CUTe-Language-Learning

Sunday, April 13, 2014

Guji Guji--Syntax Trees

Guji Guji is a funny story about a crocodile who thinks he is a duck. Watch Robert Guillaume read the story on YouTube:

At the beginning, a crocodile egg rolls into a duck's nest. The baby crocodile hatches (= comes out of the egg) and thinks he is a duck.

Try to make a syntax tree for these sentences:

An egg was rolling on the ground.

It was a crocodile egg.

The crocodile egg rolled into a duck's nest.

Guji Guji learned quickly.

Crocodiles can hide under water.

You can see the answers below:

Me and My Cat--Syntax Trees

{Updated on 26 October, 2014} {A colored syntax tree was added at the bottom}

Watch Elijah Wood reading Me and My Cat on YouTube.

Elijah Wood as Frodo Baggins (screenshot from DVD).png

Elijah has played many roles, including Frodo Baggins in Lord of the Rings. If you have trouble understanding the story, this blog post from last year can help you.
Elijah Wood（伊莱贾·伍德）演過許多角色，包括魔戒電影三部曲的佛羅多·巴金斯。他在YouTube講 Me and My Cat。如果這篇故事聽不太懂，可以參考本部落格去年的這一篇文章。

In this very creative story, a witch turns a boy into a cat, and his cat becomes him. One of the first sentences says: "The old lady in the pointed hat came in through my bedroom window." Let's make a syntax tree for this sentence step by step. 這個富有創意的故事敘述巫婆把小男孩變成貓以後所發生的事情，開頭有一句話說 "The old lady in the pointed hat came in through my bedroom window."我們來為這句話畫樹狀圖吧：

First, we need to mark the Parts of Speech:

Next, we need to put the words into groups. Let's look at the nouns first. There are two ADJ-N groups and one N-N group. These are bigger than nouns, but smaller than Noun Phrases, so we'll mark them N' (N-Bar):

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:

Parts of Speech, How Modern Linguistics Assigns ~ 詞類的區分標準（現代語言學方法）

Traditional language teaching uses word meanings to assign parts of speech, but this can easily lead to mistaken concepts. Let's use the traditional definitions of nouns and verbs as examples: 傳統語文教學用詞義來確定詞類，可是這樣做容易引起錯誤認知。我們先拿名詞和動詞來說：

1 A noun is the name of person, place, or thing 名詞是人，地方或東西的名稱

2 A verb is an action word 動詞是代表動作的詞

The traditional definitions of English parts of speech seem very simple and easy to understand, but they are hard for Chinese-speaking students to use (even native speakers of English occasionally have trouble applying these rules). Take for example, "Playing chess takes concentration." Concentration does not feel like "the name of a person, place or thing." Furthermore, the Chinese translation of "Playing chess takes concentration" uses a what feels like a verb instead of a noun, so a careless student might wrongly assume that concentration is indeed a verb. A similar example is a Chinese student's translation of 他不怕餓: He is not afraid of ~~hungry~~, where the very common word 餓 is rendered by the very common English adjective hungry (not many beginners are aware of the noun form hunger).

以上對詞類的傳統定義看起來簡單易懂，但事實上操漢語的學生不容易使用（連母語人士也會有困擾），例如 “Playing chess requires concentration”（下西洋棋需要專心）。許多學生有壞習慣，靠中文翻譯來記英文字義，拿中文詞類當英文詞類，『專心』不是『人，地方或東西的名稱』所以不像名詞，比較像動詞，但英文的 concentration 是名詞。類似的例子很多，例如：他不怕餓 ≠ He is not afraid of ~~hungry~~ （應該是 Hunger doesn't bother him OR He's not afraid of going hungry)。

Modern linguistics uses more reliable criteria for deciding on parts of speech, morphology (word shape) and syntax (word position on a sentence). 現代語言學對詞類的區分有更可靠的標準：形態和語法.Here are some examples:

I Need My Monster--Introduction to Syntax Trees

Many small children are afraid to sleep at night. They think there are monsters under their bed or in their closet. If they go to sleep, the monsters might come out and eat them!

I Need My Monster, written by Amanda Noll, is different and funny. You can read this story as a Kindle book or a regular book.

http://www.amazon.com/Need-My-Monster-Amanda-Noll-ebook/dp/B008RCDRDA/ref=sr_1_fkmr1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1396796063&sr=8-3-fkmr1&keywords=I+Need+My+Monster%2C+written+by+Amanda+Noll

You can also listen to Rita Moreno read you the story on Youtube or on Storylineonline.net. Very important! If you click on [CC] at the bottom of the YouTube video, you can see the words when she says them.

In this story, Gabe is the name of a little boy's monster. Gabe is gone for a few days, so the boy can't sleep. "I need my monster," he says. Other monsters come to replace Gabe, but he is not afraid of them. We will use this story to talk about the grammar of English sentences.

Herbert is the first monster who comes that night. He says: "My name is Herbert and I will be your monster for the evening." Let's make a syntax tree for this sentence. First, we need to mark the part of speech (Is it a noun, verb, adjective ...?) for each word.

Only marking the parts of speech is not very useful. Next, we will make a syntax tree for this sentence. A syntax tree is a picture of the parts of the sentence: