Basic Properties of Trees: Dominance and Precedence
Andrew Carnie · 2007
Abstract In the last chapter, we looked at some preliminary evidence that syntactic structure is organized hierarchically into constituents. In this chapter we look at many of the terminological and structural properties of a hierarchical constituent structure. We will look primarily at the formal description of trees and the basic structural relations of dominance (also known as domination) and precedence. I start by giving some definitional descriptions—some formal, some intuitive—in terms of the graphic representation of each relation, then I provide a more precise description in terms of axiomization in first-order logic or set theory.