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2-Lesson 2 Phrase Structure Trees and Rules 2021

This document discusses phrase structure trees and rules. It provides examples of phrase structure trees that represent sentence structures hierarchically with syntactic categories. Phrase structure rules can also represent sentence structures, showing how categories are composed. The roles of phrase structure rules are to break down sentences, show how sentences can be generated, and allow comparison across languages. Syntactic and lexical ambiguities are also discussed briefly.

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20 views

2-Lesson 2 Phrase Structure Trees and Rules 2021

This document discusses phrase structure trees and rules. It provides examples of phrase structure trees that represent sentence structures hierarchically with syntactic categories. Phrase structure rules can also represent sentence structures, showing how categories are composed. The roles of phrase structure rules are to break down sentences, show how sentences can be generated, and allow comparison across languages. Syntactic and lexical ambiguities are also discussed briefly.

Uploaded by

AYOUB ESSALHI
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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7 Phrase structure trees and rules

Phrase structure trees and brackets are notational equivalents.


Consider the example in (25).
(25) The boy kicked the ball.
It can be represented either by a tree as in (26), or by using brackets as in (27).

(26) IP
NP VP
Det N V NP
the boy kicked Det N
the ball

(27) [IP [NP [Det [the] N [boy]] VP[V [ kicked]] NP [N [Det [the] N [ball]]]].

Sentences have as their heads an abstract category ‘Infl’, short for inflection which indicates
the sentences’ s tense. Because Infl, like all heads, is obligatory, this automatically accounts
for the fact that all sentences have a tense (either past or non-past). Infl takes a VP category as
its complement and an NP (the subject) as its specifier.
IP or InflP (S): Inflectional phrase is a functional head containing (in English) auxiliary verbs
and/or tense and/or agreement features, also written as I (I0). More recently, Infl has been
reinterpreted as a conflation of two separate heads AGR (agreement) and T (tense).

A tree diagram with syntactic category information is called a phrase structure tree. This tree
shows that a sentence is both a linear string of words and a hierarchical structure with phrases
nested in phrases. Words appear in trees under labels that correspond to their syntactic
category. Nouns are under N, determiners under Det, verbs under V, and so on.
In discussing trees, every higher node is said to dominate all the categories beneath it. VP
dominates V, NP, and also dominates Det and N. A node is said to immediately dominate the
categories one level below it. VP immediately dominates V and NP. Categories that are
immediately dominated by the same node are sisters. V and NP are sisters in the PS tree of the
boy kicked the ball.
The information represented in a PS tree can also be represented by another formal device:
phrase structure rules. The general schema is: XP (YP) X (ZP)

1
We can read it as: XP consists of YP followed by X followed by ZP. The elements in
parenthesis are optional, and the elements without parenthesis are obligatory. X, Y and Z are
variables representing any category e.g. (N. V. P. A. etc). The example in (25) can be
represented as the following:

IP NP VP
NP Det N
VP V NP

To the left of the arrow is the dominating category, for example VP, and the categories that it
immediately dominates –that comprise it- appear on the right, V and NP.

VP V NP
V Adv
V PP
V PP Adv
V CompP

Another option open to the VP is to contain or embed a clause. For example, the sentence
‘The teacher said that the boy kicked the ball’ contains the clause ‘the boy kicked the ball’.
Preceding the embedded clause is the word that, which is a Complementizer (Comp). Comp is
a functional category, like Aux and Det. Here is the structure of such sentences:
(28)
IP
NP VP
Det N V CP
the teacher said C IP
that
NP VP
Det N V NP
the boy kicked Det N
the ball

These phrase structure rules fulfill at least three roles:


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1-They show how sentences can be broken down to illustrate their structure.
2-They show a general manner of creating sentences.
3-They provide a way for us to compare languages.
Thus, phrase structure rules were formulated in order to construct unlimited sentences with a
small number of rules.

8. Syntactic and lexical ambiguities


Syntactic ambiguity, also called structural ambiguity, is a situation where a sentence may be
interpreted in more than one way due to ambiguous sentence structure, as shown in the
following phrase:
29 a-drink [tea with honey ] b-drink [tea] [with honey]
VP VP
V NP V NP PP
N PP N P NP
P NP N
N
In the first tree, the PP is a constituent of the NP; in the second tree, it is a constituent of the
VP.
Lexical ambiguity is caused by the words which have more than one reading, as shown in the
following example:
(30) She loves me more than you.
The above example can have two meanings according to the meaning of the word you.
a. She loves me more than she loves you.
b. She loves me more than you love me.

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