Constituents

Constituent structure

In a sentence, words are not simply put in a line--there is more structure. A constituent is a group of words that form a structural unit.

There are empirical tests to identify constituents:

Cleft sentences:
A group of words, X, is a constituent in a sentence A X B if X can be clefted, i.e. if the following is a well-formed sentence:

it is/was X that A B.
Example: John read the book on chemistry.

It was [the book on chemistry] that John read.
*It was [book on chemistry] that John read the.

Question:
A group of words, X, is a constituent in a sentence A X B if X can be the stand-alone answer to a question what/who/where/how/... (did) A B?
Example: John read the book on chemistry.
- What did John read? [The book on chemistry]
- *What did John read the? [Book on chemistry]
Substitution by a pronoun:
A group of words, X, is a constituent in a sentence A X B if X can be substituted by a pronoun (such as she, him, there, one, so)
Example: John read the book on chemistry.
- John read it. (it = [the book on chemistry])
- *John read it chemistry (it = [the book on])
Pronominalization:
A group of words, X, is a constituent in a sentence A X B if the sentence can be followed by another sentence S2 such that S2 contains a pronoun that refers back to X.
Note: In the case of the substitution test, we replace a constituent by a pronoun in the given sentence. In the pronominalization test, the pronoun is used to refer to the constituent in a second sentence.
- John read a book on chemistry. He found it very interesting. (it refers to a book on chemistry)
Movement (topicalization):
A group of words, X, is a constituent in a sentence A X B if it can be fronted, i.e. if X A B is a well-formed sentence.
Example: John read the book on chemistry.
- [The book on chemistry] John read.
- *[Book on chemistry] John read the.
Coordination

The results of these tests form the basis for a syntactic analysis.

For example: Pat read a novel yesterday

Constituent bracketing:
[Pat [ [read [a novel] ] yesterday] ]
Constituent structure

             -------
            /       \
           /       --------
          /       /        \
         /      ---         \
        /      /   \         \
       /      /    ---        \
      /      /    /   \        \
    [Pat [[read [a novel]] yesterday]]

Related exercises:

Phrasal syntactic categories

Once the constituent bracketing has been identified, all nodes should be classified, i.e. assigned syntactic category labels. Such as

Related exercises:

Categories: Glossary

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General Linguistics

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Constituents

Constituent structure

Phrasal syntactic categories

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