Exercise 11.2
| 1 | The spy saw the cop with the binoculars |
| 1a | Det Noun Verb Det Noun Prep Det Noun |
| 1b | Det Noun Verb Det Noun Prep Det Noun |
| 1c | Det Noun Verb Det Noun Prep Det Noun |
| 2 | The spy saw the cop with the revolver |
| 2a | Det Noun Verb Det Noun Prep Det Noun |
| 2b | Det Noun Verb Det Noun Prep Det Noun |
| 2c | Det Noun Verb Det Noun Prep Det Noun |
The rows marked 1a, 1b, 1c and 2a, 2b, 2c in the table above show the stages of the analysis in the question. Note that the analysis is identical for the two sentences through to the final stage, at which point there is a difference in which word the prepositional phrase (underlined) most plausibly modifies, i.e. the verb saw in 1 (the spy used the binoculars to see the cop) and the noun cop in 2 (the cop who the spy saw was the one with the revolver). In most syntactic analyses this will also correspond to a difference in the hierarchical syntactic constituent structure. See Exercise 10.2 for an example.