2. Notes on X-bar Theory by Prof.

Aldo Blanco

X-BAR THEORY
Prof Aldo Blanco

Consider the following expressions:

Noun phrase: the destruction of the city
the liberation of the country
Verb phrase: John destroyed the city
John liberated the country
Adjective phrase: very proud of her son
quite faithful to her husband
Prepositional phrase: quite near the door
exactly under the bridge

The four kinds of phrase have a head or nucleus, represented in bold type, a complement, which follows
them, and a specifier, which precedes them. Lets call the head X. X is a supercategory. It can be a noun, a
verb, an adjective or a preposition. These are the four basic lexical categories.
The head and its complement form a structure which is a projection of the head. The head takes a
complement and assigns a theta-role to it. This combination of head plus complement takes, in turn, a
specifier, and in this way a further projection of the head is formed. This combination of head and
complement first of all, and then the further combination of head-complement with a specifier can be
represented graphically in this way:

XP maximal projection

Specifier X intermediate projection

head X Complement

The head of the construction projects by taking a complement, or internal argument. For example, eat a
sandwich, a transitive verb takes an object. And this combination takes a subject or external argument: John
is eating a sandwich.
The conclusion of this discussion is that all four kinds of phrase have the same structure: an obligatory head
and a possible complement (that depends on the lexical nature of the head) and a possible specifier (that
depends on the kind of head involved). From now on, X is a synonym of head, also called, zero level
category, or X. The combination of a head and its complement is called intermediate projection (or X-bar, or
X, i.e. X prime). And the combination of this intermediate projection with a specifier is called maximal
projection (Xmax, or X-double bar, or X, i.e. X double prime).
In traditional grammar, all grammatical structures were considered endocentric, i.e. having a head, except
two: the sentence and the prepositional phrase, which were both regarded as exocentric, i.e. without a
head. The sentence was defined as the combination of a subject and a predicate and it was thought that the
two elements had to be present. The prepositional phrase also consisted of two elements, both obligatory:
the preposition and its object. But look at the relation between a preposition and an adverbial particle:
He went into the room He went in
He went up the stairs He went up
He went out of the house He went out
He went round the house He went round
He went away from here He went away
He went down the street He went down

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He jumped over the wall He jumped over
He came back from there He came back
This paradigm makes it clear that an adverbial particle is a preposition without its object (or complement).
This means that the preposition is the head of the prepositional phrase, an endocentric construction.
The relation between the preposition and the adverbial particle, which is very clear in English, can also be
found in Spanish to a lesser extent:
Antes (de la Guerra)
Despus (de la Guerra)
Adentro (de la casa)
Detrs (de la puerta)
Debajo (de la mesa)
Arriba (del departamento)
Cerca (de la puerta)
Lejos (de la puerta)
With respect to the sentence, in traditional grammar, the sentence was defined as a group of words with a
conjugated verb. A conjugated verb is a verb (its root) plus an inflexion: run-s, work-s, etc. To say that a
conjugated verb, i.e. an inflexion, is a necessary element in a sentence means that the inflexion is the head
of the sentence. So a sentence is also an endocentric construction: it has a head, the inflexion on the verb.
We have now extended the feature of endocentricity from the lexical categories to the sentence. Can
anything precede the subject in a clause? Yes, the complementizer, e.g.
He said [that it was raining]
The noun complement clause is introduced by the word that, traditionally regarded as a conjunction,
nowadays treated separately from conjunctions and called a complementizer. There are only three
complementizers in English: that, for and if (introducing noun complement clauses), e.g.
He said [that it raining]
He is waiting [for John to come]
He asked [if it was raining]
The complementizer is considered the head of the complementizer phrase, the one within square brackets.
The illocutionary force of the complementizer is the following:
That: indicative mood, it introduces a declarative sentence, a statement
For: the same, but the verb is infinitival
If: interrogative mood, it introduces a question
Notice the relation between the main verb and the complementizer.

A little revision
So far then, all constructions have the same structure: an obligatory head X, a possible complement, a
phrase, which expands (or enlarges, or projects) the head into an intermediate projection (X) and a possible
specifier which expands (or enlarges, or projects) the intermediate projection X into a maximal projection
(X = Xmax).
The head of an NP (noun phrase) is an N
The head of a VP (verb phrase) is aV
The head of an AP (adjectival phrase) is an A
The head of a PP (prepositional phrase) is aP
The head of XP (any phrase) is X
The clause is represented as IP (Inflexion Phrase) or TP (tense phrase). The head of a clause is I (the inflexion
on the verb) or T: tense.

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There is a little bigger clause which is CP (Complementizer Phrase). The head of CP is C (the
complementizer).
A phrase (XP) is the projection of its head (X). The head gives (transfers or transmits to) its phrase its
essential character, its category and certain features, e.g. number, gender, etc. That is to say, if the head is
singular, its phrase is singular; if the head is masculine, its phrase is masculine.
X is a variable which takes as its value either N, or V, or A, or P, or an inflexion, or a complementizer.
XP = X = Xmax = the maximal projection of a head
X = the intermediate projection of a head
X = X = the head of a phrase = zero level category or zero projection (no expansion)

Endocentricity
These syntactic hierarchies are set up by means of the notion of endocentricity. Endocentricity is a principle
of grammar to be found in all languages and in all structures:
Every head is the head of a phrase and every phrase has a head.
Every phrase is the projection of its head.
All categories are endocentric

There are three kinds of categories:

1) Zero-level categories (X): Lexical: N, V, A, P
Functional: C, Tense, Aspect, Mood, Negation, etc.
2) Phrasal categories: NP, VP, AP, PP
3) Clausal categories: IP or TP, CP
The complements and the specifiers are maximal projections. Both notions are relations or functions, not
syntactic categories. They are like the subject, object, etc.
The head of a clause is the inflexion (I), so a clause is an Inflexion Phrase (IP)
The subject occupies the position of Specifier of IP
The VP is the complement of I
IP

NP I
John
I VP
Pres
Spec. V'
?
V NP
likes
Spec. N'
?
Spec. N
? Mary

In any phrase, there are two syntactic (structural, configurational, geometric) relations between the
elements in it:

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a) primacy relations: dominance (or domination) and linear precedence
b) locality relations: sisterhood (daughters of the same mother) and government

Dominance: Node A dominates node B iff A is higher up in the tree than B and if you can trace a line from A
to B going only downwards. Compare dominance and immediate dominance.
Precedence: Node a precedes node B iff A is to the left of B and A does not dominate B or B does not
dominate A. Compare precedence and immediate precedence.
Government: A governs B if A is a governor (governors are heads) and A and B are sisters.

Definitions of lexical categories by means of syntactic features

The category N has the features [+N, -V]
The category V has the features [-N, +V]
The category A has the features [+N, +V]
The category P has the features (-N, -V]

Natural classes
[+N] = N, A (insert of): leg of the table, proud of John
[-N] = V, P (assign Case): ate bread, with bread
[+V] = V, A (predicate; semantic affinity: events and properties or qualities)
[-V] = N, P (focus in emphatic or cleft sentences): It was John that went to the cinema, It was to the
cinema that John went
The noun and the verb are not a natural class. There are no rules that apply to them both.
The same with the adjective and the preposition. They dont seem to share any features.

[features]
[+N] [-N]
A, V, N, P are categories
[+V] A V

[-V] N P

The inflexion (I or INFL) and the complementizer (C or Comp)

The inflexion is an element in the sentence which is realized (or manifested) as a suffix, an inflexional suffix,
on the verb. The inflexion is the head of a simple sentence. It is a non-lexical (but functional) syntactic
category of zero level. It manifests the tense of the sentence and agreement with the subject. According to
some linguists, the inflexion also manifests modality. According to other linguists , the modals are specifiers
of the verb.
In the early days of generative grammar, the sentence was said to be made up of two phrases: a noun
phrase (NP) and a verb phrase (VP):
S NP VP
Very soon after that, the auxiliary was supposed to include the tense as an obligatory element and a series
of optional elements (modality and aspect):
AUX tense (modal) (have en) (be ing)

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The inflexion, at that time included in the auxiliary, was described as separate from the verb. The inflexion is
a different category from the verb. The verb expresses a state or an action. The inflexion expresses time.
They are very different elements which are pronounced together in many languages because the inflexion
has no stress on it, so it cannot be pronounced separately, in isolation. It has to get attached to a word that
has its own stress. It has to be cliticized, like the clitics in Spanish: verlo, lo v, se fue, etc. You cant say lo in
isolation in Spanish. You can say l, ella, but not lo, le, se, me, etc. So the rule that generated a sentence
soon became:
S NP INFL VP
The inflexion then has the features [tense] and [Agr], where Agr, i.e. agreement, means agreement with
the subject (the set of features which establish agreement). Finite clauses or sentences have the feature
[+tense] and infinitival clauses or phrases have the feature [-tense]; they bear no agreement.
Agreement includes the features person, number, and gender, and presumably also Case (Nominative Case).
These features are also called the phi features of agreement, often represented by the Greek letter phi: .
In 1986, Chomsky decided to assume that the sentence is an endocentric structure and its head is the
inflexion (I). The symbol for the sentence then is IP (Inflexion Phrase) and when the subject is preceded by a
complementizer (Comp), the sentence is CP (Complementizer Phrase), so CP = Comp IP, or more commonly
[C IP]. This proposal was called the extension of X-bar theory to non-lexical categories I and C. An example
with the complementizer for could be:
John prefers [ CP for [ IP Peter to go to Paris]]
At one time, CP was designated S-bar because IP was S and the addition of a complementizer to S became S-
bar. Nowadays we use the symbols IP for a clause without C and CP for the clause which includes C.
The X-bar schema or theory is purely hierarchical. It does not determine the order of the constituents. The
order of the constituents will be determined by other principles of the theory of grammar. Chomskys
version of the X-bar schema consists of two projection levels: X-bar and X-double bar (or double prime). All
categories, both lexical and functional, have these two levels of projection.
The principle of endocentricity has to do with two notions: inclusion or dominance and the obligatory
presence of a head or nucleus. Words appear within phrases, phrases are parts of bigger phrases, these
bigger phrases appear within clauses and clauses are parts of sentences. This relationship is called inclusion
or dominance. It has also been described as the consist of relationship. Nowadays it is called Merge. This is
the core notion in syntax. The combination of words within phrases. A head always merges with its
complement and the resulting phrase merges with a specifier. Thats the way sentences are supposed to be
constructed or built up. Analytically, the simple sentence (IP) consists of the subject and I, and I consists of
I and its complement VP. See the tree diagram above.

The sisterhood relation

Within a phrase, there are two kinds of relation: one is vertical and the other, horizontal. The noun phrase
my book, for example, consists of the head book preceded in English by the specifier my. That is a vertical
relationship. It is called inclusion or dominance. NP includes or dominates the specifier and the head of the
phrase. But then, these two words are said to be sisters of each other, both daughters of the noun phrase.
Sisterhood is a horizontal relationship. Daughterhood is vertical.
In the case of the subject and the inflexion, there is always a verb phrase functioning as complement of the
inflexion:
IP

NP I

I VP
I and VP are sisters, and so are NP and I. But what is the relationship between NP and I?

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They are not immediately dominated by the same category: NP is immediately dominated by IP, and I is
immediately dominated by I. Well, this is said to be the extended notion of sisterhood. The strict notion of
sisterhood (same level) is extended to this configuration. This creates an asymmetry between the subject
and the object. The object is a strict sister of the inflexion whereas the subject is an extended sister of the
inflexion. The structure of the sentence (in fact, all structures) are now binary.
IP NP I
I I VP

The reasons for this binary analysis will be found in the book by Hornstein, Nunes and Grohman.

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