This document discusses rewrite systems and methods for drawing syntactic trees. It provides examples of bottom-up and top-down tree construction methods. Bottom-up involves drawing trees from the words upward, while top-down starts with a sentence node and draws the subject and predicate downward. Various syntactic categories like noun phrases, verb phrases, and prepositional phrases are also mentioned.
17. BOTTOM-UP TREES
This method for tree drawing often works
best for beginners. Here are some (hopefully
helpful) steps to go through when drawing
trees.
D A A N V D N
The very small boy kissed the platypus
19. THE TOP-DOWN METHOD OF TREES
Most professional syntacticians use a slightly
quicker means of drawing trees. Once you are
practiced at identifying tree structures, you will
probably want to use this technique. But be
warned, sometimes this technique can lead you
astray if you are not careful
This method starts out the same way as the other:
write out the sentence and identify the parts of
speech.
D A A N V D N
The very small boy kissed the platypus.
Next draw the S node at the top of the tree, with
the subject NP and VP underneath: