Did I draw this phrase diagram correctly?

Question

Hello beautiful people,

I am writing an exam on English grammar soon and one part is requiring you to draw a phrase diagram separating the noun phrases, verb phrases, etc..

Now I took a sentence from the first Harry Potter book (c) All rights reserved, and made it into a phrase tree.

Did I do everything correctly?

NP stands for noun phrase

VP for verb phrase

PP for prepositional phrase

All Feedback is appreciated!

Answer 1

I think you've diagrammed it as though Dursley is a director called Grunnings and that it's he who made drills personally. :-)

I'll let these step-by-step illustrations speak for themselves:

Focusing on the portion of the sentence qualifying the word "director":

Alternatively, with the indefinite article, I think it can also be parsed this way, if we think of "Grunnings" as a unique identifier that, if applied first, would make "a" redundant, which it isn't:

I'll leave "called Grunnings" and "which made drills" as an exercise.

Answer 2

In short, no, I don't think so. The basic structure is

NP---------------------VP

             V------------NP

Use a substitution test like He was something.

That's the top of the structure.

Then the subject complement is just

NP------------------PP

the dir.

           P------------NP

           of          
                Det-----------NP

                 a          firm

                              Reduced relative clause: [that was] called G.

                                                          Full relative clause:

                                                              NP----VP

                                                            which     V-----NP

                                                                     made  dills