Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Syntax - Coggle Diagram
Syntax
Minimal Sentence
a subject
who or what the sentence is about
a predicate
what the subject does, feels, or is
Word Categories
Lexical
content words
Nouns
person, place, thing, abstract quality
can take a plural form or possessive's
Occurs after determiners like “the”, “a”, “many”, "some"
Occurs after adjectives like “small”, “quick”, or “slimy"
eg. kid, Jane, pencils, boxes, man, student
Pronouns
:
I, you, he, they, what, who, this, that
Adjectives
properties or attributes of nouns.
can be comparative (-er, more) or superlative (-est,most)
occurs before nouns
occurs after linking verbs like "is", "feels", or "seems"
eg. quick, green, fastest, richer, cute, sad, smart
Verbs
actions, sensations, or states.
can be past tense, past participle, present participle, or third person.
occurs as the start of the predicate after the subject.
occurs after or before adverbs.
eg. run, jump, fought, slept, interrogates
Adverbs
properties of verbs or sentences.
can be comparative (-er) or superlative (-est)
occurs before or after verbs.
can be moved to the beginning or end of a sentence
eg. quickly, tomorrow, slower, harder, quickest
Prepositions
a variety of meanings like location, time, duration, instrument, manner, agency and reason
cannot be inflected.
occurs before a noun phrase.
eg. near, at, for, with, by, of, due to, on account of
Non-lexical
functional words
Determiners
eg. the, a, his, few, many, some, each, all, most, every, this...
Qualifiers
eg. very, ridiculously, quite, kind-of, a-little
Auxiliaries
Conjunctions
eg. for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so
Phase & Constituents
Constituents
any word or collections of words that function as a unit
Phrases
a group of words that function as a unit
Head of Phrase determines its category and it expresses the core meaning of the Phrase
Specifier: specifies more information about the head.
Modifiers: like adjectives can be added around the head, depending on the phrase type
Complement: the phrase required by the head to be grammatical
Noun Phrase (NP)
Noun Phrases (NPs) can take determiners (D) as specifiers.
can be modified by Adjective Phrases
Some can take PPs, AdvPs, and NPs of time as post-modifiers
may consist of a single pronoun
Adjective Phrase (AdjP)
Adjective Phrases (AdjP) can take qualifiers (Qual) as specifiers.
Verb Phrase (VP)
Intransitive, transitive, ditransitive
verb phrases can be modified by adverb phrase, propositional phrases and noun phrases of time
Adverb Phrase (AdvP)
can take qualifiers as specifiers
Prepositional Phrase (PP)
require noun phrase as a complement
if no NP complement follows, it is maybe used as an adverb
some propositional phrases can take qualifiers
Tense Phrase (TP)
T is +Past when the verb is past tense
is -Past when the verb is present tense
Modals (T/Mod)
:
can, will, shall, may, could,
would, should, might, must
Auxiliary phases (AuxP)
Designates possibility, obligation, permission, futurity, continuation of an event, completion of an event
and passive voice
eg. is leaving, did leave, had left, will leave,
might leave, should leave
Complementizer Phrase (CP)
Some verbs can take entire clauses as complements
words like
"if, that and whether"
that introduce clauses are called
complementizers
Constituency Test
Substitution Test
Movement Test
Coordination Test
Clefting Test
Q&A Test