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Syntax Notes-1-Constituents

This document discusses syntax and sentence structure. [1] Syntax is defined as the study of sentence structure, and sentences have a hierarchy of units ranging from the full sentence down to individual words. [2] Strings of words that function as a group within a sentence are called constituents. Native speakers intuitively group words into constituents. Various tests can identify constituents, including substitution, sense/fragment, movement, and coordination. Constituents are the building blocks that combine to form sentences.

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343 views

Syntax Notes-1-Constituents

This document discusses syntax and sentence structure. [1] Syntax is defined as the study of sentence structure, and sentences have a hierarchy of units ranging from the full sentence down to individual words. [2] Strings of words that function as a group within a sentence are called constituents. Native speakers intuitively group words into constituents. Various tests can identify constituents, including substitution, sense/fragment, movement, and coordination. Constituents are the building blocks that combine to form sentences.

Uploaded by

Mainul Alam
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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ENG 312

Kersti Börjars & Kate Burridge (2010). Introducing English Grammar (2nd ed.)

Syntax Notes - 1

The structure of sentences and phrases.

a) determining what the structure of a sentence is; and (b) describing the elements
which make up the structure.

The structure of words. Morphology

Syntax can be defined as the study of the structure of sentences.

There is a definite hierarchy of structural units in a sentence, ranging from the largest
unit (which is the sentence) down to the level of the word. Strings of words that can
function as a group in a sentence. These are called constituents.

How do we know sentences have structure?


Sentences have how structure do we know

- What we actually hear is a constant stream of sound;


- For us the question is now whether these strings of words are indeed just that – a
list of words without any internal structure – or whether we can find reasons to
assume that words form groups within sentences.

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- It is, in fact, quite clear that native speakers feel that in English, a sentence is not
just a plain sequence of words. Native speakers can divide sentences into
groups of words which seem to belong together more closely than others.

- consider the sentence below –

[The [weight-loss program] [was unleashed upon] [19-stone Timothy Toast] [at] [an
exclusive Miami health spa].

We share the intuition that weight-loss somehow modifies program and together these
words form a natural unit in this sentence – weight-loss program. Similarly, 19-stone
Timothy Toast forms a single unit, as does an exclusive Miami health spa. These
groups of words which ‘go together’ are called constituents. In other words, we can
say that the weight-loss program, 19-stone Timothy Toast and an exclusive Miami
health spa are constituents in this sentence.

Constituents, then, are strings of words which function as a group at some level; they
work like linguistic building blocks that combine to make larger and larger constituents.

As speakers of a language we intuitively know that some words in a sentence are linked
more closely than others. The arguments we use to translate these intuitions into more
formal criteria are known as constituency tests.

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Constituency tests can be useful to show up sentences that on account of their syntax
have multiple meanings, i.e. that show structural ambiguity. For example, a sentence
like the following, which is based on the description of food rejection therapy, is actually
ambiguous in two ways because there are two different ways of grouping the italic
words together to form a single phrase.

[The seven days of extensive food-rejection therapy] included [the staff beating
the patients with barbecue chicken legs.]

As is often the case with ambiguity, there is one interpretation that’s more natural,
because of what we know about the world. In this case, it’s where the phrase with
barbecue chicken legs has an instrumental function and is what the staff use to beat the
patients with. The second, probably less natural, interpretation is where the phrase with
barbecue chicken legs modifies the noun patients; in other words, the only patients who
were beaten were those with chicken legs. We can use brackets to show the two
different ways the words can be grouped:

… the staff [[beating the patients] with barbecue chicken legs]


… the staff [beating [the patients with barbecue chicken legs]]

In both cases, the staff beating the patients with barbecue chicken legs forms a
constituent of the sentence, but they differ in the structural position of with barbecue
chicken legs; in one case it modifies beating the patients and in another it modifies only
patients.

We will use constituency tests, rather than just intuition, to decide whether a particular
string is a constituent or not. A constituent is by definition a string of words which
functions as a group at some level. All the constituency tests are therefore designed to

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check whether the string in question can function as a unit. We will start by using four
tests:

The most important constituency tests are -


1. substitution,
2. unit of sense/sentence fragment,
3. movement and
4. co-ordination.

[The seven days of extensive food-rejection therapy] included [the staff beating
the patients with barbecue chicken legs.]
e.g. Substitution test - [treatment]. (or any other word, or pronouns, determiners,
e.g. it, he, she, they, them, this, that etc., or with an echo question, e.g. who,
what, when, which, where etc.)

e.g. Movement test (fronting) - [the staff beating the patients with barbecue
chicken legs] were included in the seven days of extensive food-rejection
therapy.

1. Substitution – when we can substitute the constituent with a single word.


2. Sentence fragment – when we can ask a wh- question and the answer
would be a short sentence fragment, the constituent.
3. Movement – when we can move the entire constituent to another position
in the sentence. Moving to the front position is called “fronting”.
4. Co-ordination – when we can conjoin another constituent (can be of the
same category) after the constituent we are testing with a linking word
such as and, but, and or.

Some test may work better than other tests.

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A single word is the smallest possible constituent belonging to a particular syntactic
category – the sentence or phrase. So if a single word can substitute for a string of
several words, as the substitution test shows, then that's evidence that the single
word and the string are both constituents of the same category.

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