What is an empty category in syntax?
In linguistics, an empty category is an element in the study of syntax that does not have any phonological content and is therefore unpronounced. Empty categories may also be referred to as covert categories, in contrast to overt categories which are pronounced.
How would you define empty categories give examples?
1. Definition. The empty category is the category with no objects, and hence no morphisms, i.e. the category whose class of objects is the empty set. This is the initial object in Cat. This is a groupoid, so we may call it the empty groupoid.
What is ECP in syntax?
In linguistics, the empty category principle (ECP) was proposed in Noam Chomsky’s syntactic framework of government and binding theory. The ECP is supposed to be a universal syntactic constraint that requires certain types of empty categories, namely traces, to be properly governed.
What is grammatical category in linguistics?
The term “grammatical category” refers to specific properties of a word that can cause that word and/or a related word to change in form for grammatical reasons (ensuring agreement between words). For example, the word “boy” is a noun. Nouns have a grammatical category called “number”.
What are empty null covert constituents?
(By saying that a constituent is null or empty or covert, we mean that it has no overt phonetic form and so is silent.) The kind of null subject found in the bracketed clauses in the (b) examples has much the same grammatical and referential properties as pronouns, and hence is conventionally designated as PRO.
What is Subjacency in linguistics?
Subjacency is a general syntactic locality constraint on movement. It specifies restrictions placed on movement and regards it as a strictly local process. This term was first defined by Noam Chomsky in 1973 and constitutes the main concept of the Government and Binding Theory.
What are bounding nodes?
A bounding node is a node that plays a role in determining whether a movement is local enough.
What is Subjacency condition?
What grammatical category do I have?
A grammatical category is a class of units (such as noun and verb) or features (such as number and case) that share a common set of characteristics.
What are the two divisions of grammatical category?
The traditional division of grammar into two sections is accordingly retained: morphology (etymologically, “the science of forms”) and syntax (etymologically, “arrangement together,” or “combination”), the first of which examines the internal structure of words and the second, the rules for combining words into …
What is Subjacency principle?
What is an empty category in grammar?
In linguistics, an empty category is an element in the study of syntax that does not have any phonological content and is therefore unpronounced. Empty categories may also be referred to as covert categories, in contrast to overt categories which are pronounced.
Do Empty categories enter the derivation of a sentence at the same point?
Not all empty categories enter the derivation of a sentence at the same point. Both DP-trace and WH-trace, as well as all of the null heads, are only generated as the result of movement operations. Trace refers to the syntactic position which is left after something has moved, helping to explain how DP-trace and WH-trace get their names.
How does a child acquire the notion of empty categories?
Possible explanations for the eventual acquisition of the notion of empty categories are that the child then learns that even when he or she doesn’t hear a word in the original position, they assume one is still there, because they are used to hearing a word.
Which is an example of a motherese utterance that doesn’t use empty categories?
An example of a motherese utterance which doesn’t use empty categories is in response to a child’s request for a certain object. A parent might respond “You want what?” instead of “What do you want?”.