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Constituent Structure, Syntactic Categories, and Grammatical Relations
Constituent Structure, Syntactic Categories, and Grammatical Relations
Grammatical Relations
3.1 Constituents and constituent structure
The fundamental concept of this chapter is that sentences are not just strings of words,
but have a more complex structure, which linguists call Constituent Structure.
3. 5 Auxiliary verbs
Many languages have a subclass of verbs called AUXILIARY VERBS or
AUXILIARIES. Examples in English include words like should, have, and be, which are
used in combination with other verbs and that contains another VP embedded inside it.
What is special about an auxiliary verb is that it requires a second VP to be present in the
tree, just like a transitive verb requires a direct object to be present. In other words, auxiliaries
subcategorize for VPs. In (10), the VP take the Cadillac occurs alongside the auxiliary
should, thus satisfying its subcategorization requirement. It is this second VP that contains the
‘main’ verb.
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___________________________ Start to Learn Syntax 24
(10)
S
NP VP
Det N V VP
the driver should V NP[DO]
take D N
the cadillac
Auxiliary verbs require just a few modifications to our formal grammar. First, the phrase
structure rule for VP must allow for the possibility of one VP embedded inside another one.
Auxiliary verbs require just a few modifications to our formal grammar. First the phrase
structure rule for VP must allow for the possibility of one VP embedded inside another one.
The constituent structure of a sentence can be represented in two ways, with LABELED
BRACKETS and with TREES. Trees consist of a set of NODES connected by
BRANCHES. Different types of nodes include ROOT NODES, TERMINAL NODES,
PRETERMINAL NODES, and NON TERMINAL NODES.