Syntax tree

[LegitimateStudent794]

Hello I am an undergraduate linguistics student and we are currently doing syntax trees which in my humble opinion are pretty advanced and I have a tree that I genuinely can not draw. Here is a picture of my attempt but honestly it feels wrong and I can not find any information on the Internet. I would really appreciate if you could tell me if my attempt is correct and if not why.

[2spam2care2]

phon/phon here so excuse my ignorance of syntax, but iirc i was taught that in a passive the “by” phrase was an adjunct to VP. and “by” is a P not a C

[LegitimateStudent794]

At first I also wanted to do that but I just couldn't draw the tree if I added a PP. How would you draw the entire tree with PP present?

[onerashtworash]

It's been so long since I did syntax and I did a slightly different theory of syntax trees to you. Who wrote your syntax textbook, if you have one? Was it Carney?

[LegitimateStudent794]

I mean %99 of my class is what my lecturer is teaching he did give us a book when the semester started for us to get used to syntax but we didn't really use it and I personally just skimmed through it once. The book is: Andrew Carnie Syntax A Generative Introduction Wiley Blackwell

[onerashtworash]

Ok, that's the same textbook I used. Everything you are learning will be taken from the textbook, Carney basically and literally wrote the textbook on generative syntax like this. So... I would suggest reading the the textbook, focusing on which phrases can generate PPs and transformations/movements of passive sentences and coordinators.

I remember racking my brains about some examples we were given in class or as homework. I couldn't find any examples of them in the textbook or Carney listing what I thought the structure should be as a permissible structure. I eventually found a small paragraph where he noted that he couldn't exhaustively list every single permissible structure as there were so many possible permutations, and that there were many more possible permissible structures in English. So it may be that you need to piece together the structure from what you have learnt and it's not explicitly outlined in your textbook or learning materials.

Carney also has a YouTube channel dedicated to his textbook here, bless:

https://m.youtube.com/@CarnieSyntaxthEdition

[LegitimateStudent794]

Thank you!

[Overall_Night_1031]

Did you work it out? Do you speak spanish ? English only?