LIN 737 - 3. Constituency

Topic 3

Constituency

Introduction

In this unit, you are introduced to the notion of constituency, and five constituency tests. Constituency tests are essentially tools for syntactic tree drawing. The 'take home' message of this unit is that you should never 'memorise' how to draw a tree. You should instead always rely on constituency tests to guide you in finding out what the right tree for any given phrase, clause, or sentence really is.

Constituents: A quick overview

In super basic terms, a constituent is a group of words. Every phrase, clause, and sentence is a constituent. And since a clause is basically a very large phrase, clauses are constituents too.

Take a look at the diagram below, which provides the tree structure of the sentence The minister denied the allegations:

In this diagram, every non-terminal node (S, NP, VP) represents a phrase (a grouping of words). Each of these phrases is a constituent.

By the way, representing this structure using square bracket notation, would look like this:

[S [NP The minister] [VP [V denied] [NP the allegations]].

Now, you might be wondering (in fact, I hope you are wondering):

"But why does the tree diagram look this way? Why is the verb [denied] grouped with the object NP [the allegations] and not the subject NP [the minister], like in the following diagram?" (Another way to ask this question is: "Why does the verb form a constituent with the object and not the subject?"):

That is an excellent question! In fact, we can prove that the verb forms a constituent with the object, rather than the subject using CONSTITUENCY TESTS. And that's what this unit is about. We will learn how to use six constituency tests that can be applied to groups of words to check that they form constituents before drawing the tree diagram. These tests a very important in syntax, because they ultimately tell us how we should draw our trees.

Yes, you heard me right: we don't randomly make up this whole tree drawing business! We actually rely on scientific evidence to indicate how phrases, clauses and sentences are structured!

Introducing constituency

Recap terms and concepts for referring to the parts of a tree and the relations between those parts. We also recap the notion of constituents.

Ellipsis

In this video you learn about ellipsis and how to use it as a constituency test for verb phrases. You also find some evidence for the claim that objects form a constituent with the verb phrase.

Clefting

In this video, you learn how to use clefting as a constituency test.

You also find more evidence for the claim that objects (and not subjects) form a constituent with the verb phrase.

Pronoun Substitutions

Here, you learn how to use nominal and verbal pro-forms to test for constituency.

You also learn the difference between arguments and adjuncts, and how these behave differently when verbal pro-forms are applied to the verb phrase.

WH-questioning & Fronting

In this video, you learn how to use WH-questioning (Q: What has the dog eaten? A: Your homework) and fronting (Your breakfast, the dog ate) as two further types of constituency tests.

Coordination

Here, you learn how to use coordination (Your homework and the bacon) as a constituency test. This test is also helpful for figuring our what category an unknown constituent might belong to.

Tutorial: Using constituency tests to draw tree diagrams

video1729915911.mp4

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