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Author Topic: Syntax Tree Help  (Read 3965 times)

Offline linguisticgirl

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Syntax Tree Help
« on: November 12, 2016, 11:52:32 AM »
Hello,
I am working on syntactic trees right now and I have a sentence I need to make a tree diagram for and it has two verbs. One is the verb before the DP (that is what we are using in this class rather than NP) and the other is at the end of the sentence. It is similar to the sentence:

"I know she sings."

The problem is I do not understand how to draw a diagram with two verbs like this. If it had a complementizer then I'd know how to proceed. Can a VP or an IP phrase contain a VP or IP phrase itself? I've never seen a sentence structured that way. Will someone explain this to me?
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Offline Daniel

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Re: Syntax Tree Help
« Reply #1 on: November 12, 2016, 02:16:05 PM »
It depends somewhat on the exact theory you're using and certain kinds of assumptions you can make. But generally the approach taken is to assume a null complementizer. If this is for a class you should check your book or ask your instructor about what kinds of assumptions you can make at this time. Most textbooks and classes introduce syntactic structure step by step so you might actually be doing it differently than you will even later in the same class, based on your current approach.
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