SYNTAX
The Structure of Simple Sentences
I.
Introduction
EXERCISE: Make a sentence out of each of the following sets of words:
(a) sleeps, a, baby, newborn
(b) in, house, live, green, the, a, people
(c) the, kicked, boy, ball, a
II.
Simple Phrases
A. Three ways to identify phrases
Example: Mary swims.
EXERCISE: None of the following string of words follows the rules of English
syntax. Change the order of each so that it is a grammatical sentence.
(a) Has been eating the chocolate cake the old man.
(b) The old man the chocolate cake has been eating.
(c) Has been eating the old man the chocolate cake.
Phrases - Groups which move as whole units and are intermediate between words and
sentences.
Three tests to identify which groups of words in a sentence are phrases:
1. movement
2. meaning
3. substitution
Examples:
(a) The old man ate the chocolate cake
(b) What the old man ate was the chocolate cake.
(c) The chocolate cake was eaten by the old man.
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(a) *It was man the chocolate cake which old ate.
(b) *The the cake was eaten by chocolate old man.
Phrases do not just form grammatical units, but also form units of meaning. The
following sequences of words all have a coherent identifiable meaning:
(a) the old man, the chocolate cake,
(b) the large evil leathery alligator,
(c) in a bad mood,
(d) unbelievably boring,
(e) quite large,
(f) is reading a book.
Each one of these sequences is a phrase.
Exercise #1: In each of the following sentences identify sequences of three or more
words which are phrases.
(a) An ancient monument fell down during the bombing.
(b) Several young Latvian artists danced gracefully before the Empress.
EXERCISE: Look at the following sentences and substitute another phrase for each of
the italicized phrases.
Davina sold petrol yesterday at the corner store.
Example sentences:
-
My old friend John sold tulips yesterday in the market.
-
The angry tenants sold all of the furniture of the apartment block yesterday out of
spite.
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B. Heads and Modifiers
The five major lexical categories (parts of speech):
-
noun
-
verb
-
adjective
-
adverb, and
-
preposition
‘Distribution’ or ‘Distributional properties’ - the order in which syntactic
constituents come.
Example: in a train
(a) Granville met his beloved in a train.
(b) You always get an odd range of smells in a train.
(c) The emergency cord in a train should not be touched without good reason.
If we take a phrase like a train it cannot fit in these places:
(a) *Granville met his beloved a train.
(b) *You always get an odd range of smells a train.
(c) *The emergency cord a train should not be touched without good reason.
Example: the noun phrase gorgeous looking Bentleys with walnut dashboards
_____________ make Clive drool.
Clive loves _____________.
Example: the noun phrase the witches’ discovery of the secrets of life
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Exercise #2: Using the properties of phrases, find the heads of the following phrases. Note that in some
cases there are phrases within these phrases. You should find only the word which is the head of the whole
phrase, and not the heads of any of the phrase’s other constituents.
(a) the great big elephant
(b) several very old books
(c) all the women in the moon
(d) excellently presented material on Lady Havisham
(e) rather thick in the head
(f) most awfully pleasant
(g) delighted by their arrival
(h) sitting in the room
(i) bored out of his skull
(j) having delayed writing to you
(k) syncopated rhythms of Africa
(l) very lovely
(m) in trouble with the law
(n) almost out of the woods
(o) right above his neighbour’s house
(p) singularly unimpressed with Jeffery
(q) is eating a big dinner
Exercise #3: Identify the grammatical category (part of speech) of the heads of the following phrases.
(a) out of the stratosphere
(b) given his intransigence
(c) cycled to work
(d) dreadfully slowly
(e) quite inappropriately large
(f) tawdry work by the amateur painters
(g) right up in Scotland
(h) so nearly correct
(i) genuinely silly about his aunt’s fortune
(j) right beside a dirty factory
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C. Noun Phrase
Look at the following phrases:
(a) the dog
(b) a moderately short programme
(c) some very old cars
(d) six bags of wholemeal flour
(e) very dirty marks on the walls
We can see an important grammatical process at work within these phrases, namely that a
phrase can function within another phrase. This process is termed embedding; one
phrase is said to be embedded within another.
We can represent embeddedness with a tree diagram.
A moderately short programme
Noun phrase
adjective phrase
a
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adverb
adjective
moderately
short
noun
programme
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Exercise #4: Write tree diagrams for the two noun phrases below.
(a) some very old cars
(b) six plants in the shop
(a) some very old cars
Noun phrase
Adjective phrase
some
adverb
adjective
very
old
noun
cars
(b) six plants in the shop
noun phrase
prepositional phrase
noun
six
preposition
plants
noun
in
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noun phrase
the
shop
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Determiners - a and the
Example: I have a new car.
Example: I saw the teacher yesterday.
Demonstratives: this, that, these and those
Quantifiers: many, most, some, all, few, several, and both
Examples:
-
all the cars and both the students
-
some red boats
-
many soldiers.
Examples of possessive noun phrases:
Joan’s car
an old building’s fences
a park’s six tall trees
an old building’s rather green fences
oxen’s yoke
the old mill by the stream’s green fences
Exercise #5: Pick out the heads and modifiers in the following noun phrases.
(a) The old grey mare down in the paddock.
(b) My uncle with the fish and chip shop.
(c) These three intelligent bus drivers I met yesterday.
(d) Another person whom I don’t know.
(e) Six goblins in green.
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1. Pronouns
Example: Most teachers work very hard and they earn all the money they get.
Antecedent – “stands for”
Most teachers is the antecedent of the pronoun they.
Example: All the older teachers at UCP work very hard and they earn all the money
they get.
The pronoun they has the noun phrase all the older teachers at UCP as its antecedent.
Forms of English pronouns:
-
number
-
person
-
gender
Possessive Pronouns:
Example: The old steam train travelled to its nearest destination.
The old steam train travelled to the old steam train’s nearest destination.
Exercise #6: Find the pronouns in the following passage and for each pronoun indicate
its number, person, and gender.
Marie and her brother had worked together for a long time in the family business while it
was developing. I had known them since school and you must have known them too. He
was a short fellow while she was much taller.
Answers:
Her – 3rd pers, poss., fem, sing.
Them – 3rd pers, comple, plur
It – 3rd pers, subj, neut, sing
He – 3rd pers, subj, masc, sing
I – 1st pers, subj, sing.
She – 3rd pers, subj, fem, sing
Them – 3rd pers, comp, plur
You – 2nd pers., subj, sing/plur,
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D. Adjective Phrase
Examples:
(a) quite old
(b) moderately expensive
(c) quite moderately long in the arms
Draw labelled tree diagrams for the following two adjective phrases:
-
quite old
-
quite moderately long in the arms
Answers:
quite old
Adjective Phrase
adverb phrase
adjective
degree adverb
quite
old
quite moderately long in the arms
Adjective Phrase
Adverb phrase
Adverb phrase
adjective
adverb
prepositional phrase
preposition
Degree adverb
Quite
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noun phrase
determiner
moderately
long
in
the
noun
arms
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Examples of Adjective phrases in two places:
(a) the very old goat,
the goat was very old;
(b) the rather dreadful holiday,
the holiday which was rather dreadful
The first position is termed ‘attributive’ position and adjectives which are located in this
position are called attributive adjectives.
The other position is termed predicate position and the adjectives which are located in
this position are called predicate adjectives. It is the position an adjective phrase takes
when it comes after verbs.
Differences between the attributive and predicate positions for adjectives:
1. Attributive adjectives have a preferred sequence while predicate adjectives do
not.
Examples: a friendly former conductor
a small blue car
*a car is small, blue
The car is small and blue.
The car is blue and small.
2. Attributive adjective phrases cannot have constituents after their heads, whereas
in predicate position modifiers after the head are allowed.
Examples: *the long in the arms young man
the young man is long in the arms
Exercise #7: Identify the adjective phrases in the following passage.
In other ways he was a very hard man. He was big and rather clumsy-looking, with big
heavy bones and long flat muscles, and he had a big, expressionless, broken-nosed face.
Yet he moved with surprising ease and silence as well as having a gift for stillness.
(M.K. Joseph, A Soldier’s Tale)
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E. Adverb Phrase
Examples: very quickly, quite slowly, quite moderately slowly
Adjective and adverb phrases can be termed ‘A phrases’ or AP for short.
F. Prepositional Phrase
Look at the following verb phrases:
(a) play in the moonlight,
(b) sat by the gate
(c) has come home in a couple of hours,
on a motorbike,
through a tunnel.
Exercise # 8: Find the prepositional phrases in the following extract.
At first it seemed there was no one about. Then he saw a single figure, a girl, far down
the beach, close to where the surf was breaking, sitting under a beach umbrella. He went
towards her. When he was close enough to see her clearly he sat down on the white sand.
He could not see her face. She sat with her back to the land, staring out to sea.
The umbrella above her was dark blue, with white frills and tassels that swayed in the
breeze. Her hair was long and blonde and it too was dragged at by the breeze from the
sea. She was slender, her shoulders broad only in proportion to her long tapering back
and narrow waist. She sat cross-legged, her knees appearing to Smith projecting on
either side, like outriggers. She was pale-skinned, lightly tanned. She sat perfectly still.
From where Smith watched the highest waves appeared to lift above her. He saw her
framed in green. Then as the wave broke and shot forward up the sand he saw her
against the white froth and blue of the sky. Sometimes in the relative quiet between
breakers he heard faintly the sound of music and guessed that somewhere among her
things, scattered about the beach towel on which she sat, was a battery radio.
(C.K. Stead, Smith’s Dream)
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SOME HINTS FOR DRAWING TREE DIAGRAMS OF SIMPLE PHRASES:
1. Find the head of the phrase. Remember that every noun, adjective, verb, adverb
and preposition is the head of a phrase.
2. Find the modifiers which go with a head. Modifiers always tell you more about
the head. For example, in the phrase the red mill by the river, red tells you more
about the mill, and the fact that it is by the river tells you more about the mill.
Even the determiner the tells you that there is a particular mill being mentioned.
Exercise #9:
Draw tree diagrams of the phrases below. Use the abbreviations
presented here to help you.
Abbreviations:
N for noun
NP for noun phrase
A for adjective and adverb
POSS for possessive noun phrase
P for preposition
AP for adjective and adverb phrases
V for verb
PP for prepositional phrase
DET for determiner
VP for verb phrase
DEG for degree adverb
LexV for lexical verb
A also for numerals and quantifiers
AuxV for auxiliary verb
PRON for pronoun
Noun Phrases:
1.
too many undertakers
2.
the animals’ captivity in dirty cages
too many (modifiers); undertakers (head)
the animals’ (modifiers); captivity (head); in dirty
cages (modifiers)
Prepositional Phrases:
3.
completely down the drain
completely (modifier); down (head); the drain (modifier)
4.
across the street
across (head); the street (modifiers)
Adjective Phrases:
5.
fearful of the consequences
fearful (head); of the consequences (modifiers)
6.
too involved in students’ affairs
too (modifier); involved (head); in students’ affairs (modifiers)
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G. Verb Phrase
Examples:
(a) gave Jill a book
(b) has given Jill a book
(c) will be giving Jill a book
Lexical verbs
3 Types of Auxiliary verbs
1. Modal auxiliary verbs: can, could, shall, should, will, would, may, might and
must, which if the verb phrase has one, always come first;
2. Aspect auxiliaries, have and be, which if they are present, come in that order and
after any modal auxiliary verb; and
3. Passive auxiliary which is also be, which if it is present, comes last.
Example: could have been being taken
Examples of constituents which come before lexical verbs:
a. does give Jill a book
b. did give Jill a book
c. doesn’t give Jill a book
d. hasn’t given Jill a book
Examples:
(b) hasn’t given Jill the book
(c) isn’t giving Jill the book
(d) will not give Jill the book
Given the above restrictions, why are the following verb phrases ungrammatical?
(a) *does be giving Jill the book
(b) *hasn’t beenn’t giving Jill the book.
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Now look at the following verb phrases. What constituents other than auxiliary verbs and
negatives appear in front of the lexical verb?
(a) has very suddenly given Jill the book
(b) is almost certainly giving Jill the book
(c) could not very easily be giving Jill the book
The perfective aspect auxiliary have
Example: Jill has given John the book
The progressive aspect auxiliary be
Example: Jill is giving John a book.
Examples of verb phrases which contain the perfective auxiliary have:
(a) have eaten their breakfasts
(b) have taken the train to Lisbon
(c) have been opening many windows
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