Analysing Syntax 1 Lesson 8B

Sentences Sentences, like the morphology of individual words, can be analysed using trees to illustrate their phrase structure In order to be able to analyse a sentence you need to understand the main grammatical categories

Grammatical categories Nouns (N) dog, cat, apple, park etc. Determiners (Det.) a, the, this, that etc. Verbs (V) walk, come, go Adjectives (A) big, black, hairy etc. Adverbs (Adv) quickly, slowly etc. Pronouns (PRO) he, she etc. Prepositions (P) in, on, under, over etc.

Categories and trees Words have to be attached to their grammatical category dog the walks hairy park quickly in the N Det V A N Adv P Det

Putting words in order words combine to form phrases phrases combine to form sentences What kind of phrases are there?

Types of phrase Noun phrase Verb phrase Prepositional phrase Adverb phrase Adjective Phrase

Phrases Each sentence contains a subject and a predicate the hairy dog walks quickly in the park Syntactically these correspond to: a noun phrase and a verb phrase the hairy dog walks quickly in the park

The top of the tree S NP VP So the tree for any sentence (S) should start like this: This means that every sentence is made up of a noun phrase and a verb phrase S NP VP

The bottom of the tree What we need to do is to connect: the structure at the top of the tree TO the words of the sentence at the bottom the hairy dog walks quickly in the park S NP VP Det A N V Adv P Det N

Connecting top and bottom You need to start at the bottom of the tree and build more phrases on to the categories. These phrases could be: Noun phrases Adverb phrases Prepositional phrases Adjective phrases

What about? The dog ? The park?

Noun phrase (NP) A name is a noun and it attaches to a noun phrase Romeo NP N

A simple noun phrase (NP) Determiner (Det.) + Noun (N) = Noun Phrase (NP) the dog the park NP NP Det N Det. N

Prepositional Phrase (PP) Preposition + NP = Prepositional Phrase (PP) in + = the park in the park P PP NP P NP Det N Det N

Adverb Phrase (Adv.P) When there is just one adverb, it attaches to an Adverb Phrase (Adv.P) quickly Adv.P Adv

Adjective Phrase (AP) A single adjective attaches to an Adjective Phrase (AP) hairy AP A

More on adjectives Adjectives are often found in sentences as modifiers of nouns: the hairy dog modifier of noun In this case they form part of a more complex noun phrase …

More complex noun phrases … and they are analysed like this: the hairy dog NP AP Det N A

Inserting the phrases The subject NP is easy to insert……………….……………… but the VP is more difficult the hairy dog walks quickly in the park S NP VP AP Det A N V Adv P Det N

First you attach the Verb the hairy dog walks quickly in the park S NP VP AP Det A N V Adv P Det N

Then you attach the AdvP the hairy dog walks quickly in the park S NP VP AP AdvP Det A N V Adv P Det N

Then you attach the PP the hairy dog walks quickly in the park S NP VP AP AdvP Det A N V Adv P Det N

What a complete tree looks like a sentence divides into a noun phrase ……………….. and a verb phrase these attach to phrases or and categories categories attach to words the hairy dog walks quickly in the park S NP VP PP NP AP AdvP Det A N V Adv P Det N

How to analyse the syntactic structure of a simple sentence It’s a bit like decorating a Christmas tree: Write S NP + VP at the top Write the words of the sentence at the bottom Write the categories above the words Where necessary put the categories into phrase structures (NP, Adv,P, AP, PP) Attach the phrase structures to the main NP and VP

Ambiguous sentences These sentences look the same but they have a different meaning The man hit the intruder with a stick The man hit the intruder with a wooden leg They should have a different syntactic structure. Where is the difference going to be

Disambiguating With a wooden leg and with a stick are both prepositional expressions BUT …… with a wooden leg is about the intruder so it is attached to the noun with a stick is about how he hit the intruder so it is attached to the verb

Different structure hit the intruder with a wooden leg attached to NP hit the intruder with a stick attached to VP hit the intruder with a stick VP VP NP PP NP PP NP NP NP AP V D N P D A N V D N P D N

Juliet loves Romeo Romeo loves Juliet S NP VP NP N V N

He loves carrots He loves carrots S NP VP NP PRO V N

The lamb followed Mary The lamb followed Mary S NP VP NP Det V N N

The cat killed the mouse NP VP NP Det V N Det N

Jack killed the giant Jack killed the giant S NP VP NP V N Det N

She solved the mystery She solved the mystery S NP VP NP V PRO Det N

Beavers build dams Beavers build dams S NP VP NP V N N

Beavers build dams Beavers build dams S NP VP NP V N N