Operator (linguistics)

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In linguistics, an operator is a special variety of determiner including (in English) the visible interrogatives (wh-words) and the hypothetical invisible pronoun "OP".^{[citation needed]}

Operators are differentiated from other determiners by their ability to produce topicalization and to have traces that "jump" over other trace chains.^{[citation needed]}

There was a time <when> <a man> would have been shot <t> for such behavior <o>

in which a trace of "a man" acts as complement to the verb "shot" and a trace of "when" acts as modifier to the entire "shot" verb phrase, in addition to the "for such behavior" modifier already present.

1 Visible Operators
2 Invisible Operators
3 Operators in Government and Binding
4 References
5 See also

[edit] Visible Operators

In English, the interrogatives are considered visible operators, including who/whom, whose, what, where, when, why, which and how. Older forms of English would add whence, whither, and whether.

[edit] Invisible Operators

Acceptance of invisible operators in syntactic theory has been justified on the basis of visible operators or topic markers in languages such as Japanese.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Operators in Government and Binding

In classical GB theory an operator Op is usually understood to be a wh-word or a quantifier (in an A'-position):

Who said he killed John?
Everyone likes someone.

Operators can be non-overt (or null):

John is easy [Op_i PRO to please t_i]

All operators are subject to the Bijection Principle (first proposed by Koopman and Sportiche): Every operator A'-binds exactly one variable and every variable is A'-bound by exactly one operator.