More Word Class Practice

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More Word Class Practice
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PS Rules and PS Trees

• As we saw yesterday, phrase structure trees give
  us a visual representation of the structure of a
  given sentence they show us the way a native
  speaker of that language structures the sentence
  in his or her mind.
• We will be deriving the PS rules for English. You
  dont need to memorize them - you know them! The
  process, however, is important, as it will give
  us some important insights into the phenomenon of
  language.

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Drawing Phrase Structure Trees
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The Sentence

• The largest constituent of any sentence, as we
  have seen, is the sentence itself. Thus, the
  Sentence (S) is the most basic syntactic
  category.
• To analyze phrases, we will first break them up
  into their component constituents.
• What are the largest constituents of the
  following sentences?

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Sentences

• I am.
• The dog ate.
• My wife loves cheese and crackers.
• The man who sold me my car was a big fat liar.

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S NP VP

• As we can see, every sentence consists of two
  constituents an NP, the subject, and a VP, the
  predicate. They must occur in this order.
• Interestingly, languages like English, where the
  subject occurs at the beginning of the sentence,
  make up 90 of human languages.
• Thus we can draw the most basic PS tree like this

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S
NP
VP
I The dog My wife The man who sold me my car
am. ate. loves cheese and crackers was a big fat
liar.
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Analyzing Phrases

• To determine the structure for each phrase, all
  we have to do is break it down into its
  constituent phrases
• Consider the following NP
• the man with the red hat
• We can break off man with the red hat into its
  own constituent, like this

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NP D NP the man
with the red hat
NP
D
NP
the
man with the red hat
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NP N PP man with the red hat
NP
D
NP
the
N
PP
with the red hat
man
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PP P NP with the red hat
NP
D
NP
the
N
PP
man
P
NP
the red hat
with
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NP D NP the red hat
NP
D
NP
the
N
PP
man
P
NP
with
NP
D
red hat
the
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NP AdjP N red hat
Because each phrase can have only one head!
NP
D
NP
the
N
PP
man
P
NP
with
NP
D
the
N
AdjP
hat
red
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And finally, AdjP Adj
NP
D
NP
the
N
PP
man
P
NP
with
NP
D
the
N
AdjP
hat
Adj
red
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Phrase Diagramming Practice
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Some Special Points
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Auxiliaries

• We can see that an Auxiliary should be part of
  the VP, as in I should go

S
VP
NP
N
Aux
V
I
should
go
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Auxiliaries

• But what about a sentence like I should be going?
  It has two auxiliaries.
• If we think about it, we can see that our PS rule
  for VPs should allow something like
• VP Aux VP
• As we can see in the following slide

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Auxiliaries

• This is an example of a recursive rule.

S
VP
NP
N
Aux
VP
I
should
Aux
VP
V
be
going
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Recursive Phrases

• Try drawing trees for these recursive sentences
• I ate in my office this morning.
• The policeman caught the man with the gun in his
  coat.

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The Infinity of Language

• Recursive rules are critical for the creative
  aspect of language they allow us to keep adding
  bits to sentences ad infinitum.

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More About Auxiliaries

• What about the difference between these
  sentences?
• He likes her.
• They liked him.
• Structurally, what is telling the verb to
  change form?

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The Answer Is The Auxiliary(But we cant see it
- yet.)

• There is actually always an Aux present,
  inflecting the verb, like this

S
NP
VP
N
VP
Aux
They
V
NP
liked
N
him
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Embedded SentencesConjunctions and
Complementizers

• What about more complex phrases like this?
• He said that she liked you.
• I think he said that she liked you.
• I think he said that she said that she liked you.
• This is another recursive rule subordinating
  conjunctions and complementizers.

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Complementizer Phrases

• We can diagram these sentences like this

VP
V
CP
said
C
S
that
NP
VP
N
Aux
VP
she
liked you
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In Other Words,

• We can add the following PS rules
• VP V CP
• CP C S
• Where C represents a subordinating conjunction.

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Coordinate Conjunctionsare very easy

• We simply need to recognize a new kind of phrase,
  the CoordP or Coordinating Phrase
• XP XP CoordP
• CoordP Coord XP
• Where XP means any kind of phrase and Coord
  represents a coordinating conjunction.

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So we get phrases like this
VP
NP
V
N
CoordP
CoordP
eat
Coord
VP
snakes
Coord
NP
or
V
and
N
drink
barrels
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Structure and Ambiguity

• So, what about ambiguous sentences like
• The spy shot the man with the gun.
• I said I would see you on Tuesday.
• It becomes (relatively) simple the meaning is
  determined by constituency!

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Heres one of them, simplified a little (which
meaning is it?)
S
NP
VP
the spy
VP
Aux
VP
PP
shot the man
with the gun
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Try to diagram the other ones!

• So, now we are masters of simple declarative
  sentences. From tomorrow, well look at some
  other kinds of sentences.