I'm working on a natural language processing project, and I'm trying to diagram sentence structures as XML.
I've been through this excellent YouTube series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwDNiZsItbo
As well as a few books and other videos trying to find information on diagramming sentences.
But I keep getting stuck on complex sentences that don't fit the easy "subject -> predicate" mold.
Here's an example, pulled from a random fiction book on my shelf:
"The sound of a helicopter winding up on the cliff cut through the night"
The subject is "sound" modified by "The". The verb is "cut". "The sound cut". That's right (as far as I can tell).
What I'm having trouble with is the sentence complement "Of a helicopter winding up on the cliff"
Because "winding" is being used as a verb here. And I don't know what to do with extra verbs outside of the main predicate.
Can anyone help me determine what it is I'm looking for? I don't know how to start searching for a question like this.
Here's what I have so far:
I don't know where or how to place "winding up" or "on the cliff"
"On the cliff" is a prepositional phrase that modifies "helicopter" so it can probably go there. But "Winding up" is a verb phrase
EDIT: I know that "on the cliff" is a prepositional phrase. What I don't know is how to deal with a verb that is not a part of the predicate
EDIT 2: I know "to wind" is a verb, but "winding" in its -ing form could be a gerund or an adjective. But it's not. "Winding up" is a verb phrase. (as far as I can tell)