IC Analysis - BA -English Rajarata University of Sri Lanka

Constituent is a term used in structural sentence analysis for every linguistic unit, which is a part of a larger linguistic unit. Several constituents together form a construction: for example, in the sentence The boy ate the apple, S (A), the boy (B), ate the apple (C), each part is a constituent. Constituents can be joined together with other constituents to form larger units. If two constituents, in the case of the example above, B (the boy) and C (ate the apple), are joined to form a hierarchically higher constituent A (“S” , here a sentence ), then B and C are said to be immediate constituents of A.
Ex. 4-7

This tree contains three Nodes. The top-most node, A, is the mother of the two lower nodes, B and C. B and C are Daughters of the same mother, and so we refer to them as Sister nodes. The simple tree in the above represents a constituent of category A which is composed of two parts, one of category B and the other of category C, occurring in that order.
To dismantle a grammatical construction in this way is called IMMEDIATE CONSTITUENT ANALYSIS or IC analysis.
The immediate constituents themselves can be constructions of specific types, for instance, the nominal phrase “The boy” can be further analysed into “The(Determiner) + boy (Noun)”. Thus, “The boy” is the construction of a nominal phrase, whereas “The” and “boy” are its constituents.
When a tree diagram is used to represent the constituent structure of a grammatical unit (e.g. a phrase or sentence), syntactic categories are used to label the nodes; the most common of these are listed in the following:

Word-level Phrasal
N= noun
A=adjective
V=verb
P=preposition
Det=determiner
Adv=adverb
Conj=conjunction NP=noun phrase
AP=adjective phrase
VP=verb phrase
PP=preposition phrase
S=sentence or clause
Take the construction The boy ate the apple for example again, one can analyze it by means of a TREE DIAGRAM in detail.
(a) Tree diagram

Ex. 4-8


(b) Bracketing
In contrast to tree diagram, BRACKETING is not so common, but it is an economic notation in representing the constituent structure of a grammatical unit.
　
(((The) (boy)) ((ate) ((the) (apple))))

Source: linguistics.bjfu.edu.cn/4-2-2.htm-16.10.2011