Understanding parse trees

Parse trees represent hierarchical relationships between elements of text. For example, a dependency tree shows the relationship between the grammatical elements of a sentence. Let's reconsider the following sentence:

The cow jumped over the moon. 

A parse tree for the preceding sentence is shown here. It was generated using the techniques that will be found in the Using the LexicalizedParser class section later in this chapter:

    (ROOT
      (S
        (NP (DT The) (NN cow))
        (VP (VBD jumped)
          (PP (IN over)
            (NP (DT the) (NN moon))))
        (. .)))
  

This sentence can be graphically depicted, as shown in the following diagram. It was generated using the application found at http://nlpviz.bpodgursky.com/. Another editor that allows you to examine text in a graphical manner is GrammarScope (http://grammarscope.sourceforge.net/). This is a Stanford supported tool that uses a Swing-based GUI to generate a parse tree, a grammatical structure...