Eng. 501_Constituent Structure I

8/4/2019 Eng. 501_Constituent Structure I

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Eng 501: Lecture 3

Constituent structure I

1. Intuitions about structure refer to judgements about how sound sequences in sentence are

structured into successively larger structural units called ‘constituents’ and judgements about how particular sets of constituents belong to the same constituents or not

2. Certain words in a construction are intuited to do with, or modifying other words:

In the sentence ‘This boy must seem incredibly stupid to the girl

‘incredibly’ is intuited to go with ‘stupid’

‘that’ is intuited to go with ‘girl’

‘this’ is intuited to go with ‘boy’

‘seems’ is intuited to go with ‘incredibly stupid to that girl’

3. Information about constituent structure can be presented diagrammatically:

●

(a)●

● ● ●

●

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

That boy must seem incredibly stupid to that girl

(b) Each point on the tree is called a node. Each node represents a constituent (syntactic unit)

(c) There are words and phrases

4. How do we know that the constituents belong to the same type?(a) Traditional Grammar makes a distinction between group and class of words: (boy/girl)

(this/that), (seem) (incredibly), (to)

(b) Just as words belong to different categories so do phrases: (this boy/that girl), (must) (seem

incredibly stupid), (to that girl).

5. We may include the categorical information on the tree diagram:

(a)

S

NP M VP

D N V AP PP

ADV A P NP

D N

This boy must seem incredibly stupid to that girl

(b) The categorial tree diagram provides a visual representation of the phrase structure of the sentence.

This type of labelled tree diagram is called a ‘Phrase Marker’ as it marks hierarchical grouping of words

into phrases and of phrases into sentences.

(c) We may just as well use a labelled bracketing:[S[ NP[D this] [ N boy]][M must][VP [V seem][AP[ADV incredibly][A stupid]][PP[P to][ NP[D that][ N girl]

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6. (a) The point is that sentences are not just random sequences of sounds, rather they have hierarchical

structure in which sounds are grouped together into words, words into phrases, and phrases into

sentences

(b) Each phrase belongs to a specific syntactic category

(c) We may say that sentences have categorial constituent structure.

(d) All sentences have categorial constituent structure, i.e. all sentences are hierarchically structured outof words and phrases, and that each of the component words and phrases in the sentence belongs to a

specific category.

7. Evidence for word level categories:

(a) Phonological

Differences in stress patterns in words distinguish them into different word classes. It

seems that phonological rules have access to categorial information.

(b) Semantic

(i) Certain types of ambiguity support the proposal that words belong to different categories

(ii) Structural ambiguity present cases in which we are compelled to read certain words as

occurring in different categories. E.g. the string ‘mistrust wounds’ may be read as (a) (VP

+ NP) or as (b) (NP + VP) (a) will correspond with ‘mistrust sores’ and (b) willcorrespond with ‘suspicion wounds’.

(c) Morphological

Certain types of inflections tend to attach only to specific categories

• Verbs have the five forms

• Adverbs have the –ly suffix

• Prepositions are invariable, taking no inflections

(d) Syntactic

Syntactic evidence is distributional, i.e. the sentence position in which a word can occur is

determined by its category.

•Only nouns can fill the ff gap: ‘- can be a pain in the neck’

• Only verbs can occur in : ‘they/it can – ‘

• Auxiliaries: ‘- be frank’

• Adjectives and Adverbs can occur after ‘very’

• Only Adverbs can occur in the gap ‘He treated her – ‘

• Only Adjectives can occur as complements of ‘be’

• Only determiners can occur in the gap ‘he wrote – other work(s)’

• Only prepositions can be preceded by ‘right’ in the sense of ‘completely’

We may therefore define word level categories as sets of words which share common sets of

linguistic (morphological and syntactic) properties.

Constituent Structure II: Phrasal level categories

1. Word level categories expand into phrasal categories with the addition of other constituents.

2. Non-syntactic evidence

(a) Morphological

While morphology is actually a property of words rather than of phrases, there is one

inflection in English which is indeed a phrasal inflection – the genitive (-‘s) inflection.

E.g. ‘this crown is the king’s’ Is the inflection here the property of the word or of the

phrase? In a noun phrase in which the head noun is premodified the genitive ‘s must

attach to the whole phrase. This may be affirmed by the evidence provided bysequences such as, ‘this crown is king of England’s’, which is permissible, and ‘this

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crown is the king’s of England’. The genitive can attach only to an NP and to no other

-phrase. The string ‘this crown is very handsome’s’ which is non-permissible.

(b) Semantic

(i) Structural ambiguity

‘Mary looked very hard’

The underlined phrase may be interpreted as AdvP, paraphraseable by ‘very intensely’,or as an AP paraphraseable as ‘very severe’.

Another type of structural ambiguity occurs when a given word/phrase can be taken as

modifying any one of two (or more) different constituents:

‘The president could not ratify the treaty’

This sentence may either be iinterpreted as

• ‘It would not be possible for the president to ratify the treaty’; or as

• It would be possible for the president not to ratify the treaty’.

The ambiguity in the sentence relates to the scope of the negative particle VP or S.

The fact that ‘not’ may lie outside or inside the VP makes the constituent VP a key

construct in our account of scope ambiguity, i.e. negative scope facts provide strong

evidence for the postulation of a VP constituent.

Again the sentence may be seen as having two cleft constructions:

‘What the president could not do was ratify the treaty’

‘What the president could do was not to ratify the treaty’.

(c) Phonological

Negative contraction as in ‘would not’ -> wouldn’t

Negative contraction is only possible where the negative modifies the modal and when

it modifies the ff VP. Therefore ‘The president couldn’t ratify the treaty’ can only be

interpreted as ‘it would not be possible for the president to ratify the treaty’

It seems therefore that the negative contraction rule applies to contract a negative which

modifies a modal, but not a negative which modifies a VP. Such an account of negative contraction presupposes that sentences have their ICs (NP M VP), and

therefore requires to posit the existence of phrasal categories.

(d) Distributional criteria

The bulk of evidence for phrasal constituent structure is syntactic in nature. These

relate to the distribution of various sequences or words.

(i) Preposing – certain parts of the sentence may be preposed for emphasis. E.g. I

can’t stand your elder sister Your elder sister I can’t stand.

Only a whole phrase, not just part of it, can be preposed

• Your elder sister I can’t stand.

• *Your elder I can’t stand sister.

• *Elder sister I can’t stand your.• *Sister I can’t stand your elder.

Non constituent elements cannot be preposed.

• Joan looked up her phone number Her phone number Joan looked up.

• *Up her phone number Joan looked

The point is that only phrasal constituents can undergo preposing

(ii) Postposing – Structures moved to the right of the construction.

‘He explained all the terrible problems that he encountered to her’ ‘He

explained to her all the terrible problems that he encountered.The structure that make a successful postposing forms a phrasal constituent. Only

phrasal constituents can undergo transposition.(iii) Sentence fragments

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(a) Consider: ‘Where did he go?’

‘Up the hill’ ;which is right, and

‘Who were you ringing up?

‘Up my elder sister’

which is not permissible.Only phrasal level constituents can be used as sentence fragments.

(iv) Adverbial expressions

Adverbial expressions group into 2 – ‘certainly’ group and ‘completely’ group

‘Certainly/*Completely the team can rely on my support’

‘The team certainly/*completely can rely on my support’

‘The team can *certainly/completely rely on my support’

‘The team can rely on my support certainly/completely.

We can account for the different distribution of ‘certainly’ and ‘completely’ in terms of

constituent structure: ‘Certainly’ as an S adverb can be attached to the modal and not to the VP.

‘Completely’ as a VP adverb must be attached to the VP between the modal and the VP or at the

end of the sentence.(e) Other distributional evidence

(i) Coordination

The question is what kind of elements can or cannot be coordinated in English.

‘Is she in the kitchen or the bathroom’

*‘John rang up his father and up his mother’

Only constituents can be conjoined; non constituent sequences cannot be conjoined.

Further only identified constituents can be conjoined idiomatically

‘John wrote to Mary and to Fred’ (PP & PP)

‘She sent a letter and a postcard’ (NP & NP)

*’John wrote a letter and to Fred’ (NP & PP)

This demonstrates that there is no way we could give an account of coordination without

presupposition that sentences are structured into sets of constituents each of which

belongs to a particular category.

(ii) Shared constituents coordination

E.g. ‘John walked and (Mary ran) up the hill’ .‘John denied (but Fred admitted) complicity in the crime.’ The italicised elements are shared by the respective two conjuncts. Thus ‘up the hill’ goes

with both ‘John walked’ and ‘Mary walked’.

But *John rang (and Harry picked) up Mary’s sister.

The sentence may be elliptical for

‘John rang up Mary’s sister and Henry picked up Mary sister’. But ‘up Mary’s sister’ isnot a constituent in either sentence. ‘Up’ goes with the verb ‘rang’ to form the phrasal

verb ‘rang up’, and the second conjunct ‘up’ goes with the verb ‘picked’ forming the

phrasal verb ‘pick up’.

Shared constituent coordination is only possible where the moved string is a possible

constituent of each of the conjuncts.

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Eng. 501_Constituent Structure I

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