Practical Grammar 7

Prepositional Phrases: explaining the complex annotation

The textbook contains a c-structure rule for VP like the following:

1. VP → V          PP
       ↑=↓   (↑ (↓ PCASE)) = ↓

which translates into the following xlfg rule:

1. VP → V PP
2. {
3. ↑=↓1;
4. (↑ (↓2 PCASE)) = ↓2;
5. }

Explaining the meaning of (↑ (↓ PCASE)) = ↓

The annotation on the PP looks a lot scarier than it actually is! Let us look at its structure piece by piece. To do this, we will begin by looking at the annotations in the following rule one more time:

1. VP → V DP
2. {
3. ↑=↓1;
4. (↑ OBJ) =↓2;
5. }

Remember that the meaning of ↑ is "the mother's f-structure". Let f_VP be a name for the mother's f-structure. ↓2 refers to "the f-structure of daughter 2". Let's name that f-structure f_PP.