PHRASE STRUCTURE GRAMMAR 105
artÆanadjÆexpensiveThe rule for AdjP introduces another convention—brackets. Brackets indi-
cate that one of the elements, adj or NP, must be chosen.
Let’s take this opportunity to generalize a bit. The rule for AdjP describes all
adjectivals in a noun phrase, but it does not describe predicate adjectives, which
we discussed in chapter 3. The sentence,The tree was tall,illustrates a basic
sentence pattern, withtallfunctioning as a predicate adjective. Having dis-
cussed adjectivals in the noun phrase, it is a good idea to extend our analysis
and adjust our rules here so that they will describe all instances of AdjP. We can
do this by making a simple modification to our rule for VP:
VPÆV (NP) (AdjP)Adjusting the rule for the verb phrase raises an interesting issue with respect
to verbs—the status of particles. We examined particles in chapter 3, but now
we can look at them more closely. While doing so, let’s consider another con-
struction that can appear in both the verb phrase and the noun phrase—the
prepositional phrase. Consider these sentences:
- The goons with bow ties looked up the number for Pizza Hut.
- Buggsy put the gun on the table.
The set of phrase-structure rules we have developed so far works to de-
scribe only parts of these sentences. Unlike sentences 1 through 3, sentence 4
has two prepositional phrases (PP) as parts of two noun phrases, and it has the
verb particleup(prt). Sentence 5 has a prepositional phrase as part of the verb
phrase. These structures were not in the previous example sentences, which
means that we must treat them as optional elements. Adjusting the rules
should be easy at this point: We must provide for optional prepositional
phrases in both NP and VP, and we must allow two possibilities for V, one be-
ing averb+particlecombination. With these adjustments, we can describe
sentences 1 through 5 and many others:
SÆNP VPNPÆ(det) (AdjP) (PP) NVPÆV (NP) (AdjP) (PP)