Structural Syntax: Grammatical Ties
The Immediate Constituents (ICs) of any construction are connected with each other by a grammatical tie.
It seems to speakers of English that the relationships between ICs in different constructions are not always the same. For example, the relationship between Alice and grew in Alice grew seems different from the relationship between white and rabbit in white rabbit. We might say that grew is the "predicate" of the subject Alice, whereas white is an adjective "modifying" the noun rabbit.
Structural grammar calls these relationships between ICs "grammatical ties," and theorizes that well-formed English sentences may be analyzed in terms of five grammatical ties.
The five grammatical ties that structural grammar finds sufficient for the analysis of English syntax are listed below. Click on the name of the grammatical tie to go to a page containing a brief discussion of that tie. (If you are going through this discussion for the first time, it will be more efficient to consider the grammatical ties in the order listed.)
COORDINATION. In coordination, the ICs in question are presented as being "coordinated," or in some sense "syntactically equal."
PREDICATION. Predication is the relationship between a subject (with its modifiers) and a verb (with its complements and modifiers).
MODIFICATION. Examples of modification are the relationship between an adjective and its noun, or a verb and its adverb.
SUBORDINATION. Examples of subordination are the relationship between a preposition and its object, a subordinating conjunction and its clause, and a relative pronoun and its clause.
COMPLEMENTATION. Complement means "to complete"; complementation is the relationship between a verb and an element that "completes the meaning" of the verb.
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