Terminal

终端

A term used in generative linguistics to identify certain characteristics of the output of the syntactic component of the grammar. A terminal element or terminal symbol refers to the units employed in the syntactic representation of a sentence, after all the rules have been applied, viz. the morphemes, formatives, features, such as the, -en, +, #, man. Terminal symbols are distinguished from non-terminal (or ‘auxiliary’) elements, which are used in formulating rules. The former are usually written in lower-case letters, the latter in upper-case (e.g. NP, VP). A node which does not dominate other categories is a terminal node. A string consisting of terminal elements is known as a terminal string, i.e. the final string generated by a phrase-structure grammar.

生成语言学术语，用来指语法的句法部分的输出的某些特点。终端成分或终端符号指所有规则都应用后句子的句法表征式所采用的单位，即语素、构形成分、特征等，如the（定冠词），-en（后缀），+，#，man“男人”。终端符号区别于非终端或“辅助”成分，后者用于规则的阐述。前者一般用小写字母表示，后者一般用大写字母（如NP，VP）。不统制其他语类的节点是终端节点。由终端成分组成的语符列称作终端语符列，即短语结构语法生成的最终语符列。