Modern Grammar - Assignment 16 James Madison University

Instructions: This is practice with basic VP structures and with some new phrase structure rules that may be involved in building single clause sentences. Think carefully and give it your best shot. It will be graded only as an acceptable or unacceptable effort.

1. First, let's just practice building various forms of VPs that correspond to the semantic and syntactic constraints of different verbs. Most of the examples will list the rule used, but the last couple leave it up to you. (You may want to do this without LLAMA syntax, but you can check your answers against that program if it helps. Just make sure to set the parser to parse VPs...)
   1. stopped (VP --> V)
   2. sleep (VP --> V)
   3. swallowed a sword (VP --> V NP)
   4. had a great time (VP --> V NP)
   5. costs money (VP --> V NP)
   6. dove into the ocean(VP --> V PP)
   7. is in a bad mood (VP --> V PP)
   8. talked to me (VP --> V PP)
   9. smells strange (VP --> V AP)
   10. appeared confident (VP --> V AP)
   11. were ready (VP --V AP)
   12. gave the largest piece to his mother (VP --> V NP PP)
   13. tossed her shoes into the suitcase (VP --> V NP PP)
   14. handed the sword to the warrior (VP --> V NP PP)
   15. handed the warrior the sword (VP --> V NP NP)
   16. gave his mother the largest piece (VP --> V NP NP)
   17. threw the ball from the outfield to homeplate (VP --> V NP PP PP)
   18. trades Monica a lollipop for her gumball (VP --> V NP NP PP)
   19. brings her friends to her private island
   20. sold that guy a phony diamond
2. Next, here are a few whole sentences to practice:
   
   1. The confused flock of sheep wandered from the pasture to the dangerous mountains on the edge of the ranch.
   2. Those shy young lovers passed small, romantic messages to each other. (Here the "recipient" is expressed with a PP instead of with an indirect object NP. Also, remember that "each other" is one pronoun!)
   3. The boobytrapped safe exploded.
   4. The boobytrapped safe blew up. (This will be your first use of the phrasal verb rule. Simply put, recognize "up" is a particle, mark it as such, and then use an odd rule that combines the verb with the particle to make a new, bigger verb: V --> V part)
3. Now, also try out another odd new rule, this time it's the rule for turning a noun phrase that is marked with possessive morphology into a determiner (det --> NP 's ) YES, this is even odder than the verb forming rule; We'll discus in class how and why a noun phrase can be (used as) a determiner.
   
   • Alyssa's brother moved to Alaska.
4. And finally, here's just one other completely new rule. It is a rule for an intensifier adverb when it is modifying an adjective, and it is one of the onlly cases where a SUBCLASS of a word class has its own rule. The rule is
   AP --> int AP
   and you'll notice that the rule really has the intensifier modify the whole adjective phrase. We can discuss why in class. Here is a sentence with two examples of this rule at work:
   • The extremely difficult part of the puzzle was the very monochromatic part.