Syntactic Theory

Constituent Structure in HPSG: Basic Principles

The constituent structures assumed in HPSG are very close to those sketched on the Traditional Grammar pages.

Some key features of constituent structures in HPSG are:

• The leaves are words, which contain both the phonological and the syntactic information.
• Non-branching structures are avoided.
• Auxiliaries are verbs, with a feature specification [AUX plus]. Non-auxiliary verbs are specified as [AUX minus].
  The auxiliary verbs include:
  • the infinitival marker to,
  • be in all its uses,
  • have, at least in its uses as temporal auxiliary.
• The highest verb in a clause is the head of the clause.

Example structure:

• To see how these structures are licensed by the grammar, look at the page about HPSG grammar rules.