Syntax made easy: how to read (and draw) syntactic trees

Abstract

This is a very short guide to reading and interpreting syntactic trees. It is meant for those who wish to approach generative syntax papers but do not dare to because they are scared by the obscure formalism. The notes are in no way comprehensive, and they are oversimplified. They are for those who would like to know more or less how to interpret a tree, what's the intuition behind it, what the difference is between v and V, what the difference between a head and a phrase is, and what these funny trees with Vs and Ts and Cs are. What do we mean by movement? What are these phi features then? And what do we mean by left periphery? - In other words for people who have heard our jargon but don't really know what we're talking about.