Immediate Constituent Analysis and Ambiguity

                        Immediate Constituent Analysis & Ambiguity

 

Immediate constituent analysis, also called IC Analysis, in linguistics, is  based on the notion that a sentence is just not a  linear string of words but is made up of layers of constituents. It is a system of grammatical analysis that breaks up sentences into sequential 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 term was introduced by the United States linguist Leonard Bloomfield in 1933, though the underlying principle is common both to the traditional practice of parsing and to many modern systems of grammatical analysis. But I C analysis was a much more powerful method of analyzing sentences than parsing. The analyst had to be more specific and explicit about his reasons for analyzing the data. Bloomfield illustrated the way in which it was possible to split the sentence ( Poor John ran away) into its immediate constituents (poor John and ran away). These were further analyzed into constituents.  (Poor+John+ran+away)

           S

Subject Predicate 

                             

Adj     Noun        V   Particle

           Poor   John    ran    away

Bloomfield’s followers Zellig Harris in Methods in Structural Linguistics (1951) and others were more illuminating and precise. A great deal of information could be expanded to apparently infinite lengths following certain procedures as in 

Buns taste nice.

Those delightful buns you bought taste nice.

Not quite all those delightful currant buns you bought 

the other day from that shop on the corner taste nice.

The process reached a full-blown strategy for analyzing sentence structure in the early works of Noam Chomsky.[3] The practice is now widespread. Most tree structures employed to represent the syntactic structure of sentences are products of some form of IC-analysis.

There were many problems involved in IC analysis. They fell into two categories: It was difficult to use IC analysis in all sentences in a completely consistent way. Important insights into grammar were missing. I C analysis does not provide much information about the grammatical identity of the ultimate constituent on one hand and about the identity of the sentences (whether statements, questions, active, passive) on the other. 

This limitation of I C analysis was removed by  Mak Haliday by labeling the constituents: Class labels and functional labels. Class labels: NP, VP, Art., Adj, etc. Functional labels are S, V O.

S- sentence node.

N P- Noun phrase node.

VP is a Verb phrase node.

Lines that connect the S node with NP and VP nodes are called branches.

S is called the mother node.

NP and VP are daughter nodes.

NP and  VP nodes are sisters. 

Constitute, constituent and construction: When they are joined by a horizontal line , they are said to be in ‘construction’ with each other .  The construction establishes a relationship between the constituents.  The concepts of constitute, constituent and construction are of immense importance for analysis.  Examples:

 Her new hat - constitute

 her, new, hat - constituents

posessive+ adjective, noun - construction

Immediate and ultimate constituents: The constituents of a constitute are its immediate constituents. The ultimate constituents (Ucs) are the constituents which cannot be further analyzed. The analysis starts with the whole sentence being divided  into its principal parts: subject and predicate.( NP+VP) which are further divided into sub parts.  Example:

He resented her unkind remark.

He + resented her unkind remark

resented + her unkind remark

her + unkind+ remark

He  resent+ed she+ poss un+kind +remark

We have eight ultimate constituents.

Given a phrase structure grammar (= constituency grammar), IC-analysis divides up a sentence into major parts or immediate constituents, and these constituents are in turn divided into further immediate constituents. The process continues until irreducible constituents are reached, i.e., until each constituent consists of only a word or a meaningful part of a word. The end result of IC-analysis is often presented in a visual diagrammatic form that reveals the hierarchical immediate constituent structure of the sentence at hand. These diagrams are usually trees. For example:

Poor John lost his watch

NP VP

(Phrase Structure)

 [s[NPPoor John][VP lost his watch]]

(Bracketing )

 S →→→→→→→→ NP-VP 

 

Tree Diagram

Structural description of the sentence “The man will hit the ball,” assigned by the rules of a simple phrase-structure grammar.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Labels: One of the limitation of the I C analysis it does not indicate the nature and grammatical function  of the constituent. This was removed by  Mak Haliday by labeling the constituents: Class labels and functional labels. Class labels: NP, VP, Art., Adj, etc. Functional labels are S, V O.

S- sentence node.

N P- Noun phrase node.

VP is a Verb phrase node.

Lines that connect the S node with NP and VP nodes are called branches.

S is called the mother node.

NP and VP are daughter nodes.

NP and  VP nodes are sisters. 

Ambiguity

Some sentences can be ambiguous For eg. 

She took the baby out of the water and threw it away. 

Flying planes can be dangerous.

Syntactic ambiguity, also called amphiboly or amphibology, is a situation where a sentence may be interpreted in more than one way due to ambiguous sentence structure.

In English grammar, syntactic ambiguity is the presence of two or more possible meanings within a single sentence or sequence of words. Also called structural ambiguity or grammatical ambiguity. Compare with lexical ambiguity (the presence of two or more possible meanings within a single word).

Syntactical/ structural ambiguity

The intended meaning of a syntactically ambiguous sentence can often (but not always) be determined by context.

Example : The shooting of hunters was terrible.

It could mean:  The way animals were shot by the hunters.

The fact that hunters were shot was terrible.

Passivization removes the ambiguity: 

Syntactic structures and semantics should be included as an integral part of the grammatical anlysis of languages.

Types of ambiguity

In speech and writing, there are two basic types of ambiguity:
(1) lexical ambiguity (the presence of two or more possible meanings within a single word);
(2) syntactic ambiguity (the presence of two or more possible meanings within a single sentence or sequence of words). C analysis can help to account for  ambiguity of certain constructions

 grammar has to take into account ambiguity in  language.  Chomskey’s illustration “ The police were order to stop drinking about midnight

 Was the drinking taking place at midnight or the ordering? And who was drinking anyway, the police or someone else?  The given sentence has more than one interpretation or meaning.

The grammatical structure by relating the different possible senses to the other structures which are similar and meaning but which are unambiguous for example at midnight the police were  ordered  to stop drinking or  The police were ordered to stop them drinking at midnight. (Altering an adverb phrase and inserting a personal pronoun at a specific point can disambiguate the sentence. In I C analysis disambiguation is not possible.

Ambiguity:

Immediate Constituent (IC) Analysis Approach

In order to show the structural relationship between the different constituents of a construction or to find its meanings at the various levels, structural linguists employ the IC technique of linguistic analysis. Although the IC technique follows some principles and though it seems promising for the analysis of many constructions; yet it is inadequate for handling or resolving

all types of ambiguity. In certain cases of ambiguity, where the constituents of a sentence are not clearly marked; structuralists find some difficulty in the application of this technique as it is shown in these instances.

The gentleman follow,Ying the chief goaler with his eyes who moved across the room. 

Mr Brownlow returned accompanied by Oliver who Mr Grimwig received graciously. 

The equipment of the class, which is there.

In regard to such ambiguity Fries comments:

The forms of the words in the last group could correlate with either of Class I words preceding, and therefore, the structural grouping is ambiguous. With no other clues we cannot decide just what the immediate constituents of the structures are. (Fries, 1984:265)

The IC analysis shows the hierarchical structure of certain sentences, but it presents some obvious weaknesses. 

Simpson (1981 :21) expresses this uncertainty as to how we impose an IC analysis on unambiguous verbal forms such as has been killed. This applies not only to verbal forms, but also to compounds, which are also unambiguous, for example, ladies and gentlemen.

The IC analysis is not so promising in syntactic description, since it applies only to SSs, as can be noted from the analysis of the examples below which are superficially identical:

They are difficult to penetrate.

  Tom is easy to please.

Tom is eager to please .

As far as ambiguity is concerned, Palmer ( 1982: 133) distinguishes between the IC analysis, which displays the grammatical relations, and that of labeling which displays the function of words in sentences.

It is obvious that in itself dividing a sentence into ICs does not provide much infonnation. Nevertheless it can sometimes prove illuminating. It can sometimes account for ambiguities and distinguish them. (Palmer, 1982: 1-27)

By the use of labeled ICs, the ambiguity of the sentence in the famous example flying planes can be dangerous can be resolved as having not only two DSs, but also two different SSs.

adjective-noun planes which fly 

or noun (gerund)-noun to fly planes. 

Though the use of IC analysis and labeled IC cuts may sometimes illuminate many cases of ambiguity; yet, there are some ambiguities, which are irresolvable by either of these.

Nevertheless, some ambiguities can only be resolved by transformation. No IC type analysis of which I am aware of can disambiguate the shooting of the hunters or it is too hot to eat.

Each of these surely has only one surface structure but two or more deep structures.(Op.cit: 149)

In language analysis, meaning and grammatical structure should have been given a lot of attention as they represent two sides of the same coin. But the lC analysis cannot account for meaning and grammatical structure clearly.

In IC analysis, however, such disambiguation was impossible: an IC diagram either presented one meaning of a sentence only, and ignored the others or it left us with one sentence analysis  which was still ambiguous. (Crystal, 1985:212)

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