Phrase Structure Rules

Phrase Structure Rules

Phrase-structure rules are a way to describe a given language's syntax and are closely associated with the early stages of Transformational Grammar. They are used to break down a natural language sentence into its constituent parts (also known as syntactic categories) namely phrasal categories and lexical categories (aka parts of speech). A grammar that uses phrase structure rules is a type of phrase structure grammar - except in computer science, where it is known as just a grammar, usually context-free. Phrase structure rules as they are commonly employed operate according to the constituency relation and a grammar that employs phrase structures rules is therefore a constituency grammar and as such, it stands in contrast to dependency grammars, which are based on the dependency relation.

Read more about Phrase Structure Rules:  Definition, Top Down

Famous quotes containing the words phrase, structure and/or rules:

    Listen to any musical phrase or rhythm, and grasp it as a whole, and you thereupon have present in you the image, so to speak, of the divine knowledge of the temporal order.
    Josiah Royce (1855–1916)

    The syntactic component of a grammar must specify, for each sentence, a deep structure that determines its semantic interpretation and a surface structure that determines its phonetic interpretation.
    Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)

    However patriarchal the world, at home the child knows that his mother is the source of all power. The hand that rocks the cradle rules his world. . . . The son never forgets that he owes his life to his mother, not just the creation of it but the maintenance of it, and that he owes her a debt he cannot conceivably repay, but which she may call in at any time.
    Frank Pittman (20th century)