These 30 cards will help you learn the symbols used in the phrase-structure rules. Although you will have the chart on tests, you will use the symbols frequently, and you will need to know most of them without having to look them up.
| S | sentence |
| → | can be expanded into or may be rewritten as |
| NP | noun phrase |
| N | noun |
| AUX | auxiliary |
| VP | verb phrase |
| DET | determiner |
| Q | quantifier |
| ADJP | adjective phrase |
| ADVP | adverb phrase |
| PP | prepositional phrase |
| ADJ | adjective |
| INT | intensifier |
| ADV | adverb |
| P | preposition |
| V | verb |
| Vi | intransitive verb |
| Vt | transitive verb |
| Vl | linking verb |
| NP1 | noun phrase referring to referent #1 |
| NP2 | noun phrase referring to a second referent (within the sentence) |
| NP3 | noun phrase referring to a third referent (within the sentence) |
| M | modal auxiliary |
| have | a form of have (have, has, had) |
| be | a form of be (am, is, are, was, were, been, being, be) |
| -en | past participle morpheme |
| -ing | present participle morpheme |
| ( ) | optional item |
| { } | alternative choices (Choose one line.) |
| . . . . | List is necessarily incomplete. |
| F | finite verb phrase marker (Roughly, tense) |