3

I am working through "Contemporary Linguistics" on my own. It's been going pretty well, but I have a question about building syntax trees.

I understand the tree here for "The dog might bite that man" fairly well. Now, I would like to add "tomorrow" to the end of the sentence. I've looked through the book, and the only similar example I can find is using "never", which comes in front of the verb.

Is this there a Move happening here?

Tomorrow the dog might bite that man.

This is correct grammar, but I don't see anything to attach tomorrow to on the left side of the sentence.

*The dog might tomorrow bite that man.

This is not correct grammar, and I believe that means tomorrow could not have moved from there?

I don't quite know if "The dog tomorrow might bite that man" is correct grammar, but it seems much less ungrammatical than *"tomorrow bite". Could the adverb attach to the I?

How can I build this tree?

A syntax tree for "The dog might bite the man."

3
  • "tomorrow" is an adjunct. By the way, are you aware of this website? bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/linguistics6e/…
    – Alex B.
    Commented Jan 15, 2013 at 18:26
  • 1
    See also this freshman grammar problem, where the simplest answer has to do with identifying constituents (never mind the labels; labels get changed regularly).
    – jlawler
    Commented Jan 15, 2013 at 20:02
  • This question appears to be off-topic because it is about help with particular syntax trees. Commented Apr 1, 2014 at 10:20

1 Answer 1

1

Tomorrow simply becomes a part of a Verbal Phrase (VP):

update 2

I'
. I: might
. VP
. . VP
. . . V: bite
. . . NP
. . . . DET: that
. . . . N: man
. . PP
. . . Adv: tomorrow

Also, note that there are two possible formal representations:

  1. bite tomorrow, as pictured above;
  2. might tomorrow, when tomorrow becomes a part of epistemic modality verb phrase (I' in your diagram);

I guess the clash may be caused by mixing language-specific and language-agnostic semantic graphs.
The former are often vulnerable to artifacts that prevent displaying them into a nice tree-style structure. Maybe the simplest example would be separable prefixes in German language:

Ich fange mit der Arbeit an ("I begin with studying")

Here, VP is mit der Arbeit, but the V itself splits into two words around its VP, which can't be represented with a nice tree. In a language-agnostic semantic graph, there is no such problem.

13
  • I'm not quite sure how to read your "tomorrow" N-NP-PP?
    – Alex B.
    Commented Jan 16, 2013 at 1:38
  • that HPSG parser might not give the same kind of trees as the transformationalist textbook the OP is working with.
    – user483
    Commented Jan 16, 2013 at 4:00
  • Why is "tomorrow" Adj?
    – Alex B.
    Commented Jan 16, 2013 at 16:29
  • Thanks bytebuster. I've tried to recreate the tree you made. Does this look right? i.imgur.com/CUmed.jpg If that looks good I will accept this. If I changed this to "might bite tomorrow" would the NP just drop out, keeping the two VPs? Thanks!
    – arsenius
    Commented Jan 17, 2013 at 10:23
  • @arsenius Yes, if it matches the required notation (which I'm not familiar with, otherwise my answer worked from the first try). Commented Jan 17, 2013 at 12:07

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.