Constituency Analysis

Syntactic Constituency
Although language seems to be spoken linearly, since the only way we can do language is by
having one word follow another, sentences and phrases are actually formed by attaching
constituents to each other in a hierarchical construct.
A constituent is a word or group of words that form a unit built around a head. They can be
made up of words, phrases, and even entire clauses.
English syntax is based on this ability of structures to function within larger structures, which
are, in turn, serving other functions in still larger, more complex structures (sentences).
Composing a more complex sentence such as The pretty girl put on her red and blue coat kissed
her mother and left, demonstrates the nature of the relationship that must be negotiated if a
hearer or a reader is to understand such a sentence. Anyone capable of understanding the
meaning of the sentence has the mental capacity to keep all those relationships afloat as he hears
or reads the sentence.
Immediate constituent analysis
Immediate constituent analysis, also called Ic Analysis, in linguistics, a system of grammatical

analysis that divides sentences into successive layers, or constituents, until, in the final layer,
each constituent consists of only a word or meaningful part of a word. (A constituent is any word
or construction that enters into some larger construction.) In the sentence “The old man ran
away,” the first division into immediate constituents would be between “the old man” and “ran
away.” The immediate constituents of “the old man” are “the” and “old man.” At the next level
“old man” is divided into “old” and “man.
The goal of ICA is to identify and describe words that are closely related (Immediate
constituents). A two-way or binary system is used in dividing up a sentence into decreasing parts
called constituents. In syntax, the biggest constituent is therefore the sentence while the smallest
is the word. In morphology, the smallest is the morpheme, whether bound or free. To illustrate,
we will make a binary analysis of the sentence ‘The small boys opened the door’ and indicate
how some of the constituents are related to each other.
1. The small boys / opened the door
{NP-subject} {VP-predicate}
2. The / small boys
{det} {noun phrase}
3. Small / boys
{adj} {noun}
4. opened / the door
{verb} {noun phrase}
5. the / door
{det} {noun}
Morphologically, the word ‘boys’ is divided into ‘boy’ and ‘-s’ and ‘opened’ into ‘open’ and ‘-
ed’.
Concerning the relationship between constituents, those that need each other (and are therefore
both obligatory) are said to be in mutual dependency (also called binary dependency). This kind
of relationship exists between a subject and a predicate (i above), a determiner and a singular
noun (viii above), and a transitive verb and its object (v above). If one of the constituents is
obligatory and the other optional, they have a relationship of unilateral dependency. For
example, in (ii) and (iii) above, the first constituent can be left out but not the second one. If two
constituents cannot co-occur, they are said to be in mutual exclusion. This would be the
relationship between the subject and a pronoun if one were to be introduced as in * The small
boys they…
There are several criteria used in determining what forms a constituent. First is substitutability.
For example, the noun phrase ‘ the small boys’ can be replaced by the pronoun ‘they’. Second is
coordination. This means that we can join one unit to another similar one as in ‘the small boys
and the big girls’ or ‘opened and closed’. Third is movement. This means that we can move a
unit from one position of the sentence to another as in ‘The door was opened by the small boys’-
initially the phrase appeared after the verb.
IC analysis helps to graphically display the layers or units in a sentence and how the units are
hierarchically organised to form the sentence. It discovers the layers of relationship in a
construction such as NP, VP, PP, ADJ P, and ADV P

Constituency Analysis

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Syntactic Constituency

Immediate constituent analysis

Immediate constituent analysis, also called Ic Analysis, in linguistics, a system of grammatical

1. The small boys / opened the door

2. The / small boys

{det} {noun phrase}

{verb} {noun phrase}

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