Constituency of Verb Phrases
A class participation exercise
(based on Radford, Chapter 3, exercise IX)
• Goals of the exercise:
– Relying on tests when your intuition fails
– Adapting to inconsistent results
• (e.g., find evidence for disqualifying some of the tests)
• The five trees on the following slide have all been proposed by
linguists, in published articles, for the sentence: He has been writing
a letter.
• Unlike the previous exercise with particles and PPs, people do not
have a feeling about which structure is correct.
• We will learn several more tests for constituency, and apply them to
these sentences in order to pick one of the trees as the correct one.
• The answer comes out different every year (depending on
grammaticality judgments).
S
S
TREE 1
TREE 2
VP
AUX
V
NP PERF PROG V
AUX
He has
NP PERF PROG V
He has
V
He
has
TREE 4
VP
AUX
V
VP
V
VP
V
NP
VP
AUX
NP
V
He
has been writing a letter.
He
has
TREE 5
VP
V
VP
NP
been writing a letter.
S
NP
been writing a letter.
S
TREE 3
VP
NP
NP
been writing a letter.
S
VP
V
NP
been writing a letter.
NP
Test 3: Deletion
• A constituent can be deleted, if you can
identify an appropriate meaning-preserving
deletion rule.
Verb Phrase Deletion
• A meaning preserving deletion rule for VP
(verb phrases):
– John was writing a letter and Bill was writing a letter
too.
– John was writing a letter and Bill was writing a letter
too.
– John was writing a letter and Bill was too.
• Condition: you need to leave behind an auxiliary
verb or insert do if there was no auxiliary verb.
– John wrote a letter and Bill wrote a letter too.
– John wrote a letter and Bill did too.
Note to myself. Feel free to read it.
•
•
•
•
•
John wrote a letter and Bill too.
Stripping, not verb phrase deletion.
Sam likes chocolate, and vanilla too.
Sam likes chocolate and Sam likes vanilla too.
Looks like a non-constituent was deleted (so it’s
not left-peripheral ellipsis either).
• It is still a test for constituency because the
piece left behind has to be a constituent (I think).
Test 4: Pro-Forms
• A pronoun can substitute for a noun:
– Sam went to school.
– He went to school.
• Other pro-forms can substitute for other
parts of speech.
A Pro-VP: Do so
• Put do in the same form as the verb you are
substituting it for.
• John wrote a letter and Bill wrote a letter too.
• John wrote a letter and Bill did so too.
– Write and do are in the past tense.
• John was singing and Bill was singing too.
• John was singing and Bill was doing so too.
– Sing and doing are present participles (gerund form).
A meaning-preserving movement rule
for VPs
– I thought he was singing and he was singing.
– I thought he was singing and singing he was singing.
– I thought he was singing and singing he was.
• Like Verb Phrase Deletion, this movement rule
must leave an auxiliary verb behind. If there is no
auxiliary verb, insert do as an auxiliary verb.
– I thought he would sing a song and he did sing a song.
– I thought he would sing a song and sing a song he did.
Test 5: Adverb Placement
• Sentence Adverb:
• Certainly he can rely on
my support.
• He certainly can rely on
my support.
• He can certainly rely on
my support.
• *He can rely certainly on
my support.
• ?He can rely on my
support certainly.
Note: With certainty vs it is certain that
• VP Adverb:
• *Completely he can rely
on my support.
• *He completely can rely
on my support.
• He can completely rely on
my support.
• He can rely completely on
my support.
• He can rely on my
support completely.
Adverb placement
• Sentence adverbs must be immediately
dominated by a node labeled S.
• VP adverbs must be immediately
dominated by a node labeled VP.