Analyzing Grammar: An Introduction
Constituent structure 47
Syntactic constituents are groups of words that function as a unit in terms of
word order: they may replace or be replaced by a single word, occur together
in various positions in a variety of sentence types, be the “focus” of a con-
tent question, or function as the answer to such a question. A constituent
is represented in a tree diagram as a string of words that is exhaustively
dominated by a single node.
Syntactic categories are classes of words (or phrases) that share certain
properties. Category names appear in a tree diagram as the labels for each
non-terminal node. We have said that lexical category names (the traditional
names for parts of speech) are assigned on the basis of semantic factors,
and that phrases share the same category as their head. However, category
membership for both words and phrases must be determined on the basis
of shared grammatical properties. Two of the crucial types of evidence are
(i) sameness of distribution, and (ii) sameness of internal structure. For
lexical categories (words), we ask: (i) what kinds of phrases does this word
occur in, and what is its function within the phrase (e.g. head, modifier,
complement)?; and (ii) what kinds of affixes occur on this type of word?
For phrasal categories we ask: (i) where may this type of phrase occur in a
sentence, and what is its function in the sentence?; and (ii) what kinds of
words occur, and what is their function, within this type of phrase?
Phrase Structure trees are a popular and efficient way to represent these
aspects of sentence structure. However, there are other aspects of syntactic
structure that are not directly represented in simple tree diagrams of the sort
we have seen thus far. We will begin to explore some of these in the next
chapter.
Practice exercises
A Give examples of tree structures that could be generated by the following
two rules:
PP → P NP
NP → Det N (PP)
B Based on these rules, parse (that is, determine the tree structures) for the
following two phrases:
a [a durian on the tree in the garden of that house in Penang]
b [in the closet at the top of the stairs in that castle beside the river]
Exercises
3A Give five examples of possible tree structures that could be generated
by each of the following simple grammars:
48 Analyzing Grammar: An Introduction
(i) A → B C (take A to be the root node)
B → D (A)
C →
!
D
E
”
(ii) S → NP V (NP) (PP) (take S to be the root node)
NP → Det (A) N (PP)
PP → P NP
V → {runs, sings, yawns, likes, gives, pinches}
A → {small, big, young, white}
P → {to, in, behind, from}
the, a, an Det → {
NP → {John, Mary}
N → {boy, girl, house, tree, cake, sausage, dog, cat}
3B (from Baker 1978:41) Find the smallest set of Phrase Structure rules
which will generate the following tree:
D
B C
A
A
S
D
D
C
C
3C Ngbaka (Congo; Roberts 1999, ex. 5.7)
Write a set of PS rules which will generate all of the grammatical noun
phrases (#1–9) but none of the ungrammatical ones (#10–18).
1. toa kpo ‘one house’
2. toa ke ‘this house’
3. toa ge ‘that house’
4. gã folo kpo ‘one big elephant’
5. folo ge tũ ‘that black elephant’
6. bisı̃ gbogbo kpo ‘one small lion’
7. gbogbo ge fẽ ‘that white lion’
8. bisı̃ gbogbo ke fẽ ‘this small white lion’
9. gã folo kpo tũ ‘one big black elephant’
10. *ke (‘this’)
11. *toa ke kpo (‘this one house’)
12. *toa kpo ge (‘that one house’)
13. *ge toa (‘that house’)
14. *kpo toa (‘one house’)
}
Constituent structure 49
15. *folo kpo gã (‘one big elephant’)
16. *tũ folo ge (‘that black elephant’)
17. *gbogbo bisı̃ kpo (‘one small lion’)
18. *fẽ gbogbo ge (‘that white lion’)
3D Mersthami (artificial language data; Bendor-Samuel and Levinsohn
1986, ex. D-4)
Based on the following examples, you are to: (i) identify the lexical and
phrasal categories in Mersthami. State the grammatical criteria for identify-
ing each category, and list the roots which belong to each lexical category;
(ii) draw tree diagrams for #3, 5, and 7; (iii) write a set of PS rules which
will generate all of these sentences.
1. lopa beli lale kuntu.
walked man old slowly
‘The old man walked slowly.’
2. lopa fobeli lalepu kuntu.
walked men old slowly
‘The old men walked slowly.’
3. lopa taha onka titam.
walked woman young quickly
‘The young woman walked quickly.’
4. lopa fotaha onkapu titam.
walked women young quickly
‘The young women walked quickly.’
5. tika sente titam lale.
ran dog quickly very
‘The dog ran very quickly.’
6. tika fobeli titam.
ran men quickly
‘The men ran quickly.’
7. lopa fotaha lalepu kuntu lale.
walked women old slowly very
‘The old women walked very slowly.’
8. tika fosente titam kindi.
ran dogs quickly unusually
‘The dogs ran unusually quickly.’
9. lopa taha lale titam onka.
walked woman old quickly quite
‘The old woman walked quite quickly.’
10. tika fobeli onkapu kuntu onka.
ran men young slowly quite
‘The young men ran quite slowly.’
TUTE week 4 PSRs and PSTs.doc page 1 of 1
Syntax
Week 4 tute
PSRs and PSTs
Kroeger exercises ch 3, p47-49, 3A, B, C
Then:
PSRs. Write all the PSRs needed to generate the following sentence.
S
VP
PP
NP AP NP
AP AdvP AP
D A N V Adv A P D A N
The accused man sat proudly upright with a rigid grace.
(‘Snow falling on cedars’ by David Guterson)
PSTs. Draw PSTs for the following sentences, using the set of PSRs you generated above. Do
you need to add to these rules?
1. He wore a white shirt.
2. His trousers were very neat.
3. His figure communicated the impression of irrefutable physical strength.
4. They conducted themselves with churchgoing solemnity.