LINGUIS 3 Study Guide - Quiz Guide: Syntactic Category
30 Jun 2018
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Department
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Professor
Consider the underlined words in the following paragraph; identify the syntactic category of
each, by filling in the blanks in the table.
The father sang a lullaby each night to his angel daughter. He might sing a lullaby that promised
he would always stay with her, while he was rocking her in the rocker. She slowly closed her
eyes as his voice carried her into the land of dreams.
word
category
word
category
the
D
rocking
V
angel
A
rocker
N
might
I
slowly
Adv
that
C
her
D
stay
V
dreams
N
For each of the phrases in the table, identify the head, complement, specifier (if any), adjuncts
(if any), and syntactic category of the phrase.
Head
complement
Specifier
Adjunct
Phrasal
Category
The father
the
father
n/a
n/a
DP
Into the land
into
The land
n/a
n/a
PP
His daughter
[possessive]
daughter
his
n/a
DP
(possessive)
Sang a
lullaby
sang
A lullaby
n/a
n/a
VP
The child
sleeps
[present]
sleeps
The child
n/a
IP
Angel
daughter
daughter
n/a
n/a
angel
NP
He sang a
lullaby to the
baby
[past]
Sang a
lullaby
he
To the baby
NP
Land of
dreams
land
n/a
n/a
Of dreams
NP
