Phrase Structure Rules

• Phrase structure rules specify the well-formed structures of a sentence.

• How phrases are formed is governed by rules “phrase structure rules”
• A tree must match the phrase structure rules to be grammatical

In the phrase structure rules, there are two immediate constituents

1. Phrasal Category:
The categories that occur to the left of the arrow in a phrase structure rule.

2. Lexical Category:
The categories that never occur on the left side of any rule Phrase
structure trees always have lexical categories at the bottom since the rules
must apply until no phrasal categories remain unexpended. The lexical
categories are traditionally called “Parts of Speech”, include Articles,
Nouns, Verbs, Prepositions, etc

Phrase
A phrase is a sequence of words or a group of words arranged in a grammatical
construction, and functions as a unit in a sentence.

There are five commonly occurring types of phrase. They are:

 Noun Phrase (NP)
 Adjective Phrase (AdjP)
 Verb Phrase (VP
 Adverb Phrase (AdvP)
 Preposition Phrase (PP)

Phrase structure tree (also called constituent structure tree), is a tree diagram with
syntactic category information provided. A phrase structure tree shows that a sentence
is both linear string of words and a hierarchical structure with phrases nested in phrases
(combination of phrase structures. A phrase structure tree is a formal device for
representing speaker’s knowledge about phrase structure in speech.
BASIC PHRASE STRUCTURE RULES:

(1) S → NP VP
Sentence consists of Noun Phrase and Verb Phrase

(2) NP → (Det) (Adj) N (PP)

Noun Phrase consists of (Optional Determiners) (Optional Adjective) there has to
be a Noun and (Optional Prepositional Phrase).

(3) VP → V (NP) (PP) (Adv)

Verb Phrase consists of Verb (Optional Noun Phrase) (Optional Prepositional
Phrase) and (Optional Adverb).

(4) PP → P NP
Prepositional consists of Preposition and Noun Phrase.

TREE DIAGRAM
A tree diagram, or tree, is a two-dimensional diagram used in generative grammar as
a convenient means of displaying the internal hierarchical structure of sentences as
generated by a set of rules.

Example:

1. He run quickly

NP VP

Pro V Adv

He run quickly