#about trees

THERE ARE BUDS ON THE TREES

I KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS :DDDD

LEAVES!! SOON! GREEN LEAVES! OH HOW I’VE MISSED THEE!!

OH THE WINTER FREEZED YOU, DELICATE LEAVES, BUT YOU SHALL BE PERUSED BEST AFTERWARDS, TOMB-LEAVES, BODY-LEAVES, GROWING UP ABOVE ME, ABOVE DEATH (/ref)

A syntax tree is a way of representing the constituent structure of a sentence (i.e. how it can be broken up into parts) as a graph. It's one of the most common representations used in contemporary syntactic theory.

As for how you construct it, there are various both general and language specific rules but the simplest explanation would be that you "split" the tree each time you reach a unit of syntax that could be replaced by a simpler atom.

For example:

The sentence "I knew that guy" can be split into a subject "I" and verb phrase "knew that guy", which you could replace with a simple verb (e.g. "I ran"), so you split these two parts into an NP and a VP (under an IP for complicated theoretical reasons).

"knew that guy" can be broken up into a verb "knew" and an object "that guy", which you could replace with a simpler noun phrase (e.g. "I knew him"), so you split these two parts into a V and an NP.

"that guy" can be split into a determiner "that" and a head noun "guy", both of which are substitutable ("the guy", "that dog"), so you split these two parts into a D and an N.

Add some extra details that are required for theoretical reasons that I can't easily go into here, and boom!

[ID: Syntax tree for the sentence "I knew that guy".]

Of course, nothing's ever quite that simple.

For one, substitution isn't really the only test that goes into making the divisions on the tree. For example, there's active debate among different syntacticians over whether you should split ditransitive verb phrases like "give me a cake" into [[give] [me] [a cake]] or into [[give me] [a cake]]. The substitution test I gave above would suggest the latter, but I personally believe the former is better suited to account for the data in object symmetric languages like the Kordofanian language Moro. So I would represent the verb phrase "give me a cake" with a trinary branching tree like below, but other syntacticians would hate this.

I've been using ao3-tag-blocker for a while now and liked it, but I recently learned about AO3 Savior as well and thought it was interesting how they work differently from each other, for different purposes.

ao3-tag-blocker works within ao3's own tag-tree system. I love trees, they're so nice, and the tag wranglers do good work maintaining those trees! This allows ao3-tag-blocker to block all synonyms of a tag I've blocked, including subtags and stuff, which is great! However there are 2 slight limitations. (1) The urls of seach pages include my blocked tags as excluded, so I still have to see them if I look at the urls. Even if I'm searching for something for which results wouldn't include any of my blocked tags anyway. (2) The blocking is "a nuclear option", so if there's a fic that includes one of my blocked tags, I won't even know of its existence or have the option to unhide it to see it anyway.

AO3 Savior on the other hand, only blocks the version of the tag you tell it to block. It doesn't work within ao3's tag-tree system, so if you block, let's say, "alpha/beta/omega dynamics", tag synonyms of that such as "a/b/o dinamics" will not be blocked by AO3 Savior, and sub-tags like "Alpha Castiel/Omega Dean Winchester" will also not be blocked by it. Also, in the ao3-savior-config I think it only works if I put the tag in lowercase? The fact that it doesn't work with ao3's tag-tree system is a big downside compared to ao3-tag-blocker. However it does have an upside for certain tags: there are some tags that I want to see less of but don't want to nuke completely. I like being able to know that there's something there that's filtered, and having the option to unhide it if I feel like.

AO3 Savior does have wildcards so I think you could use "*a*/b*/o*" to block both "alpha/beta/omega dynamics" and "a/b/o dinamics", but even that wouldn't block other tag synonyms like "α/β/ω". Also, I think AO3 Savior's tag blocking only really works when your ao3 preferences don't have "Hide additional tags" checked? Otherwise the blocker doesn't notice fics that have blocked "additional tags".