Some notes on Constituency ests Alan Munn February 25, 2006 Here are some notes on tests for constituency. Remember t best test t something a constituent substitution. Here are some common substitutions t work to test for s, s, s and s: 1 ests for s and s 1.1 ests for If a phrase a, it should be able to be substituted for a personal pronoun like he, she, him, her, it, y, etc. Here are some examples of places where substitution works and where it doesn t work. Consider sentence (1). (1) he tall was. In th example, re are a number of strings t could possibly be s. Here are some possibilities: (2) a. Is a b. Is tall a? c. Is tall a? We can substitute it, so th shows t a. We can also substitute tall he, so tall a. he actual substitutions are shown in (3a/b). However, if we try to substitute tall he, test fails, as in (3c). h shows t tall IS O, in th sentence. (3) a. he tall read it. b. He read. c. * He read. W do se tests tell us about drawing a tree for th phrase. Here how we draw tree, step by step. he first thing we do label all of parts of speech of words in sentence: A tall Constituency ests 1
A tall We know t we can combine to form a : A tall We also know t Auxiliary verb (which we have categorized as ense ()) combines to form an intermediate category. A tall ow question w to do remaining words. We know t whole phrase a, because it can be replaced by he. However, to see rest of structure we need to be more careful. We know t a constituent, because it can be substituted it. We also know t goes, so we can build anor phrase: Constituency ests 2
A tall 1.2 ests for ow next part not obvious, so we need to be very careful. It looks like we should be able to turn tall into a, since it forms a coherent setic unit. However, remember example (3c) above. If tall a in HIS ARICULAR SEECE, n it should be able to be substituted for he in I HIS ARICULAR SEECE. But it can t: (4) * He a However, we can do anor substitution t shows t tall a constituent. Look at (5): (5) he tall a, but one umbrella n t. In th example, we have used noun one to substitute for phrase tall. Since th substitution possible, it shows us t tall a constituent EE HOUGH tall IS O. h allows us to add in following to our partially completed tree: A A tall We now are in a position to combine last four pieces toger. We know t tall O a phrase, and t adjectives modify ouns (or more properly oun hrases). So th means t tall must combine to form anor, and n we add determiner Constituency ests 3
to create. We know t th a constituent, because it can be substituted by he, as in (3b) A A tall Finally, we can combine last two pieces toger to form completed : A A tall 2 ests for he substitution test for s involve use of do so or just leaving out a in dcourse. If we go back to example (1) above, we can easily show t a a. In (6b) I have marked msing part symbol in (6b). We interpret msing part in (6) as meaning a. he fact t we interpret it th way evidence t a a constituent because it can be substituted by. (6) a. he a and wo too. b. he a and wo too. Sometimes it more usual to substitute s do so, as in following examples: Constituency ests 4
(7) a. he will play guitar in park, and wo will do so on sidewalk. b. he will drive to store quickly and wo will do so slowly. c. he will play guitar in park, and wo will too. d. he will drive to story quickly, and wo will too. In (7a) do so substitutes for play guitar. In (7b) do so substitutes for drive to store. hese tests show t those groups of words form constituents. In (7c) msing portion substitutes for play guitar in park, while in (7d) msing portion substitutes for drive to store quickly. hese test show t larger phrases are also s. h means t in a sentence like (8), re are two phrases. h reflected in tree in (9). (8) he will play guitar in park. (9) will play guitar in park otice t th tree matches exactly tests in (7). In (7a), test showed t play guitar a, and in our tree, re a t contains play guitar. In (7c), test shows t play guitar in park a, and in our tree re a t contains play guitar in park. Constituency ests 5
3 ests for repositional phrases can also be tested by substitution. Consider following examples. In (10a/b) in park can be substituted for by re. In (10c/d) on Sunday can be substituted for n. (10) a. he will play guitar in park. b. he will play guitar re. c. he will play guitar on Sunday. d. he will play guitar n. 4 Coordination as a constituency test here anor way to test constituency, although it sometimes gives some false results. Generally, if two groups of words can be joined toger a conjunction like and, n each of two groups of words a constituent. We can apply th to all of categories we have seen above,,, and. (11) a. he and wo left. ( and wo are both s) b. he and wo left. ( and wo are both s) c. he will buy a car and drive to oronto. (buy a car and drive to oronto) d. he will drive to oronto and to ew York. (to oronto and to ew York) Constituency ests 6