Tree structures for phrasal and S

preposition verbs
A tree is built up from our evidence of what these phrases are, which comes in
the form of tests for constituent structure. So lets start with evidence for the two NP VP
main constituents in each tree: the subject and the VP predicate. Our tests show
that those smugglers, the subject in each sentence, is indeed a constituent. Both
subjects can be sentence fragments:
a.Who shook off their pursuers? [NP Those smugglers] Those smugglers V NP
b.Who relied on the weather forecast? [NP Those smugglers]
Second, both subject NPs can also appear in the focus position of a cleft The pursuers
sentence: V P
a.Its [NP those smugglers] who shook off their pursuers.
b. It's [NP those smugglers] who relied on the weather forecast.
shook of
And the third, Since it replaces a whole NP it's really a pro-NP: 'pro' means
'(stands) for'. The cover term used for all pro-phrases is PROFORM: a proform
takes the place of a sequence of words which form a constituent, and so any
string of words that can be replaced by an appropriate proform must be a
constituent.
a.Those smugglers [VP shook off their pursuers], and the moon shine merchants
[VP did so] too.
b.Those smugglers [VP relied on the weather forecast], and these fishermen [VP
did so] too.