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_{Syntactic Theory}

Step 5

Determine the Grammatical Functions of the Constituents

In our example sentence:

• history teacher is the head of the NP my history teacher.
• the is the specifier of the noun history teacher.
• to is the head of the PP to my history teacher
• my history teacher is the complement of the preposition to
• write is the head of the VP write to my history teacher.
• the PP is the complement of the verb write. It is its oblique complement.
• the VP write to my history teacher is the head of the VP ''write to my history teacher tomorrow]]
• the adverb tomorrow is a modifier of the VP write to my history teacher tomorrow.
• the auxiliary will is the Head of the VP (or AuxP) will write to my history teacher tomorrow.
• the VP write to my history teacher tomorrow is the complement of the auxiliary will.
• the VP will write to my history teacher tomorrow is the head of the sentence.
• the noun Pat is the specifier of the auxiliary ''will'. It is the subject of the sentence.

In general:

• Check out the page about the grammatical functions in a clause
• and about generalized grammatical functions.

Result of Step 5:

Move on to Step 6!
... or go back to the overview over the six steps.