The Structure of Simple Sentences

SYNTAX

The Structure of Simple Sentences

I. Introduction

EXERCISE: Make a sentence out of each of the following sets of words:

(a) sleeps, a, baby, newborn

(b) in, house, live, green, the, a, people

II. Simple Phrases

A. Three ways to identify phrases

Example: Mary swims.

EXERCISE: None of the following string of words follows the rules of English syntax. Change the order of each so that it is a grammatical sentence.

(a) Has been eating the chocolate cake the old man.

(b) The old man the chocolate cake has been eating.

Phrases - Groups which move as whole units and are intermediate between words and sentences.

Three tests to identify which groups of words in a sentence are phrases:

1. movement

2. meaning

3. substitution

Examples:

(a) The old man ate the chocolate cake

(b) What the old man ate was the chocolate cake.

(a) *It was man the chocolate cake which old ate.

(b) *The the cake was eaten by chocolate old man.

Phrases do not just form grammatical units, but also form units of meaning. The following sequences of words all have a coherent identifiable meaning:

(a) the old man, the chocolate cake,

(b) the large evil leathery alligator,

(d) unbelievably boring,

(e) quite large,

(f) is reading a book.

Each one of these sequences is a phrase.

Exercise #1: In each of the following sentences identify sequences of three or more words which are phrases.

(a) An ancient monument fell down during the bombing.

(b) Several young Latvian artists danced gracefully before the Empress.

EXERCISE: Look at the following sentences and substitute another phrase for each of the italicized phrases.

Davina sold petrol yesterday at the corner store.

Example sentences:

- My old friend John sold tulips yesterday in the market.

- The angry tenants sold all of the furniture of the apartment block yesterday out of spite.

B. Heads and Modifiers

The five major lexical categories (parts of speech):

- noun

- verb

- adjective

- adverb, and

- preposition

‘Distribution’ or ‘Distributional properties’ - the order in which syntactic constituents come.

Example: in a train

(a) Granville met his beloved in a train.

(b) You always get an odd range of smells in a train.

If we take a phrase like a train it cannot fit in these places:

(a) *Granville met his beloved a train.

(b) *You always get an odd range of smells a train.

Example: the noun phrase gorgeous looking Bentleys with walnut dashboards

______make Clive drool.

Clive loves ______.

Example: the noun phrase the witches’ discovery of the secrets of life

Exercise #2: Using the properties of phrases, find the heads of the following phrases. Note that in some cases there are phrases within these phrases. You should find only the word which is the head of the whole phrase, and not the heads of any of the phrase’s other constituents.

(a) the great big elephant

(b) several very old books

(d) excellently presented material on Lady Havisham

(e) rather thick in the head

(f) most awfully pleasant

(g) delighted by their arrival

(h) sitting in the room

(i) bored out of his skull

(j) having delayed writing to you

(k) syncopated rhythms of Africa

(l) very lovely

(m) in trouble with the law

(n) almost out of the woods

(o) right above his neighbour’s house

(p) singularly unimpressed with Jeffery

(q) is eating a big dinner

Exercise #3: Identify the grammatical category (part of speech) of the heads of the following phrases.

(a) out of the stratosphere

(b) given his intransigence

(d) dreadfully slowly

(e) quite inappropriately large

(f) tawdry work by the amateur painters

(g) right up in Scotland

(h) so nearly correct

(i) genuinely silly about his aunt’s fortune

(j) right beside a dirty factory

C. Noun Phrase

Look at the following phrases:
(a) the dog
(b) a moderately short programme
(c) some very old cars
(d) six bags of wholemeal flour
(e) very dirty marks on the walls

We can see an important grammatical process at work within these phrases, namely that a phrase can function within another phrase. This process is termed embedding; one phrase is said to be embedded within another.

We can represent embeddedness with a tree diagram.

A moderately short programme

Noun phrase

adjective phrase noun

adverb adjective

a moderately short programme

Exercise #4: Write tree diagrams for the two noun phrases below.

(a) some very old cars

(b) six plants in the shop

(a) some very old cars

Noun phrase

Adjective phrase noun

adverb adjective

some very old cars

(b) six plants in the shop

noun phrase

prepositional phrase

noun preposition noun phrase

six plants noun

in the shop

Determiners - a and the

Example: I have a new car.

Example: I saw the teacher yesterday.

Demonstratives: this, that, these and those

Quantifiers: many, most, some, all, few, several, and both

Examples:

- all the cars and both the students

- some red boats

- many soldiers.

Examples of possessive noun phrases:

Joan’s car

an old building’s fences

a park’s six tall trees

an old building’s rather green fences

oxen’s yoke

the old mill by the stream’s green fences

Exercise #5: Pick out the heads and modifiers in the following noun phrases.

(a) The old grey mare down in the paddock.

(b) My uncle with the fish and chip shop.

(d) Another person whom I don’t know.

(e) Six goblins in green.

1. Pronouns

Example: Most teachers work very hard and they earn all the money they get.

Antecedent – “stands for”

Most teachers is the antecedent of the pronoun they.

Example: All the older teachers at UCP work very hard and they earn all the money they get.

The pronoun they has the noun phrase all the older teachers at UCP as its antecedent.

Forms of English pronouns:

- number

- person

- gender

Possessive Pronouns:

Example: The old steam train travelled to its nearest destination.

The old steam train travelled to the old steam train’s nearest destination.

Exercise #6: Find the pronouns in the following passage and for each pronoun indicate its number, person, and gender.

Marie and her brother had worked together for a long time in the family business while it was developing. I had known them since school and you must have known them too. He was a short fellow while she was much taller.

Answers:

Inglês IV Lesson on Syntax – The Structure of Simple Sentences 2

Her – 3rd pers, poss., fem, sing.

It – 3rd pers, subj, neut, sing

I – 1st pers, subj, sing.

Them – 3rd pers, comp, plur

You – 2nd pers., subj, sing/plur,

Them – 3rd pers, comple, plur

He – 3rd pers, subj, masc, sing

She – 3rd pers, subj, fem, sing

Inglês IV Lesson on Syntax – The Structure of Simple Sentences 2

D. Adjective Phrase

Examples:

(a) quite old

(b) moderately expensive

Draw labelled tree diagrams for the following two adjective phrases:
- quite old
- quite moderately long in the arms

Answers:

quite old

Adjective Phrase

adverb phrase adjective

degree adverb

quite old

quite moderately long in the arms

Adjective Phrase

Adverb phrase adjective prepositional phrase

Adverb phrase adverb preposition noun phrase

Degree adverb determiner noun

Quite moderately long in the arms

Examples of Adjective phrases in two places:

(a) the very old goat, the goat was very old;

(b) the rather dreadful holiday, the holiday which was rather dreadful

The first position is termed ‘attributive’ position and adjectives which are located in this position are called attributive adjectives.

The other position is termed predicate position and the adjectives which are located in this position are called predicate adjectives. It is the position an adjective phrase takes when it comes after verbs.

Differences between the attributive and predicate positions for adjectives:

1. Attributive adjectives have a preferred sequence while predicate adjectives do not.

Examples: a friendly former conductor

a small blue car *a car is small, blue

The car is small and blue. The car is blue and small.

2. Attributive adjective phrases cannot have constituents after their heads, whereas in predicate position modifiers after the head are allowed.

Examples: *the long in the arms young man

the young man is long in the arms

Exercise #7: Identify the adjective phrases in the following passage.

In other ways he was a very hard man. He was big and rather clumsy-looking, with big heavy bones and long flat muscles, and he had a big, expressionless, broken-nosed face. Yet he moved with surprising ease and silence as well as having a gift for stillness.

(M.K. Joseph, A Soldier’s Tale)

E. Adverb Phrase

Examples: very quickly, quite slowly, quite moderately slowly

Adjective and adverb phrases can be termed ‘A phrases’ or AP for short.

F. Prepositional Phrase

Look at the following verb phrases:

(a) play in the moonlight,

(b) sat by the gate

on a motorbike,

through a tunnel.

Exercise # 8: Find the prepositional phrases in the following extract.

At first it seemed there was no one about. Then he saw a single figure, a girl, far down the beach, close to where the surf was breaking, sitting under a beach umbrella. He went towards her. When he was close enough to see her clearly he sat down on the white sand.

He could not see her face. She sat with her back to the land, staring out to sea. The umbrella above her was dark blue, with white frills and tassels that swayed in the breeze. Her hair was long and blonde and it too was dragged at by the breeze from the sea. She was slender, her shoulders broad only in proportion to her long tapering back and narrow waist. She sat cross-legged, her knees appearing to Smith projecting on either side, like outriggers. She was pale-skinned, lightly tanned. She sat perfectly still. From where Smith watched the highest waves appeared to lift above her. He saw her framed in green. Then as the wave broke and shot forward up the sand he saw her against the white froth and blue of the sky. Sometimes in the relative quiet between breakers he heard faintly the sound of music and guessed that somewhere among her things, scattered about the beach towel on which she sat, was a battery radio.

(C.K. Stead, Smith’s Dream)

SOME HINTS FOR DRAWING TREE DIAGRAMS OF SIMPLE PHRASES:

1. Find the head of the phrase. Remember that every noun, adjective, verb, adverb and preposition is the head of a phrase.

2. Find the modifiers which go with a head. Modifiers always tell you more about the head. For example, in the phrase the red mill by the river, red tells you more about the mill, and the fact that it is by the river tells you more about the mill. Even the determiner the tells you that there is a particular mill being mentioned.

Exercise #9: Draw tree diagrams of the phrases below. Use the abbreviations presented here to help you.

Abbreviations:

Inglês IV OHP on Syntax – The Structure of Simple Sentences 9

N for noun

A for adjective and adverb

P for preposition

V for verb

DET for determiner

DEG for degree adverb

A also for numerals and quantifiers

PRON for pronoun

NP for noun phrase

POSS for possessive noun phrase

AP for adjective and adverb phrases

PP for prepositional phrase

VP for verb phrase

LexV for lexical verb

AuxV for auxiliary verb

Inglês IV OHP on Syntax – The Structure of Simple Sentences 9

Noun Phrases:

1. too many undertakers too many (modifiers); undertakers (head)

2. the animals’ captivity in dirty cages the animals’ (modifiers); captivity (head); in dirty cages (modifiers)

Prepositional Phrases:

3. completely down the drain completely (modifier); down (head); the drain (modifier)

4. across the street across (head); the street (modifiers)

Adjective Phrases:

5. fearful of the consequences fearful (head); of the consequences (modifiers)

6. too involved in students’ affairs too (modifier); involved (head); in students’ affairs (modifiers)

G. Verb Phrase

Examples:

(a) gave Jill a book

(b) has given Jill a book

Lexical verbs

3 Types of Auxiliary verbs

1. Modal auxiliary verbs: can, could, shall, should, will, would, may, might and must, which if the verb phrase has one, always come first;

2. Aspect auxiliaries, have and be, which if they are present, come in that order and after any modal auxiliary verb; and

3. Passive auxiliary which is also be, which if it is present, comes last.

Example: could have been being taken

Examples of constituents which come before lexical verbs:

does give Jill a book
did give Jill a book
doesn’t give Jill a book
hasn’t given Jill a book

Examples:

(b) hasn’t given Jill the book

(d) will not give Jill the book

Given the above restrictions, why are the following verb phrases ungrammatical?
(a) *does be giving Jill the book
(b) *hasn’t beenn’t giving Jill the book.
Now look at the following verb phrases. What constituents other than auxiliary verbs and negatives appear in front of the lexical verb?
(a) has very suddenly given Jill the book
(b) is almost certainly giving Jill the book
(c) could not very easily be giving Jill the book

The perfective aspect auxiliary have