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UHE3092 ENGLISH MECHANICS
TREE DIAGRAMS PART 3
by
Siti Norzaimalina bt Abd Majid
Centre for Modern Languages & Human Sciences
norzaimalina@ump.edu.my
CONJUNCTION
ADVERB
PREPOSITION
ADJECTIVE
PRONOUN
VERB
PHRASES
INTERJECTION
ARTICLE
NOUN
SENTENCE
How to build a tree diagram
First, you have to know the basic structure of a sentence. Sentence is made of phrases and words.
The rules that we use to build tree diagram is called Phrase Structure Rules. Below are the common phrases in a
sentence.
1. S SUBJ PRED 7. AUX -past
2. SUBJ NP 8. AUX -present
3. PRED (AUX) VP (NP)(PP) 9. AUX modal
4. NP (det)3 (AP) N (PP) 10. PP Prep NP
5. NP pro 11. AP (intens)n ADJn (PP)
PP Prep NP
Prepositional phrase is a group of word that begins with a preposition and ends with a noun or pronoun.
Prepositional phrase can function as an adjective or an adverb.
For example:
The girl with the red dress is my cousin.
with – preposition
the red dress – noun
Prepositional Phrase – phrase
functions as an adjective.
It modifies the noun “The
girl”.
How to build PP PREP NP tree diagram?
Eg: with the red dress
PP
Prep NP
det AP noun
with
adj
the red dress
AP (intens)n ADJn (PP)
• Adjective phrase is a phrase that has adjective as the head word. These group of words should describe the noun
or pronoun.
For example:
extremely – intensifier/adverb
Tina looked extremely worried at the party.
worried – adjective, described
Tina
Adjective Phrase • ( ) parentheses is an optional item in AP.
• The power of n means, you can add infinite
number of intensifier or adjective in an
adjective phrase
How to build AP (intens)n ADJn (PP) tree diagram?
Eg: extremely worried at the party
AP
intens adj PP
at NP
extremely worried
adj noun
at the party
More References
Celce-Murcia, M., & Larsen-Freeman, D. (1999). The grammar book : An eSL/EFL teacher's course (2nd ed.
ed.). Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle.
O’Grady, W., Archibald, J., Aronoff, M., & Rees-Miller, J. (2005). Contemporary linguistics, an introduction . (5th
ed.). Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin's.
http://people.umass.edu/scable/LING201-SP13/Slides-Handouts/Syntactic-Trees.pdf