LIN102H1F Introduction to Linguistics: Sentence Structure and Meaning

Homework 3, Due Feb 6 at the start of tutorial

Name: Student Number: Tutorial Section:
Question 1: Trees
Draw trees for the following sentences. Use the mini-grammar at the end of this home-
work for guidance.
(a) Iorek fixed the subtle knife

(b) Lyra walked for hours

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 Name:

(c) The witch sent Lyra her goose

(d) Will wonders if the bear will fix the knife

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 Name:

(e) The bear asked for Lyra to find his armour

This is a basic grammar, consisting of the set of phrase structure rules from
Tuesday and a small lexicon:

Phrase structure rules:

Basic cases:
XP →XP YP where YP is an adjunct phrase
XP →X (ZP) where ZP is a complement phrase

Special cases:

• Some heads select for both a complement (ZP) and a specifier (WP), in which case
we use an X-bar structure
XP

WP X’

X ZP

• Some heads select for two complements (ZP),(WP), in which case we use a ternary
branching XP structure
XP →X ZP WP where ZP and WP are complement phrases

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Lexicon:

• N: witch, knife, bear, goose, hours, armour

• A: golden, subtle, magnificent

• V: walked, fixed, find, sent, wonders, asked

• D: the, a, this, that, her, his, he, she, Lyra, Will, Iorek,

• P: with, of, for

• T: ø[+tense], will[+tense], to[-tense]

• C: ø[-q], that[-q], if[+q], for[-q]

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