Phrasal structure rules

       Mea M. Patriarca

Partido State University

College of Education
mhea122510@gmail.com

"Who climbs the GRAMMAR-TREE distinctly knows

where NOUN and VERB and PARTICIPLE grows..."

JOHN DRYDEN

The sixth satyr of Juvenal.1693

¢What is phrasal structure rules???
¢Phrasal structure rules means…. 
¢Are rules which generate the basic or underlying of the sentence.
¢Provide a parsing device to make explicit three basic properties of sentence grammar.



basic property of sentence grammar
¢Linearity
¢Hierarchy
¢Categoriality 

Categoriality:
Some words and group of words behave grammatically in very similar ways and in ways that are different from other words or group of words. 

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¢Linearity: Accounts for the fact that the words and morphemes of English sentence need to be produced in some sort of sequence since they cannot all be produce at once.
¢Example: the basic s-v-o word order
¢Account for the fact that it is not sufficient to simply specify words and morphemes and give their linear order. 

HIERARCHY:

Some words and group of words behave grammatically in very similar ways and in ways that are different from other words or group of words. 

let us turn now to our first phrase structure rule

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Optionally it can be expanded as:
ØNoun  with a plural inflection: books, children
ØNoun with up to three determiners: all his other money.
ØNoun with a preceding adjective phrase: a very blue sky
ØNoun with a following prepositional phrase: a man of honor

The perfective and progressive aspects are expanded into their auxiliary verb and accompanying grammatical inflections in rules 6 and 7, respectively.

PHRASE STRUCTURE RULES FOR ADVERBIAL
¢An adverbial clause gets expanded to include an adverbial subordinator followed by a new sentence.

Try This:

1.Mother is cooking in the kitchen
2.Christine is very happy.
3.The students were reading when the teacher arrived.
4.I went to school
5.Ivy plays the piano. 


¢References:Introduction to linguistics.2010.victoria fromkin,et.al The grammar book: An ESL/EFL teacher’s course.2010.Marianne C. Murcia
 EDL201UPOPENUNIVERSITY
http://people.umass.edu/afarudi/Phrase%20Structure%20Rules-Kyle%20Johnson.pdf