A shortened form of "constituent command." The term may also have been chosen so as to eliminate confusion in speech with the similar notionkommand.[1]
c-command (uncountable)
- (syntax) The relationship between a node in aparse tree and itssiblingnodes (usually meaning the children of the firstbranching node thatdominates the node) and all the sibling nodes'children.
1988, Andrew Radford, chapter 10, inTransformational grammar: a first course, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, page564: Given the key assumption of Trace Theory that a moved constituent leaves behind a coindexed trace, we might formulate the relevant principle that transformations cannotdowngrade constituents in terms of an equivalent condition that a moved constituent cannot occupy a lower position than any of its traces. This principle might be stated more formally as in (85) below
(85) C-COMMAND CONDITION
(85) A moved constituent must c-command ( =constituent-command)
(85) each of its traces at S-structure (Xc-commands Y just in case the
(85) first branching node dominating X dominates Y, and neither X
(85) nor Y dominates the other)
c-command (third-person singular simple presentc-commands,present participlec-commanding,simple past and past participlec-commanded)
- (syntax, transitive) To dominate in a c-command relationship.
dominate in a c-command relationship
- ^Keshet, Ezra (20 May 2004), “24.952 Syntax Squib”, in(Please provide the book title or journal name)[1], MIT, archived fromthe original on26 July 2008
- 1976 Reinhart, Tanya M.The Syntactic Domain of Anaphora. (Doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology). (Available online athttps://web.archive.org/web/20111122155216/http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/16400).
- William O'Grady; Michael Dobrovolsky; Mark Aronoff (1997),Contemporary Linguistics, third edition, Bedford/St. Martin's
- Liliane Haegeman (1994),Introduction to Government and Binding Theory, 2nd edition, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, page137
- Carnie, Andrew (2002),Syntax: A Generative Introduction, 1 edition, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, page77
- 2002 Harris, C. L. and Bates, E. A. 'Clausal backgrounding and pronominal reference: A functionalist approach to c-command'.Language and Cognitive Processes17(3):237-269.
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