Editing Syntactic category (section)

==Lexical categories vs. phrasal categories==
The traditional [[parts of speech]] are lexical categories, in one meaning of that term.<ref>See for instance Emonds (1976:14), Culicover (1982:12),  Brown and Miller (1991:24, 105), Cowper (1992:20, 173), Napoli (1993:169, 52), Haegeman (1994:38), Culicover (1997:19), Brinton (2000:169).</ref> Traditional grammars tend to acknowledge approximately eight to twelve lexical categories, e.g.

::<u>Lexical categories</u>
::[[adjective]] (A), [[adposition]] (preposition, postposition, circumposition) (P), [[adverb]] (Adv), [[Conjunction (grammar)#Coordinating conjunctions|coordinate]] [[conjunction (grammar)|conjunction]] (C), [[Determiner (linguistics)|determiner]] (D), [[interjection]] (I), [[noun]] (N), [[Grammatical particle|particle]] (Par), [[pronoun]] (Pr), [[Conjunction (grammar)#Subordinating conjunctions|subordinate]] [[conjunction (grammar)|conjunction]] (Sub), [[verb]] (V), etc.

The lexical categories that a given grammar assumes will likely vary from this list. Certainly numerous subcategories can be acknowledged. For instance, one can view pronouns as a subtype of noun, and verbs can be divided into [[finite verb]]s and [[non-finite verb]]s (e.g. gerund, infinitive, participle, etc.). The central lexical categories give rise to corresponding phrasal categories:<ref>See for instance Emonds (1976:12), Culicover (1982:13), Brown and Miller (1991:107), Cowper (1992:20), Napoli(1993:165), Haegeman (1994:38).</ref>

::<u>Phrasal categories</u>
::[[Adjective phrase]] (AP), [[adverb phrase]] (AdvP), [[Prepositional phrase|adposition phrase]] (PP), [[noun phrase]] (NP), [[verb phrase]] (VP), etc.

In terms of [[phrase structure rules]], phrasal categories can occur to the left of the arrow while lexical categories cannot, e.g. NP → D N. Traditionally, a phrasal category should consist of two or more words, although conventions vary in this area. [[X-bar theory]], for instance, often sees individual words corresponding to phrasal categories. Phrasal categories are illustrated with the following trees:

::[[File:Syntactic category1.jpg|Syntactic categories PSG]]

The lexical and phrasal categories are identified according to the node labels, phrasal categories receiving the "P" designation.