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ECS 5 ENGLISH SYNTAX

Chapter 4 Syntactic Tree Structures

OBJECTIVES
By the end of this lesson, you should be able to:
•Familiarize oneself with a syntactic tree structure
•Distinguish the parts of a Syntactic tree diagram.
•Diagram Trees structures using phrase structure rules

Syntactic Parsing
A sentence has a hierarchical structure and are made up of constituents. Constituents can have
constituents of their own. The constituents are phrases. A phrase consists of a head and
modifiers. The categorical type of the head determines the categorical type of the phrase (e.g., a
phrase headed by a noun is a noun phrase.) There are several categories, we looked at some of
them and determined phrase structure rules or templates for what each kind of phrase can
contain.

Syntactic parsing is the task of recognizing a sentence and assigning a syntactic structure to it.
There are many names used: a parse or parsing tree, tree diagram, derivation tree or concrete
syntax tree. This often causes confusion to students. However, one should understand that it is
simply the representation of a string of syntactic structures ordered according to some context-
free grammar.

Parse trees are directly useful in applications such as grammar checking in word-processing
systems: a sentence that cannot be parsed may have grammatical errors. More typically,
however, it also serves as an important intermediate stage of representation for semantic analysis
and thus play an important role in applications like question answering and information
extraction.

A tree consists of nodes. A node has a label, for example NP for noun phrase, VP for verb
phrase, and so on. The node at the very top of the tree, the one from which all the others
ultimately derive, is called the root of the tree. The nodes are connected by lines, known as
edges. The terminal nodes of the diagrams are the ones without any children. The children are
known as the leaves of the tree. They will contain labels for the word categories (parts of speech)
of each word.
Borrowing terminology from genealogical trees, the nodes below another node are sometimes
called the children/daughter of that node. A node
that has children is a parent node/mother node.
Just as with people, parent nodes can themselves
be children of other parents. If we need to talk
about nodes that are children of children, we call
them descendants. Unlike genealogical trees,
however, it is important to note that while a node
may have several children, it only has one parent.
Also, each line should connect to one child node.

Phrase Structure Trees

 Phrase structure (PS) trees show the internal structure of a sentence along with
syntactic category information.
 In a PS tree every higher node dominates all the categories beneath it.
*S (Root) dominates everything
 A node immediately dominates the categories directly below it
 Sisters are categories that are immediately dominated by the same node
  *The V and the NP are sisters. Some heads require a certain type of complement and some
don’t.
Examples:
The verb find requires an NP: Chris found the ball.
- The verb put requires both an NP and a PP: Chris put the ball in the toy box.
- The verb sleep cannot take a complement: Chris slept.
- The noun belief optionally selects a PP: the belief in freedom of speech.
- The adjective proud optionally selects a PP: proud of herself
 C-selection or categorization refers to the information about what types of
complements a head can or must take
 Verbs also select subjects and complements
based on semantic properties (S-selection)
The verb murder requires a human subject and object

x The beer murdered the lamp.

The verb drink requires its subject to be animate and its optional complement object to
be liquid. x The beer drank the lamp.

 For a sentence to be well-formed, it must conform to the structural constraints of PS

rules and must also obey the syntax/categorical (C-selection) and semantic (S-selection)
requirements of the head of each phrase.
 Phrase structure rules specify the well-formed structures of a sentence – A tree must
match the phrase structure rules to be grammatical.
Based on the phrase structure rules discussed in module 3. Here are the tree diagrams for
selected items for each pharsal category. (Brinton 171-181, 2000)

Noun Phrase (NP)

A preliminary structure for the NP the large dogs might be the following:

Here, Det is shown as sister of both AP and N. In fact, thedeterminer really relates to the rest
of the noun phrase as a whole, not the AP and N separately. For this reason we will introduce
the intermediate category of N-bar (N¯ ):
 And our revised structure for the large dogs would be the following:

The validity of this ―nested‖ structure is shown by the fact that the word one, which is a
kind of substitute noun, can replace both dogs and large dogs:

- Where are the large dogs and the small ones? (ones= dogs)
- Large dogs are the ones that I fear. (ones=large dogs)
By our rule for NP, a more complex phrase, that angry man‘s fierce dog, would have the
following phrase marker:

We are ignoring the presence in the NP of what are called predeterminers (all, both, half) and
postdeterminers, such as some quantifiers (many, few ) and the numerals, as in the
following:
[all] the [many] very happy people
We are also not accounting for structures such as all of (the dogs) or some of (the dogs). To this
point in our grammar, the only function for NP that we have examined is that of subject
(S→NPVP); numerous other functions will be recognized later.
Adjective Phrase (AP)
The initial tree structure for the NP the very fiercely barking dog might be the following:

However, this structure incorrectly shows very, fiercely, and barking as sisters, all
modifying dog, that is, a ‗very dog‘, a ‗fiercely dog‘, and a ‗barking dog‘. Obviously,
this is not what is being said, but rather ―very fiercely‖ is modifying ―barking‖, and
―very‖ is modifying ―fiercely‖. As we will see in the next section, the sequence [Deg Adv]
constitutes an adverb phrase, so the correct structure is the following:

We must also recognize in our rule that Deg can modify A directly, as in the very fierce dog:
 Apart from the fact that we don‘t actually have a mechanism in our rules for generating
more than one AP, a hierarchical, or ―nested‖, structure such as the following better
captures the meaning of the phrase:

or

That is, rather than being a ‗scarf which is silken and blue and long‘, it is a ‗silken scarf
which is blue‘ and a ‗blue silken scarf which is long‘. Note that changing the order
of the adjectives produces unnatural phrases: ‗blue long silken scarf, ‗silken blue long scarf.
In order to account for this structure, our rule for N¯ must be rewritten as follows:

*The adverb phrase serves an optional modifier and has simple representations which is
already shown in the structures of the adjective phase.
Prepositional Phrase (PP)

According to discussion in the previous module the rule for PP is a recursive rule since PP (on
the left) introduces a PP (on the right). And since NP introduces PP which introduces NP, NP is
also a recursive symbol. In the illustration above , ―in the library‖ modifies ―book‖ and ―on
campus‖ modifies ―the library‖. Note that a cat on the mat in the hallway would have
the structure given above, but the superficially similar a cat on the mat with long whiskers would
not since ―with long whiskers‖ modifes ―the cat‖, not ―the mat‖. A possible analysis of the
phrase with a ―flat‖ structure would give the following:
But the revision of our rule which permits more than one AP in the NP will also permit more
that one PP, so the correct phrase marker for the cat on the mat with long whiskers is the
following:

A further complication arises if there is a modifier both preceding and following the noun, as
in heavy rain in the night. Should this be analyzed as a ―flat‖ structure?
While this structure is probably not correct, it will suit our purposes, since there seems to be
no reason to prefer one of the following hierarchical structures over the other:

The phrase marker on the left would be ‗night-rain which is heavy‘ and the phrase marker on
the right would be ‗heavy rain which is in the night‘.

Verb Phrase (VP)

The verb occurs in the slot indicated by the line, with the possible complement(s) specified
afterwards. Note that only obligatory complements (NPs, APs, and PPs) figure in the
subcategorization of a verb, not the optional PP‘s which often follow a verb or verb phrase.
Distinguishing obligatory from optional PP‘s can often be very difficult. Generally, it is the case
that the obligatory complements cannot be omitted without affecting the grammaticality or
meaning of the sentence, while the optional PP‘s, which are functioning as adverbials, can be
omitted or can be moved to the beginning of the sentence. (This topic will be treated in detail in
Chapter 8.

Based on the type of complement a verb takes, a number of subcategories of verbs can be
identified:

1. Transitive (or monotransitive), abbreviated [trans], e.g., hit, eat, kill, or break, with
the following subcategorization frame:
NP Reginald broke the vase.

The complement of the verb here is a noun phrase functioning as a direct object (dO). While
traditionally a direct object is defined as the person or thing aVected by the action of the
verb, we are now able to give it a formal definition: it is the NP immediately dominated by
the VP, or it is the NP which is sister of the verb group (Vgp). A direct object can also be a
subordinate clause:

S Vivian wrote that she was unhappy

2. Intransitive, e.g., arrive, cry, laugh, or swim, labeled with the feature [intrans] and
with the following subcategorization frame:
# The package has arrived.
After the argument, she cried.

With an intransitive verb, no complement is required or allowed. Note, however, that

intransitive verbs are frequently followed by optional adverbs (e.g., The package arrived a
few minutes ago, The baby cried loudly for five minutes this morning); these do not aVect
the verb‘s subcategorization.

3. Ditransitive, abbreviated [ditrans], e.g., give, send, tell, lend, buy, oVer, or show,
with the following subcategorization frames:
NP1 NP2 Henk sent Olga
roses. or
NP2 PP[to/for NP1] Henk sent roses to Olga.
We can write this subcategorization frame more economically as follows:

NP {NP, PP[to/for NP]}

4. Copulative (or copula), abbreviated [cop], e.g., become, seem, appear, feel, be, grow,
orlook, and with the following subcategorization frame:
NP Priya is a chemist.
AP Priya seems tired.

PP Priya is in a good mood.

5. Complex Transitive, abbreviated [complex trans], with the following

subcategorization frame:
NP NP We consider him a fool.

NP AP She made him unhappy.

NP PP They regard that as the best design

FOR YOUR INFORMATION:

THE TIE-BACK
Syntax (Part 3) https://youtu.be/velk4-QlMyU

CHECKPOINT

Written Activity 3. Deadline: March 18, 2022

Test your skills in parsing trees. Construct the tree structure diagram for the following
sentences:

1. He was young.
2. Her old stweard found the letter.
3. Romeo defended his honor.
4. Juliet confesses her love.
5. Mario behaved very strangely.