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Monday, November 13, 2017

Graedjoan Giantish Sentence and Constituent Structure

Graedjoan Giantish is a Subject Verb Object  (SVO) language. However, there is some freedom in how words are arranged due to the case marking in the language.

A Noun Phrase (NP) in Graedjoan Giantish is comprised of an optional determiner, a mandatory noun, an optional conjunction, an optional secondary noun, and an optional adjectival phrase.

NP --> (DET) N (CONJ) (N) (ADJP)

An Adjectival Phrase (ADJP) in Graedjoan Giantish is comprised of a mandatory adjective, and optional conjunction, and optional secondary adjective (*this may repeat ad infinituum) and an optional adverb.

ADJP --> ADJ (*CONJ) (*ADJ) (ADV)

A Verb Phrase (VP) in Graedjoan Giantish is comprised of an optional auxiliary, a mandatory verb, an optional conjunction, an optional secondary verb, and an optional adverb for intransitive verbs. For transitive verbs, there would also be after the adverb an optional adpositional phrase, and a mandatory noun phrase. For ditransitive verbs, there would be another optional adpositional phrase, and a mandatory noun phrase.

Intransitive VP --> (AUX) V (CONJ) (V) (ADV)

Transitive VP --> (AUX) V (CONJ) (V) (ADV) (APP) NP

Ditransitive VP --> (AUX) V (CONJ) (V) (ADV) (APP) NP (APP) NP

An Adpositional Phrase (APP) is comprised of a mandatory adposition and a mandatory noun phrase. However, due to the case marking in Graedjoan Giantish, adpositional phrases are rare. When they do occur, the order of the adposition and noun depend on the adposition in question.

APP --> P NP

APP --> NP P

A Sentence (S) in Graedjoan Giantish is comprised of an optional noun phrase, and a mandatory verb phrase.

S --> (NP) VP

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