c-command

English

Etymology

A shortened form of "constituent command." The term may also have been chosen so as to eliminate confusion in speech with the similar notion kommand.[1]

Noun

c-command (uncountable)

  1. (syntax) The relationship between a node in a parse tree and its sibling nodes (usually meaning the children of the first branching node that dominates the node) and all the sibling nodes' children.
    • 1988, Andrew Radford, chapter 10, in Transformational grammar: a first course, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, page 564:
         Given the key assumption of Trace Theory that a moved constituent leaves behind a coindexed trace, we might formulate the relevant principle that transformations cannot downgrade constituents in terms of an equivalent condition that a moved constituent cannot occupy a lower position than any of its traces. This principle might be stated more formally as in (85) below
      (85)      C-COMMAND CONDITION
      (85)      A moved constituent must c-command ( = constituent-command)
      (85)      each of its traces at S-structure (X c-commands Y just in case the
      (85)      first branching node dominating X dominates Y, and neither X
      (85)      nor Y dominates the other)

Verb

c-command (third-person singular simple present c-commands, present participle c-commanding, simple past and past participle c-commanded)

  1. (syntax, transitive) To dominate in a c-command relationship.

See also

References

  1. Keshet, Ezra (2004 May 20) “24.952 Syntax Squib”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name), MIT, archived from the original on 26 July 2008
  • 1976 Reinhart, Tanya M. The Syntactic Domain of Anaphora. (Doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology). (Available online at https://web.archive.org/web/20111122155216/http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/16400).
  • William O'Grady, Michael Dobrovolsky, Mark Aronoff (1997) Contemporary Linguistics, third edition, Bedford/St. Martin's
  • Liliane Haegeman (1994) Introduction to Government and Binding Theory, 2nd edition, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, page 137
  • Carnie, Andrew (2002) Syntax: A Generative Introduction, 1 edition, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, page 77
  • 2002 Harris, C. L. and Bates, E. A. 'Clausal backgrounding and pronominal reference: A functionalist approach to c-command'. Language and Cognitive Processes 17(3):237-269.

Further reading

This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.