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Chapter One - Structure

The document explains that sentence structure is hierarchical and consists of constituents that are organized in a specific way, each serving a function. It highlights the importance of recognizing grammatical and ungrammatical expressions through examples. Ultimately, sentences are made up of phrases rather than just individual words.

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6 views7 pages

Chapter One - Structure

The document explains that sentence structure is hierarchical and consists of constituents that are organized in a specific way, each serving a function. It highlights the importance of recognizing grammatical and ungrammatical expressions through examples. Ultimately, sentences are made up of phrases rather than just individual words.

Uploaded by

AYB LRN
Copyright
© All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd

Sentence Structure: Constituents

What is Structure

When anything can be analysed in the following way, we


say that it has structure:
(a) It is divisible into parts (called constituents),
(b) There are different kinds of parts (different categories
of constituents),
(c) The constituents are arranged in a specifiable way,
(d) That each constituent has a certain specifiable
function in the structure of the thing as a whole.
Sentence Structure

Complex things often have hierarchical structure.


A sentence is not just a collection of randomly
assembled words.
When a sequence of words fails to constitute a good
expression in the language, it is described as being
ungrammatical (or ill-formed) and marked with an
asterisk (*).
Sentence Structure
Here are some examples:
[1a] *disappears none girls of the students
[1b] *Max will bought a frying pans.
[1c] *Dick believes he to be a genius.
[1d] *Dick believes himself is a genius.
[1e] *Bevis went to the circus and Max did so to the zoo.
Sentence Structure
Ultimately, a full syntactic description of any language
consists in explaining why some strings of words of
the language are well-formed (grammatical)
expressions and why others are ill-formed
(ungrammatical). And this could not be achieved
without recognising structure.
Sentence Structure
What do sentences consist of?
Are words the immediate constituents of the sentences that contain them?

To answer these questions, let us draw a tree diagram for the sentence:
[2] Old Sam sunbathed beside a stream.
If we draw the diagram in the following way, we do not show the sentence structure:
Sentence

Old Sam sunbathed beside a stream


Sentence Structure
[3] *Stream old Sam sunbathed beside a
[4] *Sunbathed old beside stream a Sam

We need to say that sentence [2] is more highly structured than the
tree diagram says it is. The position of words in a sentence is
determined by the fact that the words are not immediate
constituents of the sentence, but belong with other words to form
groups – phrases – which have their own position in the structure
of the sentence. It is these phrases (and further phrases made up of
these phrases) that function as immediate constituents of the
sentence. In short, while sentences certainly contain words, they
don’t consist of words. They consist of phrases.

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