Suggested Answers for Check Questions

Rewrite rules establish the nature of structures in languages. They become maximally general via the use of category variables which may stand both for thematic and functional categories. The complement rule (X' → X YP) introduces the head and the complement; the order of the elements on the right side of the arrow may be swapped, thereby it is possible to achieve cross-linguistic generalisations about the relative order of head + complement. The specifier rule (XP → YP X') introduces the structural position associated with specifiers which, in English, appear to the left of the constituent containing the head + complement (X'). The adjunct rule differs from the other two in that what is on the left hand side of the arrow may be a head or a bar-level constituent or a maximal projection. In addition, the adjunct may also be of two types: a zero-level category or a maximal projection. Finally, the adjunct rule is recursive, i.e. a constituent appearing on the left hand side of the arrow also appears on the right hand side, thus inclusion of any number of adjuncts in a structure is made possible.