Using the Grammar "fromkin.gr"

[Note: these instructions were created for a slightly earlier version of this grammar, but they should apply identically to the most recent version.]

If you have already followed the instructions for choosing a grammar, opening a workspace and using the grammar practice.gr, then there's not much more that you need to know in order to be able to use the larger grammar fromkin.gr.

The grammar fromkin.gr is designed to handle all of the sentences in Exercises 4 and 7 of Fromkin & Rodman, Chapter 4 (6th Edition). Having selected it using Choose Grammar... under the File menu followed by New, you should see something like this.

Additional Notes

1. Although the lexical item "that" is of category Comp ('complementizer'), it appears under the S menu rather than the Comp menu. This is not for a principled reason - it's just how we managed to get it to work.

2. Some new tree fragments for attaching modifiers etc. have been added, notably n-mod (N-menu) for adding adjectival modifiers inside NPs, and adj-mod (Adj-menu) for attaching adverbial modifiers (e.g. 'very') to adjectives.

3. Adding adjectives to noun phrases.

A number of the sentences in Exercise 7 require that you create NPs containing one or more adjectives. But you will quickly realize that after building a simple NP like "the dog", there is no place to attach an adjective like "old" between the determiner and the noun.

You need to do two things in order to attach the adjective. First click on the N node of the NP using the scissors tool. The NP will split into two tree fragments. Second, select the tree fragment shown on the right below from the N-menu ... it is called "N-mod".

With these pieces you are now in a position to create an NP structure containing an adjective, like the one below.

Similar steps of cutting and inserting the "n-mod" tree fragment can be used in order to create sites for multiple adjectives, as in "the big old brown dog".