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X-bar theory
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=== Structure of S === Under the PSR, the structure of '''S''' (sentence) is illustrated as follows.<ref name="C55" /><ref name="C57" /><ref name="C75">{{Cite book|last=Chomsky|first=Noam|authorlink= |title=The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory|publisher=Plenum Press|location=New York|language= |year=1981|page= |id= |isbn= |quote= }}</ref> * S β NP (Aux) VP However, this structure violates the headedness principle because it has an exocentric, headless structure, and would also violate the binarity principle if an [[Auxiliary verb|Aux]] (auxiliary) occurs, because the S node will then be ternary-branching. Given these, Chomsky (1981)<ref name="C81" /> proposed that S is an '''InflP''' headed by the functional category '''[[inflection|Infl]]'''(ection), and later in Chomsky (1986a),<ref name="C86a" /> this category was relabelled as '''I''' (hence constitutes an '''IP'''), following the notational convention that phrasal categories are represented in the form of XP, with two letters.{{refn|group="FN"|The functional category I was later replaced by '''T'''(ense) and '''Agr'''(eement) along the proposal by Pollock (1989).<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Pollock|first=Jean-Yves|date=1989|title=Verb Movement, Universal Grammar, and the Structure of IP|journal=Linguistic Inquiry|volume=20|issue=3|pages=365β424}}</ref> The functional category Agr, however, was rejected by Chomsky (1995)<ref name="C95b">{{cite book|last=Chomsky|first=Noam|title=The Minimalist Program |date=1995 |publisher=MIT Press |location=Cambridge MA}}</ref> because it presumably made no contributions at LF. For this reason, clauses are generally assumed to be '''TP'''s headed by the functional category '''T''' in contemporary linguistic theory.}} The category I includes auxiliary verbs such as ''will'' and ''can'', clitics such as ''-s'' of the third person singular present and ''-ed'' of the past tense. This is consistent with the headedness principle, which requires that a phrase have a head, because a sentence (or a clause) necessarily involves an element that determines the inflection of a verb. Assuming that S constitutes an IP, the structure of the sentence ''John studies linguistics at the university'', for example, can be illustrated as in Figure 10.{{refn|group="FN"|{{Anchors|Affix hopping|Affix movement}}In the structure in Figure 10, the [[linear order (linguistics)|linear order]] of the whole sentence is derived by '''affix hopping''' (also known as '''affix movement'''). Affix hopping is an operation that is applied at [[phonological form]] (PF) after syntactic formation, and in this case, it serves to move the "sound" of the inflectional suffix /-s/ and adjoin it onto the verb.<ref>{{Cite book|editor-last1=Araki|editor-first1=Kazuo|authorlink= |translator= |year=1999|title=Eigogaku Yogo Jiten (A Dictionary of Technical Terms of English Linguistics)|publisher=Sanseido|location=Tokyo|page=16|id= |isbn= |quote= }}</ref> Chomsky (1981)<ref name="C81" /> calls this kind of tense affix movement ''Rule R''.}} [[File:The_X-bar_structure_of_"John_studies_linguistics_at_the_university".png|thumb|none|600px|Figure 10]] As is obvious, the IP hypothesis makes it possible to regard the grammatical unit of sentence as a phrasal category. It is also important that the configuration in Figure 10 is fully compatible with the central assumptions of the X-bar theory, namely the headedness principle and the binarity principle.
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