Modern Grammar - Assignment 18 James Madison University

Instructions: This assignment includes more practice with basic phrase structure rules for single clause sentences, including adverbial modification of various types, and introducing the special details for gerund noun phrases. It also asks you to strat watching for coordinate conjunctions in sentences (though not to diagram sentences containing them... yet :) ). It will be graded only as an acceptable or unacceptable effort.

1. Diagram each of the sentences below:
   
   1. A woman's home is her castle.
   2. He sent flowers to his grandmother on Tuesday after class.
   3. I called up NASA before the eclipse.
   4. The invading army's early arrival ruined the leader of the village's defensive plans.
   5. That is the manager's assistant's parking space. (Recursive possessives...)
   6. We have rescheduled the meeting at your request! (First example with an AUX!)
   7. In my imaginary kingdom, the royal chefs have invented a calorie-free chocolate.
   8. Flora was looking at the details of her contract with the company very carefully.
   9. The new magician did not seem too worried about his tricks.
   10. Sometimes, on dark, windless nights, after midnight, strange sounds do come from the top of that very dreary, empty, old house on the corner for no clear reason. (Tip: "sometimes" is an adverb. :) )


2. Dealing with gerunds:
   Here's your first example containing a gerund noun phrase. (In this example, "aiming" is a gerund noun. Reminder --as with common nouns, the first thing that happens with a gerund noun in a sentence is that it becomes an "N-bar." Then, in this case, there's actually just the regular "N-bar" formation rule that applies. Finish off the noun phrase as you would with any common noun.):
   
   1. Aiming for the moon wastes ammunition. (The whole gerund noun phrase here is "aiming for the moon")
   
   Remember, however, that gerunds are not really like other nouns. There are some specialized rules for gerunds that allow them to build rather odd "N-bar" constituents. This is because any VP that could be needed in the verb use becomes an N-bar rule in the gerund use. In those corresponding "N-bar" rules, all VPs and Vs become "N-bars". Now try these examples:
   
   2. Frank enjoys sending his colleagues anonymous gifts. (Hint: if "sending" ( Use the rule N-bar --> N-bar NP NP. This is a very odd rule that would certainly never work for ordinary nouns!))
   3. Undoubtedly, their becoming best friends might be possible in the future. (Try to figure out the N-bar rule for this example and note too that the gerund noun phrase is introduced by the determiner "their." You should be able to use the ordinary rule involving a determiner.)
   
   
3. Now for some sentences containing coordinate conjunctions:
   (When we introduced coordinate conjunctions a few weeks ago, we noted that the general pattern is always some kind of phrase or clause (X) followed by the conjunction, wich is then followed by another phrase/clause of the same basic syntactic category (X). (For example "NP conjunction NP" or "S conjunction S"). For each example below, just circle the coordinate conjunction and say what kind of matching syntactic structures are on each side of it.
   1. The door was open, and all the leaves blew into the house.
   2. They sent the petition to their senator and to other national leaders.
   3. The children were writing poems and chatting.
   4. We need more time for fun, but we have piles of homework!