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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:

Diagram of the sentence

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)

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    I don't know what you mean by "winding" is being used as a verb here. "To wind" is a verb, and "winding" is its present participle form; in this sentence, it modifies "helicopter". If you're having trouble identifying parts of speech, syntactic relationships, and other properties of sentence elements, then you may get better traction at ELL.
    – MarcInManhattan
    Nov 14, 2022 at 1:47
  • In any event, the parse is this: The sound of a helicopter //[that was] winding up on the cliff //cut through the night" The sound of a child /[who was] /crying in the night/ /came through the fog.
    – Lambie
    Nov 14, 2022 at 2:14
  • I'll add that "of a helicopter winding up on the cliff" is a prepositional phrase, so you should probably search for that in your sentence diagramming resources to learn more about how to handle those. (and "on the cliff" is a prepositional phrase within the prepositional phrase... fun!)
    – saritonin
    Nov 14, 2022 at 8:10

2 Answers 2

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Here's a slightly simplified tree diagram of the sentence.

enter image description here

Det:determiner / D: determinative / N: noun / PP:preposition phrase

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  • What is this style of diagram called?
    – jordynfinity
    Nov 15, 2022 at 22:08
  • @jordynfinity It's a standard tree diagram. Its main advantage is that it clearly shows the word class (POS) and function of every constituent and how those constituents combine to form a sentence.
    – BillJ
    Nov 16, 2022 at 15:37
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Courtesy of the CMU link parser, here is the constituent tree it parsed from your sentence using standard tags:

(S (NP (NP The sound)
       (PP of
           (NP (NP a helicopter)
               (VP winding
                   (PRT up)
                   (PP on
                       (NP the cliff))))))
   (VP cut
       (PRT through)
       (NP the night))
   .)

I presume that explains the syntax of your sentence.

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  • What does PRT stand for? Preposition?
    – HippoSawrUs
    Nov 14, 2022 at 3:07
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    @HippoSawrUs No, particle.
    – tchrist ♦
    Nov 14, 2022 at 3:35
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    @HippoSawrUs the PP is the prepositional phrase. The full list of constituent parts is described here: link.cs.cmu.edu/link/ph-explanation.html
    – saritonin
    Nov 14, 2022 at 8:08
  • Thanks for the links. IDK what a particle is; seems like a catch-all.
    – HippoSawrUs
    Nov 14, 2022 at 11:22

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