The purpose of this study is to discuss syntactic structure of sentences in generative grammar, point out some problems, and offer a new alternative version of syntactic structure. Current generative grammar represents syntactic structure of sentences in terms of categories and postulates tense as an independent syntactic constituent from verbs. The new syntactic structure will be offered which is comprised of six fundamental syntactic constituents. They are Comp, Tense, Neg, Link, Aspect, and Predicate. Neg, Link, and Aspect will be optional syntactic constituents which will be postulated only when they occur as independent words at surface form. On the other hand, Comp, Tense, and Predicate will be obligatory syntactic constituents which will almost always be postulated. Empirical evidence will be offered for such composition of syntactic constituents. In three significant respects the new syntactic structure will be more advantageous than formerly assumed syntactic structures in generative grammar. First, the alternative syntactic structure postulates tense as an independent syntactic constituent from predicates and thus nonpredicate tensed verbs such as auxiliary verbs will not be decomposed into verb and tense. They will be the syntactic constituent Tense by themselves. This will dispense with auxiliary verb raising to Tense. Second, straightforward and uniform licensing conditions will be specified for ellipsis of main verbs and auxiliary verbs in terms of the new syntactic structure. This will dispense with Lasnik (1999) s hybrid approach to verbal morphology to account for differences between main verbs and auxiliary verbs with regard to verb ellipsis. Third, the new syntactic structure will have practical and educational merits as well as theoretical values.
1. Introduction
2. An alternative structure
3. Empirical explanation of the sentences in terms of the new structure
4. Justification from the verb ellipsis
5. Conclusion
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