Page 381 - DENG504_LINGUISTICS

Unit 29: Transformational and Phrase Structure Rules

6. the is a determiner (article). Notes
7. The Phrase marker represents the derivation diagrammatically.
8. The tree, that is, the Phrase Marker, is also the Structural Description of the Sentence.
9. S is a string (sentence).
10. NP and VP are substrings (phrases).
11. S dominates NP and VP. That is, S is a higher unit than
NP or VP. Similarly, NP dominated Det and N
VP dominates V and NP
N dominates boy
V dominates admire, and so on.
NP. VP, Aux., V, Det, N, etc. are the nodes of the tree.
They are all constituents.
12. The derivation shows us the elements, the operation and the resulting relation.
13. It is all explicit—nothing is left to the reader’s intuition.
14. If one knows how to apply the rules of grammar, one does not have to know the language to
produce grammatical sentences of the language— a guarantee no other grammar can provide.
15. Traditional “parsing” and IC analysis are formalised by this grammar.
16. This grammar is different from other grammars in that it is a formal system with axioms, rules
of inference, theorems (sentences) and mathematical proof derivation.
The set of rules given above for the sentence The boy admires sincerity is extremely limited in a
variety of ways. For example, the set can be used to produce only a finite number of sentences,
actually only four sentences :
1. The boy admires sincerity.
2. The boy admires the boy.
3. Sincerity admires the boy.
4. Sincerity admires sincerity.
Two of these sentences, sentences 3 and 4, turn out to be rather strange, and second sentence is a little
peculiar with its two fold occurrence of boy. But an adequate grammar of English should not generate
sentences such as 3 and 4, or, if it does, should indicate in some way that these sentences are less
acceptable than sentences 1 and 2. Much more serious at the moment is the fact that this grammar
generates so few sentences. A native speaker of a language can generate infinitely more sentences. So
a grammar should generate all and only sentences of whatever language it is the grammar of. We
shall deal with this problem in the following chapter.
Nevertheless, we must make certain changes in the previous set of rules to generate infinitely many
sentences of English. A sample set of PS rules of English may be shown in the manner that follows:
1. S —> Conj. SS S*
2. S —> Pre. S NP Aux VP (Adv. P)
3. Pre. S <— (Decl.)
[Q.] (Neg.) (Emph.)
[Imp.]
4. NP [NP { } ]
[ { S* } ]
[Det N (S) [ ]
[V (Prt) [NP] {P} ] ]
[ [NP {S} ] ]

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