Structural relations Flashcards
Structural relations?
Structural relations hold between items in a tree. There are three structural relations: dominance, precedence and c-command.
Domination is on the vertical axis while precedence and c-command are horizontal relations.
The three structural relations have their local versions: immediate dominance, immediate precedence and government.
What is dominance?
Dominance: node A dominates node B if and only if A is higher up in the tree than B and a branch from A to B can be traced going only downwards.
IOW, some nodes are higher than one another and are connected by a branch.
Dominance is a containment relation: it shows which categories belong to larger categories.
What is immediate dominance?
Node A immediately dominates node B if there is no intervening node G that is dominated by A, but which dominates B.
What is exhaustive dominance?
Node A exhaustively dominates a set of nodes {B, C, D}, provided that it immediately dominates all the members of the set (so that there is no member of the set that is not immediately dominated by A) and there is no node G immediately dominated by A that is not a member of the set.
What is a constituent?
Constituent is the set of nodes exhaustively
dominated by a single node.
What is precedence?
The relation of “what is said first” is called precedence.Node A precedes node B if A occurs to the left of B, and neither A nor B dominates the other.
What is a no-crossing branch constraint?
If node A precedes node B, then A and all nodes dominated by A must precede B and all nodes dominated by B
What is immediate precedence?
Immediate precedence is the local version of precedence according to which, A immediately precedes B if there is no node G that follows A but precedes B.
What is transitive precedence?
If X precedes Y, and Y precedes Z, the X precedes Z.
What is c-command?
Node A c-commands node B if every node dominating A also dominates B, and neither A nor B dominate the other.
C-command is a relation that holds between sisters and aunts and nieces. It never holds between cousins or between a mother and daughter!
What is symmetrical c-command?
A symmetrically c-commands B, if A c-commands B and B c-commands A (between all pairs of sisters, the same thing as sisterhood).
What is asymmetrical c-command?
Aunt c-commands her nieces and the descendants of her nieces.
What is government?
Node A governs node B if A c-commands B, and there is no node G such that G is
c-commanded by A, and G c-commands B.
Depending on the governor and the intervening node, we can talk about:
Phrase-government: is a type of government in which the governor is a phrase and the interveners are other phrases (not heads!);
Head-government: is a type of government in which the governor is a head and the interveners are other heads (not phrases!).
