We have looked at how words are combined together to form phrases and sentences. We have showed how more and more complex phrases can be built up by successive binary merger operations, each of which combines a pair of constituents to form a larger constituent. We have argued that clauses containing a finite tense auxiliary are formed by merging the tense auxiliary with a verbal complement to form an intermediate T-bar projection which is then merged with a subject to form an extended TP/tense phrase projection. On this view, a sentence like It may rain would be formed by merging the present-tense auxiliary may with the verb rain to form the T-bar constituent may rain, and then merging the resulting T-bar with the pronoun it to derive the TP.

It may rain. We also noted the claim made by Chomsky in earlier work that the requirement for tense auxiliaries to have a subject is a consequence of a principle of Universal Grammar called the Extended Projection Principle/EPP, which requires a finite T to have an extended projection into a TP containing a subject; and we noted that in more recent work this subject-requirement is described by saying that a finite T has an [EPP] feature requiring it to have an extended projection into a TP containing a subject. We went on to suggest that clauses introduced by a complementizer/C are formed by merging C with a TP complement to form a CP/complementizer phrase. We have argued that a prepositional phrase like right on the nose has a similar internal structure to a TP like He has resigned, and that in both cases the head P/T on/has merges with a following complement to form the intermediate P-bar/T-bar projection on the nose/has resigned which in turn is merged with a preceding specifier to form the extended PP/TP projection right on the nose/he has resigned. We went on to argue that other types of head (e.g. adjectives, adverbs, and nouns) can likewise project both into an intermediate projection via merger with a following complement, and into an extended projection via merger with a preceding specifier. We introduced the term maximal projection to denote the largest expression headed by a particular word in a given structure. We have looked at ways of testing constituent structure, outlining tests relating to coordination, substitution, and preposing. We noted that a variety of factors can sometimes prevent constituents from being preposed in order to highlight them; for example, items with little or no substantive lexical content generally cannot be preposed, and there are also syntactic restrictions on preposing – e.g. such movement operations are subject to a Functional Head Constraint which bars the complement of a certain type of functional head (e.g. determiner or complementizer) from being moved on its own. We have looked at the syntactic relations between constituents within tree diagrams, noting that the relation c-command plays a central role in syntax, e.g. in relation to anaphor binding. In §3.8 we discussed the potential redundancy in the system of labels used to represent categories and projection levels in traditional phrase structure trees, and noted that Chomsky has been seeking to develop a theory of bare phrase structure in recent work.

For those of you familiar with work in traditional grammar, it will be clear that the assumptions made about syntactic structure within the Minimalist frame work are somewhat different from those made in traditional grammar. Of course, there are some similarities: within both types of framework, it is assumed that lexical categories project into phrases, so that by combining a noun with one or more other constituents we can form a noun phrase, and likewise by combining a verb/preposition/adjective/adverb with one or more other constituents we can form a verb phrase/prepositional phrase/adjectival phrase/adverbial phrase. But there are two major differences between the two types of framework. One is that Minimalism (unlike traditional grammar) assumes that function words also project into phrases (so that by combining a determiner with a noun expression we form a determiner phrase, by combining a (present- or past-tense) auxiliary/T with a complement and a subject we form a Tense Projection/TP, and by combining a complementizer with a TP we form a complementizer projection/CP). This in some cases results in an analysis which is rather different from that found in traditional grammar (e.g. in that the nose would be considered a noun phrase in traditional grammar, but is taken to be a determiner phrase within the frame-work adopted here). A further difference between the two frameworks is that Minimalism assumes that all syntactic structure is binary-branching, whereas traditional grammar (implicitly) does not.