Phrase Structure Rules

• Must allow all and only the grammatical

sentences in a language
• Descriptive rules, not necessarily
prescriptive
• Each rule “rewrites” a constituent into one
or more constituents
 A Simple Set of Phrase Structure Rules
S NP +VP
NP art + (adj*) + N
VP V + NP + (PP*)
PP Prep + NP
N sailor, cat, horse, bridge,
V saluted, kissed, fried
adj drunken, puzzled, gregarious
art a, the
prep on, under
From this simple set of rules we can generate
many, many sentences, including:
A cat saluted a horse.
A cat saluted a horse on the bridge.
A gregarious horse fried the cat.
The drunken sailor saluted the puzzled cat.
The puzzled, gregarious sailor on a horse saluted
the drunken cat on the bridge.
 Phrase Structure Tree:
Derivation of a Sentence
S

NP VP

art adj N V NP

The drunken sailor saluted art adj N

the puzzled cat

Sentences with ambiguous meanings
have different phrase structure trees
S

NP VP
adj N aux V adj

Visiting relatives can be boring

S
NP VP
Ger N aux V adj

Visiting relatives can be boring

 Transformational Rules
• Rules that transform deep structure into
surface structure
• Apply to constituents not to individual
words
• Involve movement, insertion, and deletion
of constituents
• Conditions of occurrence: Transformations
will not apply under all conditions
 Some Transformations
• Particle-movement
– “John called up the woman.”
– “John called the woman up.”
• T1” V + part + NP  V + NP + part
– John called up the interesting woman up.
– John called the interesting woman up.
– John called up the woman with the curly hair.
– John called the woman with the curly hair up.
– *John called the woman up with the curly hair.
 Other Transformations
• Passive:
– Arlene played the tuba.
– The Tuba was played by Arlene.
– T2 NP1 + V + NP2  NP2 + be +V + –en by
+ NP1
• Wh- Question: Why is Arlene playing the tuba?
• Negation: Arlene is not playing the tuba?
• Compound: Arlene is playing the tuba and the drums.
 Derivational Theory of
Complexity
• If transformational grammar is how language is
actually done, then
– Untransformed sentences > transformed sentences
– Simpler transformations > complex transformations
– Should see this both in acquisition and in adult
processing of sentences
– But there are many exceptions to this prediction
– Compound Sentences
• “The zoo has llamas and gnus” is derived from “The zoo has
llamas and the zoo has gnus.”
 Whence Transformational
Grammar?
• Revolutionary approach to the study of language,
though the specifics have not stood up well.
Revised approaches include
• Parameter Setting (Chomsky, 1981, 1986, 1995)
– All possible linguistic variations are hard-wired, the
parameters that are set depend on exposure to language.
• Lexical-Functional Grammars (Bresnan, 1982,
Pinker, 1984, 1990)
– Grammar is actually in the lexicon, e.g. an entry for a
verb entails its argument structure and restrictions as
well as meaning.