Basic English Grammar with Exercises

Chapter 3 - Basic Concepts of Syntactic Theory

(6) a Who do you want to meet?

b Who do you want to help?

(7) a He took a shower.

b He showered.

(8) a He made the ball role down the hill.

b He rolled the ball down the hill.

Exercise 6

Below you can find an abstract sentence where small letters symbolize the words of

the sentence while capital letters stand for larger units. Construct a tree diagram

equivalent to the bracketed structure.

[I [H a b] [J c [K d [L e f]]]]

Exercise 7

Below you will find the tree structure of an abstract sentence. Small letters represent

words while capitals stand for larger units. Give an equivalent bracketed structure.

K

I L

a J P M

b c d e N

f O

g h

Exercise 8

Give the lexical entry of each word in the following sentence.

The little boy may think that he will get a very expensive present for his

birthday.