Phrase Structure Grammar

Any set of sentences that can be generated by a finite state grammar can be
generated by a phrase structure grammar. But there are sets of sentences that can be
generated by a phrase structure grammar, but not by a finite state grammar. Consider the
following English sentence: “The man hit the ball”.

The immediate constituents of the sentence are the noun phrase 'the man’, and the
verb phrase 'hit the ball’ (which has the function of predicate); that the immediate
constituents of 'the man’ are the article 'the’ and the noun 'man’, that the immediate
constituents of 'hit the ball’ are the verb 'hit’ and the noun phrase 'the ball’ and that the
immediate constituents of 'the ball’ are the article 'the’ and the noun 'ball’.

Chomsky's formalization of phrase structure grammar may be illustrated by means of

the following rules.

(1) Sentence —> NP + VP

(ii) NP —> T + N

(iii) VP —> Verb + NP

(iv T —> the

(v) N {man, ball…}

(vi) Verb {hit, took....}

This set of rules (which will generate only a small fraction of the sentences of
English) is a simple phrase structure grammar. Each of these rules is of the form of X to Y,
where X is a single element and Y is a string consisting of one or more elements. The arrow
is to be interpreted as an instruction to replace the element that occurs to its left with the
string of elements that occur to its right.

The set of nine strings, including the initial string, the terminal string and seven
intermediary strings constitute a derivation of the sentence 'The man hit the ball’ in terms of
this particular phrase structure grammar.

An alternative means of representing strings of elements generated by a phrase

structure grammar is a tree diagram.
 Since tree diagrams are visually clearer than sequences of symbols and brackets,
they are more commonly used in the literature. It will be obvious that the phrase marker
given in the Figure conveys directly the following information: the string of terminal elements
the+man+hit+the+ball is a Sentence which consists of two constituents NP(the man) and VP
(hit the ball); the NP which occurs to the left of VP consists of two constituents T (the) and N
(man); VP consists of two constituents Verb (hit) and NP (the ball); and the NP that occurs to
the right of Verb consists of two constituents T (the) and N (ball). It represents all that we
might have considered relevant in an immediate constituent analysis of the sentence, except
for the fact that 'the man’ is the subject, 'hit the ball’ is the predicate, and 'the ball’ is the
object.

According to this tree diagram, the subject is NP which is directly dominated by

Sentence and the object is that NP which is directly dominated by VP. What Chomsky
claimed, in Syntactic Structure and elsewhere, was that there are sentences of English
which can be described only "clumsily” within the framework of phrase structure grammar.