Roberts Li2 Michaelmas 2010, Lecture 3
Linguistics Tripos Paper 2: Structures and Meanings
Supervision Exercises: Lecture Three
Professor Ian Roberts
igr20@cam.ac.uk
1.
Phrase structure rules
Take the set of PS-rules given in (2) on the lecture handout, viz:
i.
ii.
iii.
iv.
S
VP
NP
PP




NP VP (“Rewrite the symbol S as the sequence NP VP)
V (NP) (PP)
(D) N (PP)
P NP
Give 5 structurally distinct, grammatical English sentences that these rules
generate, along with tree diagrams and labelled bracketings.
2.
Give the tree diagrams and labelled bracketings for the following sentences:
a.
b.
c.
d.
Harry thought that Snape wanted something.
Ron thought that Hermione said that Neville hoped that Harry liked
Ginny.
Hermione wonders whether Ron saved the shot.
Snape prefers for students to work in his classes.
3.
Using all the constituency tests discussed in the lecture (clefting, passivisation,
pronoun substitution, fronting, WH-fronting) justify the constituent structure
you have assigned to one sentence from Exercise (1) and one from Exercise
(2).
4.
The following sentences are structurally ambiguous. Explain the ambiguity,
assign distinct structural representations corresponding to each reading of the
sentence, and show how constituency tests support the structures you propose
in each case.
a.
b.
5.
John decided on the boat.
Mary said that John left yesterday.
The following two sentences look the same (“string-wise”), but have different
structures. Apply constituency tests to show that the structures are different,
and try to assign a constituent structure to both. What difficulties do you
encounter with this?
a.
b.
John looked up the number.
John looked up the chimney.
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