Extended projections

Grimshaw takes a clause or a noun phrase to be one extended projection: a lexical head together with the functional heads above it, all sharing the categorial features of the lexical head, each at a functional level no lower than the one below it. The order of the levels is read off here from the structures the sources draw rather than assigned head by head. Each cited structure is a sequence of heads, bottom-up, and a source may also take two categories to be one head; a category extends to another when a chain of cited steps leads from the first to the second. Every cited step stays within one family, so a category extends only to categories of its family, and every category is reached from the lexical head of its family, so it extends that head.

Since the order collects the structures of several sources, a category one source places above another and another source below it comes out level with it. Cinque interleaves tense, mood, modality and aspect, Zanuttini places negation on both sides of tense and Laka places polarity below tense in English and above it in Basque, so these heads are mutually level; Rizzi's topics recur on both sides of the focus, so topic and focus are level. Where the sources agree the order is strict, as along the verbal spine from the verb to Force and the nominal spine from the noun to K, and where no source relates two heads they are incomparable: Keine's nominalized clause neither contains nor is contained in a CP.

Main definitions

• Minimalist.citedSequences, Minimalist.citedIdentifications: the structures the sources draw.
• Minimalist.Cat.Step: a cited step, from a head to the one a source merges directly above it.
• Minimalist.Cat.ExtendsTo: the extension order, the reflexive-transitive closure of the steps.

Implementation notes

A root, a VP and the verb of a cited structure are its lexical head, an IP is T, Cinque's heads are read through Cartography.Head.cat, and the heads of a structure that are not categories here (Agr, Cause, Deg, Laka's English AP) are left out, its other heads kept in order. Cinque's demonstrative and numeral are specifiers, taken as heads as his footnote allows; Zanuttini's numbered negations are all Neg; Laka's Σ is Pol. Only the high applicative is cited: Pylkkänen's low applicative sits below the verb, and with one Appl category citing both would make the verb, v and the applicative one level.

TODO

Inner aspect is placed by Liu and Yip's clause sizes, which follow Travis; Travis's own structure, Kratzer's Voice, Svenonius's adpositional heads and Grimshaw's definitions are not yet read from the sources. No cited structure relates little n to the dividing head or D to the demonstrative, so those pairs are incomparable.

References

• Grimshaw 2005, Words and Structure
• Panagiotidis 2015, Categorial Features: A Generative Theory of Word Class Categories formalized
• Harley 2013, External arguments and the Mirror Principle: On the distinctness of Voice and v
• Harley 2017, The ‘Bundling’ Hypothesis and the Disparate Functions of Little v formalized
• Pylkkänen 2008, Introducing Arguments formalized
• Liu & Yip 2026, Again, finiteness, and split aspect in Chinese languages formalized
• Pollock 1989, Verb Movement, Universal Grammar, and the Structure of IP formalized
• Zanuttini 1997, Negation and Clausal Structure: A Comparative Study of Romance Languages
• Laka 1990, Negation in Syntax: On the Nature of Functional Categories and Projections
• Keine 2020, Probes and Their Horizons formalized
• Cinque 1999, Adverbs and Functional Heads: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective formalized
• Rizzi 1997, The Fine Structure of the Left Periphery
• Egressy 2026, Size-Sensitive Sequence of Tense in Hungarian formalized
• Speas & Tenny 2003, Configurational properties of point of view roles formalized
• Borer 2005, Structuring Sense, Volume I: In Name Only formalized
• Cinque 2005, Deriving Greenberg’s Universal 20 and its exceptions formalized
• Newman 2024, When Arguments Merge formalized
• den Dikken 2010, On the Functional Structure of Locative and Directional PPs