Introduction

The purpose of this chapter is to provide a syntactic explanation of the zone structure set out in chapter 2, parallel to the semantic explanation set out in the last chapter. The starting point is the basic syntactic fact, set out in chapter 2, that premodifiers modify the following part of the phrase. For example, in ‘the [large [public [nature reserves]]]’, nature modifies ‘reserves’, public modifies ‘nature reserves’, and large modifies the still larger unit, ‘public nature reserves’. The chapter explores what is entailed in the relation of modifying.

The argument is that premodifiers do more than modify the following part of the phrase. In general, the further from the head a premodifier is: (a) the wider is its scope of modification– for example, it can relate to other modifiers individually, and to participants in the discourse situation other than the entity denoted by the head; (b) the more types of modification it has; (c) the looser is its bond to the head. Those generalisations, and the exceptions to them, are explained by the semantic structure of the modifiers concerned. These facts lead to the conclusion that syntactic structure makes a partial explanation of premodifier order, but that semantic structure explains the syntactic structure.