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UNIT 3 - Constituent Structure
UNIT 3 - Constituent Structure
CONSTITUENT STRUCTURE
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ENGLISH GRAMMAR STUDENTS
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3.1. The Concept of Structure
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STRUCTURE
EVIDENCE:
(i) Structural ambiguity:
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STRUCTURE
(ii) We need the concept of structure to account for
sentence formation & to state grammatical rules
(e.g. question formation in English).
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STRUCTURE
Our hypothesis that sentences are structured seems
correct, but how can we represent it?
Linear order
Categorization of words into parts of speech
Constituent structure
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3.2. Constituency and constituent
structure tests
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CONSTITUENCY
Constituency: property of a word or an intuitively
natural grouping of words that behaves as a unit with
respect to some grammatical rules.
(2) The famous scientist will receive a surprise at the new lab
before the ceremony.
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3.2.1. The motivation for
constituent structure
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MOTIVATION
Without the assumption that sentences have
constituent structures, it is impossible to specify
what is and what is not possible in a L.
(4)
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MOTIVATION
(5) S → D N V A P D N
(8) The boy was angry that the girl had come to the
party.
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MOTIVATION
There are sequences of words which can appear in
different places:
(9) It was the girl that the boy was angry about.
(10) It was about the girl that the boy was angry.
(11) It was the boy that was angry about the girl.
(12) *It was angry about that the boy was the girl.
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3.2.2. The investigation of
constituent structure
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CONSTITUENT STRUCTURE
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CONSTITUENT STRUCTURE
A sequence of words is a constituent if it can appear
in some other position in a related sentence.
BEWARE!!
(13) It was the girl that the boy was angry about.
(14) The girl that you saw is my sister.
(15) I find the girl that said that really attractive.
(16) I told the girl that she should return at a better time.
(17) I was so mad at the girl that I asked her to leave.
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CONSTITUENT STRUCTURE
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Constituency Tests
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CONSTITUENCY TESTS
Grammatical operations can function as
CONSTITUENCY TESTS:
RULES:
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CONSTITUENCY TESTS
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CONSTITUENCY TESTS
Passive formation rule: “Move the sequence in the
object position to the subject position and use the
corresponding passive morphology on the verb”.
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CONSTITUENCY TESTS
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CONSTITUENCY TESTS
FOCALIZATION: Only single constituents can
appear in the FOCUS position:
Cleft sentences:
(23) a. Those people will move the desk into the hall.
b. It is THE DESK that those people will move into the
hall.
c. It is INTO THE HALL that those people will move the
desk.
d. *It is THE DESK INTO THE HALL that those people will
move.
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CONSTITUENCY TESTS
Pseudo-cleft sentences:
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EXERCISE
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CONSTITUENCY TESTS
TOPICALIZATION: Only single constituents can
appear in the Topic position:
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CONSTITUENCY TESTS
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CONSTITUENCY TESTS
THOUGH FRONTING: Only single constituents
can be fronted:
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CONSTITUENCY TESTS
COORDINATION: only constituents (and of the
same type) can be coordinated:
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EXERCISE
What does the COORDINATION TEST show in
sentence (ii) about sentence (i)?
(i) The criminal killed the bank manager with the gun.
(ii) The criminal killed the bank manager with the gun
and the security guard.
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CONSTITUENCY TESTS
PRONOMINALIZATION/PROFORM
SUBSTITUTION: only sequences that are unitary
constituents can be pronominalized or replaced by a
proform:
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CONSTITUENCY TESTS
(38) a. That student of linguistics that asked you a question
came after you left.
b. That one came after you left.
c. That student of that came after you left.
d. That student of linguistics that asked you a question
came then.
e. That student of linguistics that asked you a question did
so.
f. That student of linguistics that did so came after you
left.
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CONSTITUENCY TESTS
SENTENCE FRAGMENTS: only sequences that
are constituents can serve as sentence fragments
(stay alone answers):
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CONSTITUENCY TESTS
DELETION/ELLIPIS: only sequences that are
unitary constituents can be deleted:
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CONSTITUENCY TESTS
Sometimes we apply a test and find that the sentence we
end up with is ungrammatical. For example, we might
want to find out if very happy with is a phrase in (i):
(i) John seems very happy with his new bathroom.
If we apply the movement test, we get:
(ii) *Very happy with John seems his new bathroom.
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PRACTICE
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CONSTITUENCY TESTS
We have seen that sequences of words can be
manipulated by replacing them or moving them; we call
these sequences ‘phrases’. The replacement and
movement tests discover the phrase structure of a
sentence, otherwise hidden from immediate view. We
have seen that different ways of grouping words into
phrases correspond to sentences with different meanings.
So this suggests that one of the characteristics of a
sentence which makes it have a particular meaning is the
way in which its words are grouped into phrases: that is,
the phrase structure contributes to the meaning
of the sentence. So we can see why phrases are an
essential component of a sentence: they have a role in
enabling a sentence to have a particular meaning.
(Fabb, 1984, p. 5).
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CONSTITUENCY TESTS
Sometimes it’s not possible to apply the tests we have
seen in this section on certain sequences to provide
evidence of their constituency or lack thereof. However,
we still feel some sequences have different constituent
structures from similarly looking sequences:
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More on grammatical operations
used as constituency tests
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CONSTITUENCY TESTS
TOPICALIZATION: only word strings that are
unitary constituents can be fronted.
(46) John said that the new Chevrolet was cozy and very cozy it
was ___________.
(47) Give in to blackmail, I never will ______________.
(48) *Will give in to blackmail, I never ______________.
(49) They said that John would publish a new book this year and
publish a new book he did _______.
(50) *They said that John would publish a new book this year and
published a new book he _______.
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CONSTITUENCY TESTS
ELLIPSIS: only sequences which are unitary
constituents can be omitted.
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CONSTITUENCY TESTS
Typically, in English, only VPs can undergo ellipsis:
(53) a. Mary won’t put soda water into scotch, but her
brother will put soda water into scotch.
b. *Mary won’t put soda water into scotch, but her
brother will put soda water into _______.
c. *Mary won’t put soda water into scotch, but her
brother will put soda water ___.
d. *Mary won’t put soda water into scotch, but her
brother will put ____________.
e. Mary won’t put soda water into scotch, but her
brother will_______________.
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CONSTITUENCY TESTS
ORDINARY COORDINATION: only sequences
which are constituents and constituents of the same type
can be coordinated:
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CONSTITUENCY TESTS
SHARED CONSTITUENT COORDINATION: the
sequence that is being shared by both conjuncts must be
a unitary constituent.
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CONSTITUENCY TESTS
Two features of Shared Constituent Coordination:
Non-shared parts are intonationally marked.
Shared constituent appears to the right of the non-shared
material.
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CONSTITUENCY TESTS
WH-QUESTIONING: only sequences which are
constituents can be questioned about by a Wh-Phrase.
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PRACTICE
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3.2.3. The representation of
constituent structure
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REPRESENTATION
Linear order
Categorization of words into parts of speech
Constituent structure
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REPRESENTATION
(4)
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REPRESENTATION
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REPRESENTATION
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REPRESENTATION
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REPRESENTATION
(3) The boy was angry about the girl.
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REPRESENTATION
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REPRESENTATION
A tree-structure representation is a hypothesis.
Constituency Tests.
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REPRESENTATION
Basic terminology of tree representation:
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REPRESENTATION
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REPRESENTATION
Restrictions on the representation of constituent
structure:
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EXERCISE
Draw tree-structure representations for the following
sentences:
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3.3. Discontinuous dependencies
or discontinuous constituents
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DISCONTINUOUS CONSTITUENTS
The movement of certain parts of the sentence
to the left or to the right may bring about
discontinuous constituents:
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DISCONTINUOUS CONSTITUENTS
Extraposition: given an NP containing a head N
directly followed by a modifying clause, the modifying
clause may be shifted out of the NP to the end of the
sentence:
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PRACTICE
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3.4. Sentence structure and
Anaphora: C-COMMAND
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ANAPHORA
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C-COMMAND
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C-COMMAND
A
B C
D E
C c-commands B
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ANAPHORS
C-command condition on anaphors: An anaphor
must have an appropriate c-commanding antecedent:
(93)
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ANAPHORS
(95)
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ANAPHORS
The c-command condition on anaphors makes correct
predictions about whether a given appropriate NP in a given
structural position can or cannot serve as the antecedent of a
given anaphor.
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PRACTICE
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REFERENCES
ACKMAJIAN, A., DEMERS, R. A., FARMER, A. K., & HARNISH,
R. M. (1993). Linguistics. An Introduction to Language and
Communication. MIT Press. (pp. 123-191).
ACKMAJIAN, A., & HENY, F. (1976). An Introduction to the
Principles of Transformational Syntax. MIT Press.
BORSLEY, R. (1999). Syntactic Theory. Arnold. (pp. 15-37).
COWPER, E. A. (1992). A Concise Introduction to Syntactic
Theory: The Government-Binding Approach. The
University of Chicago Press. Selected chapters.
FABB, N. (1984). Sentence structure. Routledge.
HAEGEMAN, L. (1994). Introduction to Government and
Binding Theory. Blackwell.
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