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
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