Questions tagged [syntax-trees]
Graphical representations of hierarchical analyses of grammatical relations. Requests to make syntax trees are off-topic.
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How to recognize Heads [closed]
I'm reading "Introduction to English linguistics" and in the chapter 4, there is a paragraph that I don't understand :
The other crucial cluster of properties of heads concern their ...
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How can the following phrase ambiguously have two trees: "expensive shoes from Italy"?
This is an exercise from "Introducing syntax" by Olaf Koeneman & Hedde Zeijlstra, 2017. The chapter this exercise is taken from deals with "Merge".
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Infinitive clauses in syntactic bracketing/trees [closed]
I am a little confused on how the bracketing of a sentence like “millie forced me to play” would look like when also breaking down the tenses within the phrase. Thank you!
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Is there a language whose syntactic structure accepts a specifier of a PP?
We know a preposition (in X-bar theory) is the head of a prepositional phrase and it has a complement that is the sister of this very preposition. However I've never seen a language with a constituent ...
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Second Opinion on Syntax Tree [closed]
I made a syntax tree and I wanted to know if it was well done. The sentence is in French, "Rosa apportera chez le marchand d'art deux toiles de Frida Kahlo". To let you know my logic behind ...
user36516
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"STARBUCKESE" syntax problem
In standard English, one can’t put a PP before a head noun that the preposition modifies. For example, the NP in (a) is completely ungrammatical.
a) *The with milk coffee.
But there is a major chain ...
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Difference between the Merge postion and the base position
I was reading this analysis of the derivation below. And I wasn't familiar with the terminology "original Merge position." Is it just like "the base position"? Here is the sentence ...
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Why is the PP, according to this derivation, directly moved from the lower (farther) DP, not the nearer one?
The sentence being parsed:
De CHOMSKY varios libros han ganado premios internacionales, no de Trotsky.
of Chomsky several books have won awards international-PL, not of Trotsky
Why is the PP on top ...
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Why two appearances of the past participle "ganado" in this derivation?
The sentence being parsed:
De CHOMSKY varios libros han ganado premios internacionales, no de Trotsky.
of Chomsky several books have won awards international-PL, not of Trotsky
Could someone please ...
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How do you draw a x-bar tree with negative inversion? [closed]
For example: 'Never was I so offended'
There is already a T to C inversion with 'was', where do we put the word 'Never'?
And how should we label it? AdvP or Neg?
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In syntax trees, why aren't single-word phrases reduced to that word?
Why do phrases like "the car in Texas" break down into
(NP (Det the) (N car)
(PP (P in) (NP (N Texas))))
Why is the prepositional phrase "in Texas" constituted of the ...
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Handling enumerations in Generative syntax trees
How can we build syntax trees for sentences with enumerations?
I have three sentences as examples:
S1: John, Mary, Paul, Alice and Bob eat a cake.
S2: I'm eating an apple, a pear, a cherry, a ...
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How to treat adverbial phrases in X-bar theory
My question is about how to represent so-called adverbial phrases like "last night" or "all day". My confusion arises because there seems to be a consensus that these phrases are ...
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Difference between primary and secundary predicates(/argument small clauses) and their (overt) 'heads', and transition/ambiguity between the two
What is the exact difference between primary and secundary predicates?
From what I understood, primary predicates are verbal and have a predicate head (usually a copula - he was a mine worker). ...
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Why is "addressing" discontinuity/nonprojectivity important?
I was reading about dependency grammars on Wikipedia, and then, following up on the term "(non-)projectivity", was lead to the page about discontinuity. Now, the concept is quite easy to ...
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Meaning of superscript numbering in phrase structure trees
In some recent studies, I stumbled upon some seemingly conventional notation that I do not understand.
In syntax structure trees, I often encounter superscript notations in various forms: $T^0$, $...
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How to determine structure of answer for a wh- question
Consider a wh-question (in english language) such as "Who closed the door?". Personally, I can determine that an answer will look like "NP closed the door.", where NP would be a ...
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Wh-movement Question
For wh-movements, I always think of what the sentence would have looked like if it wasn't a question (e.g. for sentence "which promise did he not keep?", I would think that the original ...
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Help with syntax tree generation with movements [closed]
This is my attempt at the sentence "Which compound appears to have been created with the recently found chemical element yesterday?" , but I'm not sure if it's correct:
Is the wh-movement ...
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Is there a way to convert a syntax tree back to text?
I'm looking for a reference \ algorithm \ tool that can convert a syntax tree to text.
The intention is to parse a sentence, apply some rules on the tree, and generate the output from the modified ...
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What notable works are there that try to express the structures of linguistics by modelling them with Artificial Neural Networks (ANN)?
I know of a few works in Phonology and 1 recent work in Semantics but I will not list these here since what I would really be looking for in an answer would be a survey paper or a comprehensive list.
...
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Best book for introduction to Syntax, with exercises
I am new to the field of linguistics and I was looking for some books in order to learn syntax.
I put my eyes on two main textbooks:
Basic English Syntax with Exercises, by Mark Newson (I was ...
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What is the more natural parsing, the one that leads to the preferred reading of the sentence
I have those rules:
and those two possible parse trees:
I am asked for the next question:
What is the more natural parsing, the one that leads to the preferred reading of the sentence?
Can anyone ...
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Sentence to AST structures?
How can we distinguish the meaning from POS,words,form..or any other information.. f.e.
the cube is **in** the box
the sign splits a rule **in** two parts
in the first case the meaning is ...
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Tree Structures: Sentence breaks and TP vs. S as tree structure head
I am currently working on my Linguistics homework and I have to draw a tree diagram of the sentences:
(1) Peter thinks Susan asked if she needs to resign.
(2) Johnny said he wants to study French.
The ...
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When does do-support apply in wh-questions?
For reference, I'm working off of Carnie's Syntax (2002). In the book's framework, T → C movement is triggered by a [+Q] feature in C. In the case we have an auxiliary verb, it can raise to T and then ...
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NP or DP for "that book"
When referring to phrases such as "that book", would it be considered a DP or a NP? I think it should be considered as a DP but I am not sure how to prove it using our given data. Some data ...
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How to write a syntax tree for 'should have been'? [closed]
the sentence is "Will they decide if you should have been promoted?". The T' and AuxP are already taken up by 'have' and 'been, where does should go?
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How order of the syntax tree is formally/strictly proven?
An example from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete_syntax_tree : tree of "John hit the ball." .
The tree branches are joined in this order:
{John {hit {the ball}}}.
Ie, "the" ...
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How does one write out possessive pronouns under DP
Would for example "their" be divided into they and 's under the DP theory when writing out a tree?
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How do I know if ECM happens in a foreign language?
I have learned about ECM and how it works within the English language, but I don't understand it thoroughly. How would we be able to decide whether a language has ECM?
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After movement, do theta roles stay the same after wh-movement and verb raising?
The example sentence is "Which purse has Lena bought?" which stems from the statement "Lena has bought which purse". Do the theta roles that bought assigns stay the same after the ...
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Help with syntax analysis
Good day to everyone! Could somebody explain me why in the following sentence "that he was disappointed" is S (subject)?
(It)-S (must be confessed)-V (that he was disappointed)-S.
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How to draw the tree diagram for this sentence? [closed]
Here is the sentence "That toy, I think they gave to the dog". Should "gave to the dog" be considered as VP and "to the dog" as PP?
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Is "of the kitten" in "the paw of the kitten" a complement to the NP or an adjunct to the DP?
I'm drawing a tree for "the paw of the kitten" (from chapter 7 of Andrew Carnie's Syntax: A Generative Introduction). This chapter is "extending X-bar theory", so please keep that ...
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A question about C-command
Does "John" c-command "himself" in this sentence? "Mary talked to John about himself."
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What is the position of the subject in a Greek sentence, whose word order is VSO?
The following is a Greek sentence
Σε ποιόν φίλο νομίζεις ότι μιλάει ο άντρας;
To which friend think.2SG that speak.3SG the man
Its counterpart in ...
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How to solve this syntax question [closed]
Hello guys could anyone help me in solving these questions in syntax
the sentence ; John's discussion of the riots in the meeting suddenly put all physics students right into huge turmoil.
ps; I ...
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Is the following sentence a CP? Does it contain another CP?
Lies, do you think that she tells you?
Is this sentence grammatical?
Is the whole sentence a CP, in which lies is the CP Specifier and do is the head C?
If yes, is that the C head of a second CP in ...
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How is the ungrammaticality of the following sentence explained?
Maria asked I read which book
This sentence is ungrammatical.
Is this because an IP I read cannot be a complement or sister to a V asked
Is there a CP in this ungrammatical sentence?
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What is the position of 'that' in the relative clause of this sentence?
Researchers report they have engineered an enzyme that can convert 90% of that same plastic back to its pristine starting materials.
Does that originate in spec TP and move to spec CP like in this ...
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Difference between PRO and OP
What's the difference between PRO and OP? For example, on p. 142, the book "The Syntax of Chinese" presents the following tree (which is an analysis of indirect passives in Chinese):
In this ...
user31981
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Why should we assign the head to a word as early as possible in shift-reduce dependency parsing?
This is about dependency parsing. The operation set of a shift-reduce parser was changed so that an arc is added as early as possible. It's claimed that "the longer a word has to wait to get assigned ...
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What is the specifier in an IP where the complement of the verb is fronted?
In the sentence (IP)
The book, I think that I gave you
in which the object (complement of the verb of the CP "that I gave you") is fronted, is this fronted object the specifier of the whole IP? ...
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Compositional Semantics of relative clauses
How do relative pronouns (which, who, invisible which= WH) fit into a sentences compositionality? Given that relative clauses modify Noun Phrases, I'd expect them to be of type <et,<et>> ...
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Syntax trees associated with Prepositional Phrases as subject
Whenever we have a Prepositional Phrase as a subject, how should the dependency relations hold?
Specifically, consider the following sentence:
Before Wednesday does not work for me.
One dependency ...
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What is non-headed phrase?
I know most of the phrases in English are headed phrases, like noun is the head of NP. But what is non-headed phrase?
user27687
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What is the syntactic status of subordinate clauses such as "what can be..."?
I am not clear about the syntactic analysis of the what-clauses in bold in the following b-sentences:
(1a) These words are weak determiners.
(1b) These words are what can be called weak determiners.
...
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How to provide evidence that my hypothesis is correct (the same structure but the constituents are different), syntactic structures, constituency
How can I provide evidence supporting the hypothesis, that is, prove by means of constituency tests that my hypothesis is correct?
The sentences:
(1) Jeff lost the watch with the big numbers
(2) Jeff ...
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How to draw the NP "so little" in "He said so little" in a tree diagram?
He said so little.
includes the NP so little, which doesn't include any noun.
In the X-bar theory style tree diagram, how do you go about describing the NP? Do you have N' below the NP? Do you have ...
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