Parsing (Syntax)

Start with a sentence and figure out how it could have been generated by the rules.

Start with a sentence "Sally thought the dog chased the furry cat".
S
├─ NP
│  └─ PropN: Sally
└─ VP
   ├─ SV: thought
   └─ S
      ├─ NP
      │  ├─ Det: the
      │  └─ N: dog
      └─ VP
         ├─ TV: chased
         └─ NP
            ├─ Det: the
            └─ N
               ├─ Adj: furry
               └─ N: cat

Process of Parsing a Sentence

Label the categories for all the individual words.
Find a sequence of categories that matches the right-hand side of a rule.
Draw a tree with the left-hand side of the rule on top.
Repeat until you have a single tree that covers all the words in the sentence.