Exercise-ch3

Additional Exercises for Chapter 3: Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar

Basic syntactic notions

Parts of speech

Determine the part of speech of the words in the sentences.
Use the following part of speech labels: A, Adv, Conj, Comp, Det, N, P, V

a. Alex/ talked/ to/ my/ best/ friend/ .

b. You/ might/ suspect/ that/ Pat/ is/ a/ genius/ .

c. The/ title/ of/ a/ book/ largely/ determines/ whether/ it/ will/ be/ successful/ or/ a/ flop/ .

Feel free to send feedback on this exercise to Manfred Sailer.

Syntactic categories

Determine the syntactic categories of the following groups of words in the sentences.
Use the following labels: AP, AdvP, NP, PP, VP. Write "-" if the group of words does not form a constitutent.
Example: [S: Pat [VP: will [VP: wait [PP: for Alex]]]]

a. [ Alex [ talked [ to [ my best friend]

b. [ [ The president] [ announced [CP: that [ there [ will [ be [ no further taxes]]]]]]].

Feel free to send feedback on this exercise to Manfred Sailer.

Lexical entries as Attribute-Value Matrix

Provide the required information on the lexical properties of the underlined words in the following sentences.
Note:

• Put a minus ("-") if a slot should not receive any filling
• Use det, noun, prep or verb for the HEAD values.

1 Alex read a book yesterday.

PHON

SYNSEM | LOCAL | CAT | HEAD

SYNSEM | LOCAL | CAT | VAL | SUBJ < >

SYNSEM | LOCAL | CAT | VAL | SPR < >

SYNSEM | LOCAL | CAT | VAL | COMPS < >

2 Alex talked to a friend.

PHON

SYNSEM | LOCAL | CAT | HEAD

SYNSEM | LOCAL | CAT | VAL | SUBJ < >

SYNSEM | LOCAL | CAT | VAL | SPR < >

SYNSEM | LOCAL | CAT | VAL | COMPS < >

3 Pat liked this new documentary on African wild life.

PHON

SYNSEM | LOCAL | CAT | HEAD

SYNSEM | LOCAL | CAT | VAL | SUBJ < >

SYNSEM | LOCAL | CAT | VAL | SPR < >

SYNSEM | LOCAL | CAT | VAL | COMPS < >

4 Alex talked to a friend.

PHON

SYNSEM | LOCAL | CAT | HEAD

SYNSEM | LOCAL | CAT | VAL | SUBJ < >

SYNSEM | LOCAL | CAT | VAL | SPR < >

SYNSEM | LOCAL | CAT | VAL | COMPS < >

Feel free to send feedback on this exercise to Manfred Sailer.

Analysis of simple sentences

1 Indicate the missing values of the VAL and the HEAD features using tags ([1], ...) or "-" for empty lists.

Alex snored.

syntactic structure:

2 | |- |words: |- |Alex |HEAD [4]noun |}

SUBJ < { - _3 } > SPR < { - _3 } > COMPS < { - _3 } >

snored HEAD [5]verb SUBJ < { [1] _3 } > SPR < { - _3 } > COMPS < { - _3 } >

phrase:

S: Alex snored HEAD { [5] _3

Feel free to send feedback on this exercise to Manfred Sailer.

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