Syntax Tree for a Compound Sentence： My name is Herbert and I will be your monster for the evening

One of the first sentences in I Need My Monster is "My name is Herbert and I will be your monster for the evening." Let's make a syntax tree for this sentence.

The first step is to mark all of the parts of speech:

Parts of Speech: My name is Herbert and I will be your monster for the evening

My and your are determiners (a, the, this and some are other determiners), so they are marked DET

The four nouns are marked N: N1~N4

The two verbs are marked V: N1~N2

The conjunction "and" is marked CONJ
A conjunction is a word that "conjoins," brings together two similar things: two nouns, two adjectives, ... even two sentences.

The auxiliary verb (also called a "helping verb") "will" is marked AUX

The preposition "for" is marked PREP

A preposition is a word that is put [= pos] before [= pre] a noun.

"My name is Herbert and I will be your monster for the evening." is really TWO sentences.

1) "My name is Herbert."

AND

2) "I will be your monster for the evening."

We could put them together like this, but it would not help us understand them:

It is much more helpful if we put related words into groups: Noun Phrases (NP), Verb Phrases (VP), Prepositional Phrases (PP) and so on. Let's analyze sentence 1:

Syntax Tree: My name is Herbert

"My name" is a Noun Phrase made of a Determiner ("My") and a Noun ("name"). "Is Herbert" is a Verb Phrase (VP1) made of another Verb Phrase (VP2), but VP2 only contains one verb: "is." In the same way, NP2 only contains one noun: "Herbert."

Sentence 2 can be analyzed in almost the same way:

Syntax Tree: I will be your monster for the evening

Here, PP is a Prepositional Phrase that contains a Preposition ("for") and a Noun Phrase ("the evening"). "Will be" is more than a verb and less than a verb phrase, so it is marked V' (V-Bar). We will talk about Bar Syntax later.

The two syntax trees can now be put together:

Syntax Tree: My name is Herbert and I will be your monster for the evening