Creating digital syntax trees
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Does anyone know of any learner-friendly syntax tree builders? I'm taking Syntax this semester, and due to Covid we're having our practicals digitally, which means we've been asked to have our trees ready for screen-sharing. As the only thing that sounds worse to me and multiple of my classmates than drawing them in MS Paint is having to figure out the bracket-structure for http://mshang.ca/syntree/, I really hope any one of you has a better tip.
Hi all,
As someone that's both into linguistics and computer science, I've always been bugged by the lack of a good online tool to build syntax trees easily & intuitively. So I built one.
It's called TreeBuilder, it's 100% free, and you can find it on a temporary link here : https://nifty-morse-4f2438.netlify.app/
This project is both a university and a personal project to me, and even though it is still a work in progress, I plan on keep making it better and better.
I really think this could save linguists a lot of time, and every bit of feedback from you all is very precious to me! And finally, if you'd like to help me out, you can fill a short google-form about your experience with TreeBuilder : https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfNITag9-k6s-XWlEhvbK3qsMD84_aC49c_EpA9ZXn4eZAV2A/viewform?usp=sf_link
This is almost certainly done with LaTeX, or one of its friends, and the tikz-qtree package. It is an improvement of the qtree package with nicer node placement. If you are not familiar with LaTeX, and want to learn more, this Wikibook might help (link is to the page about linguistics, but the book is in general about LaTeX). Both tikz-qtree and qtree have a quite extensive manual.
Below is LaTeX code using the tikz-qtree package to draw your tree. The only difference with the original seems to be that the bar over the T and the v is less bold. Perhaps this was done with something like this, but I cannot get it to look exactly the same.
\documentclass[margin=5mm]{standalone}
\usepackage{tikz-qtree}
\begin{document}
\Tree [.TP
[.NP Jane$_i$ ]
[.\=T
[.T did T(past) ]
[.NegP
[.Neg not ]
[.vP
[.NP t$_i$ ]
[.\=v v [.VP \edge[roof]; {go to school} ] ]
]
]
]
]
\end{document}

An older version of this answer just used the qtree package (instead of tikz-qtree) and draws something that looks like your tree. The only trick we need is to use array and \setlength{\extrarowheight}{2pt}, because otherwise the bar over the T is touched by the edge. The differences with the original:
- The overbar is less bold;
- in the original, nodes on one level are on the same height (e.g. Janei and T and NegP);
- qtree does not consider text height to draw edges, so there is a lot of space from the edge to the text of the v node at the very bottom (because it has no capital); in the original this looks better.
\documentclass[margin=5mm]{standalone}
\usepackage{qtree}
\usepackage{array}
\setlength{\extrarowheight}{2pt}
\begin{document}
\Tree [.TP
[.NP Jane_i ]
[.\=T
[.T did T(past) ]
[.NegP
[.Neg not ]
[.vP
[.NP t_i ]
[.\=v v \qroof{go to school}.VP ]
]
]
]
]
\end{document}

If you want a VISUAL editor for Syntactic Trees, I think TreeForm could be a solution for you. The software is a specific solution for drawing Trees in a WYSIWYG approach. It has "templates" for X-Bar 3 levels (XP-X'-X), adding adjuncts/complements, etc, all with one click and some typing (actually, not literally a click, you drag and drop models/phrases and add them to the tree).
The software has several possible improvements and limitations, but it works. I have actually found this thread while looking for a better solution, but meanwhile it's the best thing I know about (considering my preference for a visual editor).