Parse tree

Unlike Reed-Kellogg sentence diagrams used for teaching grammar, parse trees do not use distinct symbol shapes for different types of constituents.

A related concept is that of phrase marker or P-marker, as used in transformational generative grammar.

[4] In the picture the parse tree is the entire structure, starting from S and ending in each of the leaf nodes (John, ball, the, hit).

The image below represents a constituency-based parse tree; it shows the syntactic structure of the English sentence John hit the ball:

The parse tree is the entire structure, starting from S and ending in each of the leaf nodes (John, hit, the, ball).

From the example, hit is a child node of V. The terms mother and daughter are also sometimes used for this relationship.

They are simpler on average than constituency-based parse trees because they contain fewer nodes.

Whether the additional syntactic structure associated with constituency-based parse trees is necessary or beneficial is a matter of debate.

Phrase markers, or P-markers, were introduced in early transformational generative grammar, as developed by Noam Chomsky and others.

For example, a bracketed expression corresponding to the constituency-based tree given above may be something like: As with trees, the precise construction of such expressions and the amount of detail shown can depend on the theory being applied and on the points that the query author wishes to illustrate.