Substitution Test
Evidence for the existence of X-bars may be provided by the various possibilities of substitution. For example, to the above sentence He studies linguistics at the university, someone may reply She does, too. Here the word does stands for the entire phrase studies linguistics at the university. However, had the reply been And she does at night-school, the word does would stand for just studies linguistics. This implies that significant constituents containing the verb exist at two levels; the constituent at the higher level here is named a verb phrase, and that at the lower level a V-bar (coming above the verb itself, which is studies).
Read more about this topic: X-bar Theory
Famous quotes containing the words substitution and/or test:
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