Introduction

In section 1.1 two distinct facets of syntactic structure, namely relational structure and constituent structure, were distinguished, and in this chapter and the next the two main approaches to describing syntactic structure, namely dependency grammar and constituent-structure grammar, will be presented. Dependency grammar concentrates on the relational aspect of syntax, while constituent-structure grammar focuses on the constituent-structure aspect. The grammatical relations discussed in the previous chapter express a kind of dependency holding between the verb (or other predicating element) and the NPs and/or PPs in the clause. Other types of dependencies exist as well, for example, the dependence of a modifier on the element it modifies, and in this chapter these other types of dependency relations will be examined.

At the end of the discussion of lexical categories in section 1.2, it was mentioned that in modern linguistics lexical categories are defined not in terms of their meaning but in terms of their morphosyntactic properties. With respect to determining the form class of an item, the important questions to ask are ‘what elements can it cooccur with?’ and ‘what morphosyntactic environment(s) can it occur in?’ The relation that a morphosyntactic element has to the elements it cooccurs with is termed a syntagmatic relation, and it is one of the two fundamental relations that underlie language as a structural system.