我们的作业Immediate Constituent Analysis

B : The girl
1. What is “constituent”?
Constituent is a term used in structure sentence analysis for every linguistic unite, which is a part of a large linguistic. Several constituents together form a construction.
• In this sense, we can take all the Grammatical Units in our text book into several syntactic categories like the following list: • Word level Phrasal • N=noun NP=noun phrase • A=adjective AP=adjective phrase • V=verb VP=verb phrase • P=preposition PP=preposition phrase • Det=determiner S=sentence or clause • Adv=adverb • Conj=conjuction
6，Features of IC Analysis
Q1: What is the advantage of IC Analysis? Q2: What is the disadvantage of IC Analysis?
• Ex. The man sees a dog on the hill. Q: what is the meaning of the sentence? And draw the tree diagram. The ambiguity exists in the sentence. (a) The man sees a dog. And a dog is on the hill. (b) The man is on the hill. And the man sees a dog.
Example 1
My litter sister bought an old bike last week. NP/Sb My little sister Det/M NP/H My little sister A/M N/H little sister VP/P bought an old bike last week VP/H bought an old bike V/V bought NP/M last week
Disadvantages
1. Some advocators insisted on binary divisions. Any construction, at any level, will be cut into two parts. But this is not always possible. 2. The main problem is that there are structural ambiguities which cannot be revealed by IC analysis. e.g. the love of God. In terms of both the tree diagram and the brackets, there is only one structure: • the love of God • Det. N Prep N • • But the word God is in two different relations with love: it may be the subject of love, meaning “the love given by God”; or the object of love, meaning “the love for God”.
• Immediate constituents are immediately, directly, below the level of a construction. • E.g. Poor John ran away.
3，Definition of immediate constituent (IC) Analysis
2，Immediate Constituents
• Conventionally for a Chinese to konw a snetence: • The+ girl+ bought+ four+ books.( Words formed equivalently into a sentence in a line. ) • But for Immediate Constituents Analysis, a sentence have a hierarchically(分层次的）structure, and that means it 's made up of layers of word group: The girl bought four books. (mother) The girl The bought four books. （daughter） girl bought the apple. （daughter） four books. （daughter）
(1)It refers to the analysis of a sentence in terms of its immediate constituents—phrases, which are in turn analyze into the immediate constituents of their own, and the process goes on until the ultimate constituents are reached. (2) The approach to divide the sentence up into its immediate constituents by using binary cutting until ultimate constituents is called IC analysis. It reveals the hierarchical relations, as well as sequential relations, among words or groups of words in a sentence.
4，Ways to IC analyze
• For Example, there are two ways to IC analyze the sentence Lovely Lucy ran away. • (1) With brackets:(less easy to read) • ((Lovely) (Lucy)) ((ran) (away)). • (2) With a tree diagram:(the best way) • Lovely Lucy ran away.
Immediate Constቤተ መጻሕፍቲ ባይዱtuent Analysis（IC）
1, Q1:What is “constituent”? Q2. What is “node”? 2. The girl bought four books. ( Words formed equivalently into a sentence in a line. ) A :(sentence) C: bought four books.
• NP Det N V
S VP NP Det N Prep Det PP NP N
The
man sees
a
dog on
the
hill
Advantage
IC analysis emphasizes the hierarchical structure（分层结构） of a sentence, （分层结构） seeing it as consisting of word groups fast. In this way, the internal structure of a sentence is shown more clearly.
• So , for the first meaning, the tree diagram looks like: S VP NP Det N V NP NP PP Det N Prep
NP Det N the hill
The
man
sees a
dog on
for the second meaning, the tree diagram looks like:
NP/C A/M N/H an old bike last week Det/M NP/H an old bike A/M N/H old bike
Example 2
S NP VP NP Det N VP V NP Det 这个；那个 N 老师；学生；医生；护士 V 打；骂 这个学生打那个老师。这个学生骂那个老师。 那个老师打这个学生。那个老师骂这个学生。 那个学生打这个老师。那个学生骂这个老师。 这个老师打那个学生。这个老师骂那个学生。 ……
Other example:
The man bought a car. With brackets:[[[the] [man]] [[bought] [[a] [car]]]] With a tree diagram:
5，What is the criterion（准则） used in IC analysis? ， （准则） • Substitutability, that is, whether a sequence of words can be substituted for a single word and the structure remains the same, is the criterion used in IC analysis. For example, in Lovely Lucy ran away, Lovely Lucy can be replaced by Lucy and ran away by ran without changing the structure, but Lovely Lucy ran away can not be replaced by Lucy or any other single word without changing the structure.