Immediate constituent analysis, IC analysis for short, refers to the analysis of a sentence in terms of its immediate constituents – word groups (phrases), which are in turn analyzed into the immediate constituents of their own, and the process goes on until the ultimate sake of convenience. The IC analysis of a sentence may be carried out with brackets or shown with a tree diagram. E.g.
Poor John ran away. →
(1) ((Poor) (John)) ((ran) (away)).
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2. Its advantages
Through IC analysis, the internal structure of a sentence may be demonstrated clearly, any ambiguities, if any, will be revealed in that IC analysis emphasizes not only the linear structure of the sentence but also the hierarchical structure of the sentence. E.g. the sentence Leave the book on the shelf. is ambiguous. It has two meanings: (1) Put the book on the shelf; (2) Don’t touch the book on the shelf. These two meanings can be shown by the following tree diagrams. (Omitted. See the textbook p125~128.)
3. Its problems
However, IC analysis has three disadvantages. First, at the beginning, some advocator insisted on binary divisions. Any construction, at any level, will be cut into two parts. But this is not possible. E.g. Old men and women is ambiguous in that it may mean old + men and women or old men + and women. It’s impossible to combine with only the preceding part or only the succeeding part. Second, constructions with discontinuous constituents will pose technical problems for tree diagrams in IC analysis. E.g. the phrasal verbs like make up, turn on, or give up will cause problems in that when the object is expressed by a pronoun, it will interrupt the phrasal verb as in make it up. The most serious problem is that there are structural ambiguities which cannot be revealed by IC analysis. E.g. the tree diagram and the labels can only do one analysis for the love of God.
4.2.3 Endocentric and exocentric constructions
An endocentric construction is one whose distribution is functionally equivalent, or approaching equivalence, to one of its constituents, which serves as the center, or head, of the whole. It is also called headed construction. Typical endocentric constructions are noun phrases, verb phrases and adjective phrases. They may be further divided into two subtypes: subordinate and coordinate constructions. Those, in which there is only one head, with the head being dominant and the other constructions dependent, are subordinate constructions. In the coordinate construction, there are more than one head, e.g. boys and girls, in which the two content constituents, boys and girls, are of equal syntactic status, and no one is dependent on the other.
The exocentric construction is defined negatively as a construction whose distribution is not functionally equivalent to any of its constituents. There is no noticeable center or head in it. Typical exocentric constructions are prepositional phrases, subordinate clauses, English basic sentences, and the verb plus object constructions.
4.3 The generative approach
4.3.1 Deep and surface structures
In transformational generative grammar (a.k.a. T-G grammar), the deep structure may be defined as the abstract representation of the syntactic properties of a construction, i.e. the underlying level of structural relations between its different constituents, such as the relation between the underlying subject and its verb, or a verb and its object.
The surfaces structure is the final stage in the syntactic derivation of a construction, which closely corresponds to the structural organization of a construction people actually produce and receive.
The example for the surface structure is The newspaper was not delivered today. The deep structure of the above sentence would be something like: (negative) someone (past tense) deliver the newspaper today (passive). The items in brackets are not lexical items but grammatical concepts which shape the final form of the sentence. Rules which describe deep structure are in the first part of the grammar (base component). Rules which transform these structures into surface structures (transformational rules) are in the second part of the grammar (transformational component).
4.3.2 The standard theory and after
What is the trace theory?
[I think this is difficult. It is too abstract for me. – icywarmtea]
After the movement of an element in a sentence there will be a trace left in the original position. This is the notion trace in T-G grammar. It’s suggested that if we have the notion trace, all the necessary information for semantic interpretation may come from the surface structure. E.g. The passive Dams are built by beavers. differs from the active Beavers built dams. in implying that all dams are built by beavers. If we add a trace element represented by the letter t after built in the passive as Dams are built t by beavers, then the deep structure information that the word dams was originally the object of built is also captured by the surface structure. Trace theory proves to be not only theoretically significant but also empirically valid.
4.3.3 Government, binding, etc.
1. Constituent command / C-command: α c-commands β if α does not dominate β and every γ that dominates α also dominates β, as shown in the diagram below:
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2. Binding theory: Part of the government / binding theory. It examines connections between noun phrases in sentences and explores the way they relate and refer to each other.
(1) An anaphor is bound in its governing category.
(2) A pronominal is free in its governing category.
(3) An r-expression is free.
3. Binding: The notion binding is borrowed from logic, which refers to the relation between a quantifier and a variable, that is a variable is bound by a quantifier. In the generative approach, binding refers to the relation between different referring word and the subject of a sentence containing it.
4. Anaphor: A process where a word or phrase refers back to another word or phrase which was used earlier in a text or conversation. In a narrow sense, it used to include only reflexives like myself and reciprocals like each other.
5. Pronominal: A pronominal refers to pronouns other than reflexives and reciprocals.
6. R-expression: A r-expression, as the abbreviation of a referential-expression, covers all the other r-expressions except anaphors and pronominals, e.g. John, Bill, the man.
7. The D-structure and the S-structure
In Government / Binding theory, the D-structure is an abstract level of sentence representation where semantic roles such as an agent (the doer of an action) and patient (the entity affected by an action) are assigned to the sentence. Agent is sometimes also referred to as the logical subject and patient as the rheme of the sentence. E.g. (in simplified form)
Vera shoot intruders
Agent or logical subject patient or rheme
The next level of sentence representation is the S-structure where syntactic / grammatical cases such as nominative / grammatical subject and accusative / grammatical object are assigned. E.g. (in simplified form)
Vera (agent) shoot intruders (patient / rheme)
Grammatical subject grammatical object
The phonetic form (PF) component and the logical form (LF) component are then needed to turn the S-structure into a surface sentence. The PF component presents the S-structure as sound, and the LF component gives the syntactic meaning of the sentence.
4.4 The functional approach
4.4.1 Functional sentence perspective
1. Functional sentence perspective (FSP)
The functional sentence perspective (FSP) is a type of linguistic analysis associated with the Prague School which describes how information is distributed in sentences. FSP deals particularly with the effect of the distribution of known information and new information in discourse. The known information (known as theme), refers to information that is not new to the reader or listener. The rheme refers to information that is new. FSP differs from the traditional grammatical analysis of sentences because the distribution between subject-predicate is not always the same as theme-rheme contrast. E.g.
(1) John sat in the front seat
Subject predicate
Theme rheme
(2) In the front seat sat John.
Predicate subject
Theme rheme
John is the grammatical subject in both sentences, but theme in (1) and rheme in (2).
2. Communicative dynamism (CD)
By CD Firbas means the extent to which the sentence element contributes to the development of the communication.
4.4.2 Systemic-functional grammar
1. The material process (a process of doing): the representation of outer experience.
2. The mental process (a process of sensing): the representation of inner experience.
3. The relational process (a process of being): the relation between one experience and another.
4. The behavioral process (a process of behavioring): physiological and psychological behavior.
5. The verbal process (a process of saying): any kinds of symbolic exchange of meaning.
6. The existential process (a process of happening): a representation of something in existence or happening/
These six processes form a circle as follows: (omitted. See textbook, p.155)
End of Chapter 4
Chapter 5 Meaning
5.1 Meanings of “meaning”
1. Meaning: Meaning refers to what a language expresses about the world we live in or any possible or imaginary world.
2. Connotation: The additional meaning that a word or phrase has beyond its central meaning.
3. Denotation: That part of the meanings of a word or phrase that relates it to phenomena in the real world or in a fictional or possible word.
4. Different types of meaning (Recognized by Leech, 1974)
(1) Conceptual meaning: Logical, cognitive, or denotative content.
