I just try syntax trees and realize that I have a few problems. I have a problem especially with two examples because I am very unsure how to handle the cases. In case 1, I do not know how to deal with fixed terms such as "the church of England". And in case 2, I don't know how to deal with "the girl who left us" These are my solutions. Would someone kindly make me more understandable? I would be very grateful!
The same mother nodes should always have the same (or at least similar) daughter nodes coming in the same order. This is expressed in phrase structure grammar by having a small number of phrase structure rules. It seems to me that this is the key point you are missing. (Your example trees are wrong.)
Commented Jan 28, 2017 at 11:22@Review I wouldn't see the question as a "Draw me a syntax tree" request. The OP proposed their own solutions and asked for feedback on specific parts of it, so I think it's okay.
Commented Jan 28, 2017 at 17:10They are both wrong, I'm afraid. They are both NPs, not a PP and a VP. I've posted an answer based on the most straightforward kind of tree that includes both function and category labels.
Commented Jan 28, 2017 at 20:02Yes but if we are given a sentence with conjunction to draw tree then where to place conjunction? For example: Joe and Alfred are my friends. How to analyse this sentence in tree diagram (phrase marker) keeping in view the binary branching
Commented Jun 7, 2018 at 17:29Although what is "correct" always depends on theory, there are various things that are definitely not quite right with your trees.
Tree #1
the founder of the church of England
The whole thing taken together is an NP (it starts with a definite article and can serve as the subject of a sentence, so it is something nominal, not prepositional), so the root of the tree should be labelled NP rather than PP.
In general, an XP must always have an X as its head.
Thus, when there is an NP, there must be an N as the head, and for a PP, there is a P head. This principle is not always follwed in your trees.
The same goes for NPs. Now I don't know what theory you are using, because there are basically two opposing approaches:
1) Make the whole thing an NP, i.e. a phrase with an N head to which the determiner is a specifier:
The head of the NP is the N "church". The DP consisting of the D "the" is a specifier because it is the sister of N' and daughter of NP.
2) Make the whole thing a DP, i.e. a phrase with a D head to which the noun phrase is a complement:
The head of the DP is the D "the". The complement of this D head is an NP which consists of the single N head "church".
I will not go into a discussion of the motivations of each approach (and neither into a discussion about whether you should leave redundant bar levels away), but you need to decide what your phrase and its head is supposed to be. Having an NP branching into a D and an N violates the X-bar scheme because a phrase must have an identifiable head and can not branch into two lexical items (D and N); one of them must be an X' or an XP. Either you make it an NP with an N head and the DP as a specifier, or you make it a DP with a D head and the NP as a complement.
Assuming that you want to have the whole as an NP, I'll continue with the first approach.
So a first rudimentary picture of your tree looks like this:
You can now argue about whether the PP "of the church of England" is an adjunct rather than a complement, but in this case I find the latter approach more plausible. So within N', we have an N head "founder" and a PP complement "of the church of England":
Now about the PP. As said above, the head of the PP must be a P of which the complement is an NP, thus:
The NP "the church of England" again branches into the determiner and the N' "church of England":
Within this N', "church" is the head and "of England" is a PP complement to the N head "church":
Again, you could also argue about making the PP "of England" an adjunction, but here too I find a complement more plausible.
The PP "of England" itself looks similar as the other PPs, with the difference that the NP "England" doesn't have a DP specifier:
And now you are done with your tree.
The whole phrase is an NP, of which the head is the noun "founder" and the PP "of the church of England" is a complement with a P head "of". The determiner "the" is located in specifier position to the NP. the PP "of the church of England" later branches into another PP "of England".
Tree #2
the brother of the girl who left us
I'll keep my explanation a bit briefer here.
Similarly as above, you have an NP in which the N' consists of the N head "brother" and a PP complement "of the girl who left us":
Within the PP, the complement NP "the girl" is modified by adjunction of the relative clause "who left us":
It is also possible to locate the relative clause as an adjunct to the N' "girl" rather than the whole NP "the girl":
For reasons that are too complicated to discuss here, I will assume adjunction to the NP rather than N'.
The difficult part now is how to handle the relative clause "who left us". The assumption is the following:
Within the relative clause CP, the relative pronoun "who" is assumed to start in the subject position, i.e. in the specifier position of IP (SpecI), because the NP it refers to ("the girl") is the subject of the sentence:
This NP pronoun is then moved to the specifier of CP (SpecC) to get into the position of a relative pronoun:
The moved pronoun leaves a trace (t_i) and is now located in SpecC position, where it serves as a relataive pronoun referring to "girl".
The tree as a whole thus looks as follows:
To summarize, the whole expression is an NP, where the head N "brother" has a PP complement "of the girl who . ", and within that PP complement, the NP "the girl" is modified by adjunction of a relative clause CP in which the NP "who" was moved from SpecI to SpecC to serve as a relative pronoun referring to "the girl".
General remarks
Which solution is deemed correct depends on what theory you are using.
