NP<\/sub> N]<\/div>\n<\/div>\nThis structure is not unique to examples (1a) and (1b)\u00a0\u2014 the NP Aylin<\/em> and the NP sushi<\/em>, for example, have the same structure, and if we think of a combination of a first name plus a last name as a compound noun, so does the NP Al Gore<\/em>. So, (2) is not just a description of specific noun phrases in specific sentences, but also a general rule for making a particular type of noun phrase in English! It tells you that you can take a noun and use it as a noun phrase.<\/p>\nThe same is true of the phrase structure of the example in (1c) \u2014 it consists of an article and a noun, as shown in (3):<\/p>\n
\n
(3)<\/div>\n
[
NP<\/sub> ART N]<\/div>\n<\/div>\nOther noun phrases with the same structure are a student<\/em>, the cafeteria<\/em>, the apartment<\/em>, the package<\/em>, the grass<\/em>, the train<\/em>, the tree<\/em>, a garden hose<\/em> (where garden hose<\/em> is a compound noun), and the avocado<\/em>. Again, (3) can be thought of as a description of these particular noun phrases, or as a general rule for making such noun phrases: we can make more English noun phrases by combining articles and nouns according to the phrase structure in (3).<\/p>\nThe NP in (1d) consists of an adjective phrase (in this case, consisting of a single adjective) and a noun, its structure is shown in (4):<\/p>\n
\n
(4)<\/div>\n
[
NP<\/sub> AP N]<\/div>\n<\/div>\nOther noun phrases with this structure are renewable energy<\/em>, vegan pizza<\/em>, and \u2014 with more complex adjective phrases \u2014 unbelievably green hair<\/em>, and more convincing arguments<\/em>. As before, we can make a large number of additional noun phrases by treating (4) as a rule for combining adjective phrases and nouns.<\/p>\nSo far, we have three rules for creating NPs in English. Now look at the NP in (1e). It contains an article (like that in (1c)), and<\/em> an adjective, like that in (1d):<\/p>\n\n
(5)<\/div>\n
[
NP<\/sub> ART AP N]<\/div>\n<\/div>\nAnother NP that has this structure is a fascinating but very long documentary<\/em>, and again, we can treat (5) as a rule for creating NPs by combining an article, an adjective phrase and a noun. We have four rules now, but note that the rule in 5 is just a combination of the rules in (2), (3) and (4): an English NP consists of a noun, optionally preceded by an adjective phrase, optionally preceded by an article. Using parentheses to show optionality, we can combine all our rules into one:<\/p>\n\n
(6)<\/div>\n
[
NP<\/sub> (ART) (AP) N]<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
Use the rule in 6 to create different English NPs. Make sure you could represent them as a tree diagram.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Next, look at the NP in (1f) \u2014 it does not have an article, instead, it has what is sometimes called a \u2018possessive pronoun\u2019, but what in linguistics is usually called a possessive determiner. Determiners are words that provide grammatical information about a noun, such as articles like a<\/em> and the<\/em> (which provide information about definiteness and, in some languages, number and gender), demonstratives (this, that, these, those<\/em>, pointing out specific instances), quantifiers and numerals (some<\/em>, many<\/em>, one<\/em>, seventeen<\/em>, etc., providing information about quantity), and possessive determiners (my<\/em>, your<\/em>, etc.), providing information about possession. In order to include all of these, we can change the rule to the one shown in (7):<\/p>\n\n
(7)<\/div>\n
[
NP<\/sub> (DET) (AP) N]<\/div>\n<\/div>\nNext, look at the verb phrase in (1g). It consists of a determiner and a noun, followed by a PP, so we can simply add an optional PP to our rule:<\/p>\n
\n
(8)<\/div>\n
[
NP<\/sub> (DET) (AP) N (PP)]<\/div>\n<\/div>\nThis is not a complete rule for the English NP yet. It does not, for example, include the possibility of a relative clause, as in the student who has green hair<\/em>. But it’s not too bad either \u2014 most NPs that you are likely to encounter in English texts are created using this rule. Except, that is, NPs that consist of just a pronoun. For these, we need an alternative rule:<\/p>\n\n
(9)<\/div>\n
[
NP<\/sub> PRON]<\/div>\n<\/div>\nThe existence of this alternative rule explains why we can test whether a sequence of words is an NP by replacing it with a pronoun!<\/p>\n
Finally, look at the NP in (1i). It contains the form Zoe\u2019s<\/em>, i.e, a combination of the NP Zoe<\/em> and the possessive clitic we discussed in Section 5.6.<\/a> In that section, we proposed a treatment of the possessive clitic as a word-formation rule, as shown in (10a), because we argued that it produces a unit that behaves like a word \u2014 a possessive determiner. However, it is a strange word-formation rule, because the clitic attaches to a phrase rather than a word or wordstem. So, alternatively, we could represent it as a phrase-structure rule, as shown in (10b):<\/p>\n\n
(10a)<\/div>\n
Form: [ X
NP<\/sub> =s]DET.POSS<\/sub><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
Meaning: \u2018belonging to X\u2019<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
(10b)<\/div>\n
[
DET.POSS<\/sub> NP {-s}]<\/div>\n<\/div>\nWe could then argue that such a unit is a particular type of phrase \u2014 a \u201cpossessive phrase\u201d, and that possessive determiners are actually a particular type of pronoun that can replace this phrase (at least that would explain the traditional label \u201cpossessive pronoun\u201d)!<\/p>\n
\n
Since different languages have different grammars, phrase structure rules are specific to individual languages. Think about other languages you know \u2014 do they have the same NP rule as English, or a similar one, or a completely different one? If you know a language that has a different NP rule, try to formulate this rule!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The adjective phrase<\/h2>\n
We have seen two types of adjective phrases so far, shown in (11a) and (11b), but there are other types of APs, such as the ones shown in (11c) to (11f):<\/p>\n
\n
(11a)<\/div>\n
green<\/span> hair<\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
(11b)<\/div>\n
unbelievably green<\/span> hair<\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
(11c)<\/div>\n
Aylin is not afraid of Zombies<\/span><\/em>.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
(11d)<\/div>\n
Aylin’s paper needs more convincing<\/span> arguments<\/em>.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
(11e)<\/div>\n
Zoe\u2019s hair is greener than the grass<\/span><\/em>.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
(11f)<\/div>\n
Zombies are not scary enough<\/span> for Aylin<\/em>.<\/div>\n<\/div>\nObviously, adjective phrases always contain an adjective. In addition, they can optionally contain adverbs, as in (11b) and prepositional phrases, as in (11c), so the phrase structure rule for adjectives would look like this:<\/p>\n
\n
(12)<\/div>\n
[
AP<\/sub> (ADV) ADJ (PP)]<\/div>\n<\/div>\nThis rule also accounts for (11d), where more<\/em> is a specific type of adverb (namely one that is used to form a comparative form with adjectives that do not have a morphological comparative). It also accounts for (11e), where than<\/em> functions as a preposition.<\/p>\nExample (11f) is not covered by the rule: although enough<\/em> seems to be used as an adverb here, it follows the adjective instead of preceding it. It is the only adverb in English that behaves like this, however, so we should treat it as an exception rather than postulating a rule that says that adverbs can follow adjectives in English!<\/p>\nThe prepositional phrase<\/h2>\n
The example sentences in the preceding section also contained a number of prepositional phrases, for example those in (14):<\/p>\n
\n
(13a)<\/div>\n
in the cafeteria<\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
(13b)<\/div>\n
about renewable energy<\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
(13c)<\/div>\n
with green hair<\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
(13d)<\/div>\n
with Al Gore<\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
(13e)<\/div>\n
with avocado<\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\nThey all have the following phrase structure:<\/p>\n
\n
(14)<\/div>\n
[
PP<\/sub> P NP]<\/div>\n<\/div>\nThis is the simplest rule we have seen so far \u2014 while NPs and APs can have many different forms, depending on which of the optional elements are used, PPs always seem to have the same form.<\/p>\n
However, this is not quite true. First, prepositional phrases can contain adverbs:<\/p>\n
\n
(15a)<\/div>\n
Zoe watched a documentary
right<\/span> in the middle of the cafeteria.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
(15b)<\/div>\n
Zoe watched a documentary
seemingly<\/span> about renewable energy, but actually advertising cold fusion.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
(15c)<\/div>\n
Zoe watched the documentary
just<\/span> with Aylin, as no-one else was interested.<\/div>\n<\/div>\nSo we have to extend the rule as follows:<\/p>\n
\n
(16)<\/div>\n
[
PP<\/sub> (ADVP) P NP]<\/div>\n<\/div>\nSo what about the following examples:<\/p>\n
\n
(17a)<\/div>\n
Noah had never seen such a violent thunderstorm
before<\/span>.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
(17b)<\/div>\n
The tram moved
forward<\/span> very slowly.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
(17c)<\/div>\n
Finally, they reached Noah’s stop and he got
off<\/span>.<\/div>\n<\/div>\nThe underlined words are called \u2018spatial adverbs\u2019 in traditional grammar. However, they do not really behave like typical adverbs \u2014 for example, they cannot modify an adjective or a preposition, as the phrase-structure rules for APs and PPs suggest, and they also cannot modify verbs, which is the typical function of an adverb. Instead, they behave like PPs \u2014 they occur in the same positions, as shown in (18):<\/p>\n
\n
(18a)<\/div>\n
Noah had never seen such a violent thunderstorm before this year.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
(18b)<\/div>\n
The tram moved through the rain very slowly.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
(18c)<\/div>\n
Finally, they reached Noah’s stop and he got off the tram.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
In fact, the ‘spatial adverbs\u2019 are sometimes the same words as the prepositions, as in (17a) and (18a) or (17c) and (18c)! So, it makes sense to assume that these spatial adverbs are<\/em> actually prepositions and that the NP in prepositional phrases is optional. Our rule for PPs would then look like this:<\/p>\n\n
(19a)<\/div>\n
[
PP<\/sub> (ADVP) P (NP)]<\/div>\n\u00a0<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
In fact, PPs can also consist of a preposition and another PP, as in\u00a0The sun appeared from behind the clouds<\/span><\/em>, so a more complete rule would look like this:<\/p>\n\n
(19b)<\/div>\n
[
PP<\/sub> (ADVP) P (NP\/PP)]<\/div>\n<\/div>\nThe verb phrase<\/h2>\n
Finally, the examples in the preceding sections also contained a range of different types of verb phrases, some of which are shown in (20):<\/p>\n
\n
(20a)<\/div>\n
Zoe
slept<\/span>.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
(20b)<\/div>\n
Zoe
watched a documentary<\/span>.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
(20c)<\/div>\n
Zoe
looked tired<\/span>.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n
(20d)<\/div>\n
Zoe was talking about renewable energy<\/span>.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n