Syntax: Phrase Structure Rules

Linguistics 201

Syntax is the study of the arrangement of words into phrases and sentences. It
attempts to describe at least two aspects of this phenomena. First, it describes
which arrangements of words are grammatical, i.e. the well-formed ones. So it
is concerned with characterizing the contrast below:
(1) a. The woman left town.
b. * The left woman
town.
(We use the convention of placing a * before strings of words that are not
gram- matical.) And second, it describes the relationship between the meaning
that some particular group of words has and the arrangement of those words.
So, for exam- ple, the actions carried out by Mary and Mark in the following are
different, and this difference corresponds to the different position that these two
words occupy in the sentence.
(2) a. Mary kissed Mark.
b. Mark kissed Mary.
Lets begin with the first of these goals of syntax, the grammatical arrange-
ments of words. At the bare minimum, we can observe that the linear order of
words in English is important; we must find a means for describing which
order- ing of words is well-formed and which not. The simplest means of doing
this is not available, i.e. we cannot merely list all the possible orderings of
words. That is, we do not have stored in our heads a long list of possible
sentences. The rea- son for this is simple: when we learn a new word, we know
where that word may be positioned with respect to other words. For example, let
me teach you a new word: stram. This is the name we shall give to a hair that
grows out of ones ear. Now that you know that word, you also know that the
sentences below have the grammaticality values shown.
(3) a. That stram seems too short.
b. * Stram that short too seems.
This fact shows that we cannot encode our knowledge of arrangements of
words in terms of those words themselves. Instead we may make reference to
the cate- gories (or parts of speech) that those words belong to. This will
correctly ac- count for the fact that once we know that a word is a noun, we know
automatically where it may fall in a sentence.
 Syntax: Linguistics
Phrase Structure
201 Rules

Perhaps, then, we store in our heads all the grammatical arrangements of

cat- egories. This too cannot be correct; but for a more subtle reason. As the
following examples illustrate, sentences may be of indefinite length.
(4) a. Mary likes Mark.
b. John said that Mary likes Mark.
c. Sally believes that John said that Mary likes Mary.
d. Sandy thought Sally believes that John said that Mary likes
Mary.
Now its clear that a sentence of English cannot be infinitely long. But we
need to determine whether this is a fact about our knowledge of the
arrangement of words. That is, we need to figure out whether our knowledge of
syntax allows in- finitely long sentences or not. If our knowledge of syntax does
not allow infinitely long sentences, then our model of this knowledge the
grammar we write will have to reflect this fact. But this means in essence that
we are going to have to decide at which point to terminate the expansion begun
above. This termination point would have to be arbitrarily chosen, and this
points to the inadequacy of supposing that our knowledge of syntax does not
encompass infinite strings of words. In fact, the common conclusion from these
observations is that the failure of our ability to utter infinitely long strings does
not reflect some fact about our knowledge of syntax, but rather some aspect of
our abilities in general. In partic- ular, our life-span, or perhaps our limited
memories or our good common sense, prevent us from uttering such things. Our
knowledge of syntax does not. This dis- tinction is described by saying that our
linguistic competence is separate from our linguistic performance.
But if our knowledge of which strings are grammatical and which arent in-
cludes knowledge about infinitely long strings, then we cannot possibly have
such a list in our heads. Our brains are of finite size and therefore cannot hold
things of infinite length. Hence we must find another means for representing our
knowl- edge of the well-formed strings of words. A list is wrong. There must
be some other way in which we recognize a string of words as a grammatical
arrangement. There must be some way this knowledge is encoded in our minds
that is finite, but still allows us to make a judgement about an infinite number of
possible strings.
We are going to set aside the solution to this problem for awhile, and discuss
some other aspects of our knowledge of syntax. We shall encounter other prob-
lems whose solution will solve the problem just discussed.
Consider the relationship between the following two sentences.
(5) a. Mary has left.
b. Has Mary left?

2
We know that these sentences are related in the following sense: they both
mean the same thing, save that one is a question, the other a statement. More
particu- larly, (5a) is uttered when the situation described by Mary has left is
something the speaker wishes to assert. One would use this sentence, for
instance, to convey the belief that the situation (5a) describes holds. We call such
sentences declaratives. By contrast, (5b) is uttered when the speaker wishes to
determine whether the sit- uation described by Mary has left actually obtains.
We call sentences of this sort Yes/No Questions. The important point is that
the situation both of these sen- tences describe is precisely the same. The only
difference is whether the speaker is asserting that the situation holds or seeking
confirmation of it. This element of meaning is indicated by word-order. This is
the fact that we need to capture. We need to fashion a theory that causes the
words of these sentences to combine to describe the same situation, and
correlate the difference in their word order with whether or not the sentence is a
question or a declarative. This points back to the second goal of syntax: to
account for the relation between the arrangements of words and their meanings.
What we need to do in the case at hand is find a way of relating the word order
differences in (5) to the difference in their meaning.
The standard way of describing the relation between these sentences is to sup-
pose that one is derived by a rule from the other. That is, one sentence is trans-
formed into the other. In particular, we suppose that the question is made of
the statement plus the application of some transformation that moves around
the constituents of the sentence to form the Verb-Subject word order. We dont
know yet how to characterize our knowledge that Mary has left means what it
means and is a grammatical string of words (thats what we left unfinished
above), but let us suppose for this discussion that this aspect of our knowledge is
given. So we begin with Mary has left, and now concentrate on the rule that
yields Has Mary left?.
It appears on the face of it that this rule interchanges the first two words. But
this is not what the rule does, as the following pair of sentences
indicates. (6) a. The woman has left.
b. * Woman the has left?
Perhaps what we should say, then, is that the first verb is moved to the front of
the sentence. This is wrong as well, however, for two reasons. One of the
reasons is sort of irrelevant for the present discussion; it has to do with
sentences like:
(7) a. Mary left.
b. * Left Mary?
What this example shows is that the rule will have to be constrained so that it
moves only a certain class of verbs, and not so-called main verbs, verbs like
left.
The class of verbs that the rule moves is called auxiliary verbs (or, AUX).
These verbs are: be, have, do and the modals: can, must, will, should, shall, could,
would, etc. So the rule will have to be constrained so that it only moves
Auxiliary verbs. English doesnt have a way of forming Yes/No questions from
sentences that dont have Auxiliary verbs.
The formulation of the rule cannot, as we suggested earlier, be simply:
Move the first auxiliary verb to the front of the sentence because of examples
like the following.
(8) a. The woman that has kissed Bill might leave.
b. * Has the woman that kissed Bill might
leave?
What we want is for the rule to produce (9) from (8a)
instead. (9) Might the woman that has kissed Bill leave?
What this example illustrates is that the notion first auxiliary is not what
the rule makes reference to. The only way to get the rule to manipulate the
right verb is to make reference to the collection of words that make up the
subject. So our grammar must be able to make reference to groups of words.
These groups are called phrases; and the subject of some sentence is the first
Noun Phrase, a phrase that has a word of the category noun, in that sentence. We
can now express the rule as follows.
(10) Subject AUX Inversion
Move the auxiliary verb that immediately follows the first NP to the
front of the sentence.
Now that weve established that phrases exist, we can rephrase our first task
in the following way: what are the correct arrangements of words that make up
some phrase. We can say that a Noun Phrase (NP) is made up of an initial
determiner, then an adjective, then a noun, as in:
(11) the brown fox
We write a Phrase-Structure rule to describe this possibility, as
follows: (12) NP Det Adj N
Note that though the noun is an obligatory part of a noun phrase, neither a
deter- miner nor an adjective are. Thus, the following are possible noun phrases.
(13) a. brown foxes
b. foxes
To represent the optionality of the determiner and adjective, well place
these terms in parentheses; as in:
 (14) NP (Det) (Adj) N
When more examples are considered, the rule that describes all possible
arrange- ments of categories that make up a noun phrase looks something like:
(15) NP (Det) (Adj) N (PP) (CP)
Det stands for determiner, a category that includes the, a, some, many,
every, most and a few others. Adj stands for adjective, a category that
includes blue, bad, happy, friendly and scores of others. We will come back to
what these addi- tional symbols represent.1
A sentence is made up of some NP followed by a collection of words that
be- gins with a verb. This collection of words forms a phrase called a Verb
Phrase, or VP, and is given by the following rules.
(16) VP V (NP) (PP) (CP)
VP AUX VP
Some examples are:
(17) a. eats
b. eats the beans
c. has eaten beans
And sentences themselves can have one of the two structures given below.
(18) S NP VP
S CP VP
All the sentences we have seen up to now have the shape that the first of these
rules describes: they are all sentences that start with a noun phrase and end with
a verb phrase. But it is possible to have sentences that start with other sentences,
this is what the CP is, as we shall see in a moment. An example of this kind is
(19).
(19) [CP That Mary hogs chocolate] bothers me.
The that Mary hogs chocolate part of this sentence is a
CP.
Sometimes two rules of the sort in (18), which are identical up to one term,
are abbreviated as follows:
NP
(20) S VP
CP

1
And I should also warn you that the actual rules allow for tremendously more complex NPs
than this simple start would lead one to expect.
The curly brackets (i.e., { and }) should be understood as enclosing a list
of options, exactly one of which must be chosen. Thus, (20) says that an S is
made up of either an NP or a CP at the beginning, followed by a VP.
The PP in these rules represents a group of words that contains a prepo-
sition, and forms a prepositional phrase. The following describes the shape that
these phrases take.
NP
(21) PP P
S
Some examples are:
(22) a. on the table
b. for the woman
c. under the desk
d. before the dance
e. before Jerry left
f. because Sally eats beans
We need one last phrase structure rule to be able to interpret all the
phrases named by our present rules. This is the rule that yields CP, or
Complementizer Phrase, as we shall call it. A CP is sort of like an S, except
that it always has a subordinating particle or complementizer word at the
beginning. So, for instance, in the following example, the group of words: that
Peter left is just a sentence with the word that, a complementizer, at the
beginning.
(23) Mary said that Peter left.
We have the following PS-rule,
then: (24) CP C S
in which C stands for Complementizer. (Other complementizers are whether
and if.)
The phrases that words are arranged into, and that form sentences, can be
represented graphically with what are called Phrase-Marker Trees, as in the
fol- lowing.
 (25) S

NP VP
D A N AUX VP

the happy child has V NP

eaten D N

an apple
We are now able to solve the problem posed by the existence of infinitely
long sentences. Because the rules we have written so far are recursive, they
are able to generate infinitely long, and infinitely many, strings. The example of
infinite length that we stumbled upon in (4) would be given the phrase marker
tree rep- resentation in (26) with these rules.
(26) S

NP VP

N V CP

Sandy thought C S

that NP VP
CP
N V
Sally believes C S
NP
that VP
N
V
John
said. . .
There is another context in which the infinity of English sentences can be
seen, but this context calls for a change to the Phrase Structure rules we have
so far developed. It is possible for English verb phrases to have an indefinite
number of prepositional phrases in them, as in:
(27) Mary walked [PP down the street] [PP over the hill] [PP through the woods] . .
. . Presently, however, our rule for VPs allows only one PP. One way of using
recur-
sivity to capture these cases is to have two rules for VPs one that
introduces PPs (recursively), and the others to build VPs of the sorts that we
have already seen. We might adopt something like (28), for instance.
(28) VP VP PP
VP V (NP) (CP)
VP AUX VP
This will give (27) the phrase marker tree, or parse, in
(29). (29) S
NP N VP
Mary PP
VP
P NP
VP PP
P NP through D N
VP PP
over D N the woods
V P NP

walked down D N the hill

the street
Although the rules in (28) correctly allow for an indefinite number of
Prepo- sitional Phrases within a VPs, they arent quite right yet. They have the
effect of putting PPs just at the right edge of a VP, and forcing all the other
phrases that a VP contains to come to their left. Thus, for instance, they allow a
Noun Phrase and a Prepositional Phrase to fit inside a VP as in (30), and not as
in (31).
(30) S

NP VP

Sam VP PP
V NP at noon

met N

Sally
 (31) *S
NP VP
Sam VP NP

VP PP N

V at noon Sally

met
This is the correct outcome, as it turns out, since (31) is ungrammatical.2 But
the rules in (28) say the same thing about PPs and CPs, and this is incorrect.
Sentences such as (32) are perfectly grammatical.
(32) I suggested [PP to Sam] [CP that he buy chocolate].
We need to change (28) therefore so that it allows CPs to follow
PPs.
It also turns out that there can be an indefinite number of CPs inside VPs,
just as there can be an indefinite number of PPs. Thus, for instance, we find
sentences such as:
(33) Mary will dance [CP when Radiohead comes on] [CP if you ask her nicely]
[CP which might be disturbing]. . .
To describe both these facts, we can change the rules we have in (28) so that
they also introduce CPs recursively, as in:
(34) VP VP PP
VP VP CP
VP V (NP)
VP AUX VP
This will now give (32) the phrase marker representation in
(35).

2
At least its usually judged ungrammatical by English speakers if the sentence is uttered with
nor- mal intonation.
 (35) S
NP VP
N VP CP
I VP PP C S
V P NP that NP VP
suggested to N N V NP
Sam he buy N
chocolate
So now we correctly allow either PPs or CPs to be the last phrase in a VP, but
force NPs to precede a PP and/or a CP that they share a VP with. With these
changes to the rules that characterize VPs, we are now able to describe the
various ways in which VPs can be indefinitely long. Although there are still
kinds of VPs that these rules do not describe, they describe enough of them for
the purposes of this class. These will therefore be the rules for VPs that we will
use.
But some of our other rules will need to be further amended. We will want to
make changes to the rule that characterizes NPs, because they also seem capable
of having an indefinite number of PPs and CPs within them, as, for example, in:
(36) a. a ball [PP on the table] [PP behind the picture] [PP near the sta-
pler] . . .
b. a ball [CP that you bought] [CP that Sally now has] [CP that might go
to Bill] . . .
Here too we might consider using additional NP rules, one that recursively
intro- duces PPs, one that recursively introduces CP, and another parallel to the
one we fashioned earlier.
(37) NP NP PP
NP NP CP
NP (Det) (Adj) N
The NP in (36a), for example, would consequently have the structure in
(38).

10
10
 (38) NP
NP PP
NP PP P NP
NP PP P NP near D N

D N P NP behind D N the stapler

a ball on D N the picture

the table
But there is additional complexity to NPs that we do not see in VPs. This
extra complexity arises because of the fact that adjectives too are capable of
coming an indefinite number of times within NPs:
(39) the big, unhappy, hairy, unattractive, . . . dog
We will want to characterize this fact, like we have with PPs and CPs, by way
of a recursive rule. But, unlike the PP and CP situations, we cant rely on a rule
like (40) because that will wrongly produce NPs like (41).
(40) NP Adj NP
(41) NP

A NP

unhappy D N

the dog
What we need, here, is a phrase inside NPs that recursively introduces
adjectives. This phrase is called an N bar, represented as N. We can use it to
introduce PPs and CPs too and, in fact, we will later encounter facts which
suggest that this is correct. So, our rules building NPs will now look like this:
(42) NP (D) N
NAN
N N PP
N N CP
NN
This will give to a noun phrase like (39) a phrase marker representation like
that in (43).
 (43) NP

D N
the A N

big A N

unhappy A N

hairy N

dog
And it will no longer give the NP in (36a) the representation in (38); but instead
it will give in the structure in (44).
(44) NP
D N
a PP
N
near the stapler
N PP

N PP behind the picture

N on the table
ball
There is another change we will need to make to our rules for NPs. This
change is made necessary by the existence of the boldfaced noun phrases in (45).
(45) a. Marys book has appeared.
b. The womans book has appeared.
c. The man from Spains book has
appeared.
In these cases, there is another noun phrase found before a noun. This noun
phrase has an s appended to the end of it, and is said to be in the possession
relation to the noun. So, for example, in (45a), Mary is understood to
possess the book; and similarly for the woman and the man from Spain in the
(45b) and (45c). These noun phrases have the structures indicated in (46).
(46) a. NP
NPs N
N N
Mary book
b. NP

NPs N

N N

the N book

woman
c. NP
NPs N

N N
the N PP book
N P NP

man from N
N
Spain
Notice, incidentally, that the determiner, the, in the b and c examples, is part
of the possessive noun phrase, and not part of the NP that contains it. That is,
(45b) isnt parsed as:
(47) NP
D NPs N

the woman N

book
In fact, it appears that a noun phrase in English can start with a determiner, or
it can start with a possessive NP, but it cant start with both. We can discover
this by first observing that certain kinds of noun phrases are prevented from
starting
with a determiner. NPs that have just a name in them, for instance, do not
easily start with a determiner. This is indicated by the difference in the examples
of (48).
(48) a. the woman
b. * the Mary
Presumably this has something to do with the incompatible meanings of names
and determiners. Whatever the cause, we can now see from the contrast in
(49) that the determiner the must be within the possessive NP and not the larger
one.
(49) a. the book
b. * the Marys
book
The goodness of (49a) shows that the can combine with book. Therefore, the
bad- ness of (49b) must be because the in this example is prevented from
combining with book, and forced instead to be part of the possessive NP
containing Mary, which (48b) has shown us isnt good.
These observations require that we change our NP rules so that they allow
Noun Phrases to start with a possessive NP, but only when that NP doesnt
start with a determiner. This can be done by changing (42) to (50).
(50) NP (D) N
NP (NPs) N
NAN
N N PP
N N CP
NN
These rules now allow an NP to start with either a determiner or a possessive
NP (both optionally).
There is one last kind of sentence structure that we will consider and
incor- porate into our set of Phrase Structure rules: coordination. Coordination
arises in cases, like (51), where the word or, and, or but brings together two
strings of words (here in italics).
(51) a. The man visited the woman or the child.
b. The woman ran over the hill and through the woods.
c. The child crawled home and ate chocolate.
One fact about this construction is that the coordinator, as we shall call
the words or, and, and but, only brings together strings of words that fit our
Phrase Structure rules. In the examples in (51), the strings of words make up
an NP, in (51a), a PP in (51b) and a VP in (51c). If we try to join strings that dont
fit the rules which build phrases of these sorts, the result is ungrammatical, as in
(52).
 (52) a. * The man visited the or woman the child.
b. * The woman ran over and the hill through the woods.
c. * The child crawled home and child ate chocolate.
Further, the strings of words that are found on either side of the coordinator
must be the same kind of phrase. If the phrase to the right of and, for example,
is a PP, then so must the phrase that shows up to the left of and. If the phrases
on either side of the coordinator are not of the same kind, the result is
ungrammatical, as in (53).
(53) a. * The man gave the book and to the
woman. b. * The happy and child left town.
We can describe these facts with the following pseudo-phrase structure
rule. (54) coordinator .
Where ranges over any category label (like Noun, Verb, etc.) or phrase (like
NP, VP, etc.). This rule will now give (51a) the phrase marker representation in
(55a), and (51c) the representation in (55b) below.

(55) a. S

NP VP
the man V NP

visited NP or NP

the woman the child

b. S

NP VP
the child VP and VP

V NP V NP

crawled N ate N

N N

home chocolate
 This method of describing which arrangements of words (or more properly,
categories) make grammatical English sentences has an interesting
consequence. They specify how words are arranged linearly in terms of the way
in which they are grouped into phrases. So, for instance, they say that
sentences will be con- structed in such a way that the string of words that
starts the sentence can be grouped into a noun phrase and all of those words
will precede the words that make up a verb phrase that ends the sentence. To be
part of the noun phrase that starts a sentence a word must precede every word
that is part of the verb phrase that ends that sentence. In a sense, the phrase
structure rules can be thought of as a function from the grouping of words into
phrases into their linear order. In cer- tain cases, the phrase structure rules can
group words in different ways, but yield the same linear ordering of those
words. We say in these cases that the string of words is structurally
ambiguous.
To get a handle on cases of this sort, lets begin by observing that the
follow- ing string of words has more than one meaning. We say that it is
semantically ambiguous.
(56) The boy hit the elf on the table.
This sentence can report that the elf on the table was hit by the boy, or it can
report that the hitting of the elf by the boy took place on the table. Now,
interestingly, this is one of those strings of words that can be given more than
one groupings into phrases by our phrase structure rules it is structurally
ambiguous. Either the PP on the table can be parsed as part of the NP or not as
part of the NP. It has the two representations given below.
(57) a. S

NP VP
the boy V NP

hit D N

the N PP

N P NP

elf on D N

the N

table
 b. S

NP VP

the boy VP PP

V NP P NP
hit D N on D N

the N the N

elf table
Is there a connection between this structural ambiguity and the meanings
that this sentence carries? I wish to convince you that there is a connection and
that the relationship between the various syntactic representations that this
sentence has and its meanings is given by the following rule.
(58) Modification Rule
A PP modifies the phrase that it is a sister to.
and are sisters if they are both dominated by exactly the same
nodes in a phrase marker tree.
This rule is a step towards completing the second goal of syntax that I outlined
earlier: it describes one of the relations between the arrangements of words and
the meanings they convey. It assigns to (57a) the first interpretation described
above, the one in which it is the elf on the table which gets hit. And it assigns to
(57b) the other interpretation, the one in which the hitting of the elf happens
on the table.
One reason for believing that there is a relationship between the structural
ambiguity of the string above and its semantic ambiguity is because this
hypothe- sis correctly predicts the number of meanings associated with strings
of this sort. To see this, consider the following example.
(59) I smashed the elf on the table with a hat.
This sentence has five different meanings, depending on which phrase the PPs
on the table and with a hat modify. We might expect more than this number of
meanings as there are two PPs and three things that can be modified here:
VP, the first NP and the second NP. But only five emerge. This is predicted by
(58) since it makes the meanings that are available in cases like these dependent
on the syntactic representations that our phrase structure rules allow. In (59),
our rules permit only five different parses. They are:
(60) S
NP VP
PP
I VP
with a hat
VP PP
V NP on the table

smashed D N
the N
elf
on the table and with a hat both modify smashed the elf
: Its on the table and with a hat that I smashed the elf.
(61) S

NP VP

I VP PP
V NP with a hat

smashed D N

the N PP

N on the table

elf
on the table modifies elf and with a hat modifies smashed the elf
: Its with a hat that I smashed the elf that was on the table.
(62) S

NP VP
I V NP

smashed D N

the N PP

N PP with a hat

N on the table

elf
on the table and with a hat both modify elf :
I smashed the elf that was on the table and had a hat.

(63) S

NP VP
I V NP

smashed D N
the PP
N
NP
N P
D N
elf on
the N PP

N with a hat

table
on the table modifies elf and with a hat modifies table:
I smashed the elf thats on the table which has a hat (on it).
(64) S

NP VP

I VP PP

V NP P NP
smashed the elf on D N

the N PP

20
20
 N with a hat

table
on the table modifies smashed the elf and with a hat modifies table:
Its on the table with a hat, I smashed the elf.
Consider, by way of contrast, the following
example. (65) I smashed the elf on the table and with
a hat.
This sentence has only two meanings: that the elf is located on the table and has
a hat, or that the smashing took place on the table and involved a hat. This is a
direct consequence, again, of (58), because our phrase structure rules will
permit only two parses of this string. Note here that we must have some
understanding about how the PPs inside a conjoined PP modify. That is, our
modification rule does not strictly speaking work in this example what we
need is some modification that talks about the special case that conjunctions are.