I am learning about English grammar, but as a programmer, I have natually gravitated towards learning about syntactic structure. I am learning from university lecture notes which I found through Google.
The production rule for a sentence is:
S → NP (Aux) VP
However, the author does not address sentences which are of the general form:
NP Aux Adjective (where the Aux is a copula, like is, are etc)
For example:
John is tall.
He is gentle.
They are unwell.
Edit: another unaccounted case would be sentences of the form:
NP Aux NP (where the Aux is a copula)
For example:
Donald is a programmer.
John is an artist.
He is a kung-fu master.
Can the production rule above S → NP (Aux) VP
account for such cases, or do I need another production rule?
Aux
is in the base structure instead of inserted when necessary by rule is an assumption that leads to lots of imaginary phenomena. – jlawler Dec 4 '13 at 16:32