Introduction to Linguistics - Assignment 6
James Madison University
Consider the sentence "The wise owl solved the problem." Using entirely different words
(except maybe sticking with the word "the" rather than other determinders, if you want), write TWO
other sentences that each have the exact same constituent structure pattern as this one.
(Re-)read the discussion in Chapter 3 of what syntax is, what syntactic categories are and what phrase
structure trees and rules are, then try to paraphrase any five of the eight phrase structure rules on page 92 of
your textbook in ordinary English. Make sure to include a description for each rule you choose of what you think it's saying
about the relationship between the syntactic category listed on the left side of the arrow and
the set of one or more syntactic categories on the right side of the arrow.
Do your best with the following exercises at the back of Chapter 3:
Exercise 1
Exercise 3, just examples a, c, d, and e (note that the word in this example should be "man's"!).
