Perspectives on Phrase Structure

Book excerpt: This book explores licensing theory and its implications for a theory of syntax. It brings together a series of new papers which focus on developing a constrained set of licensing mechanisms relating elements in a syntactic representation, and on the different properties of lexical and functional heads as licenses of complements and specifiers. Directed toward an audience of syntacticians and those interested in the applications of syntactic theory, it demonstrates the expanding explanatory parts of this approach to syntax.Key Features* Principles of phrase structure, focusing on X-bar theory and category projection* Licensing of syntactic elements, including adjuncts* Properties of functional and lexical categories* Thematic relations and argument structure