Li2 Syntax Constituency Tests

Constituent: a group of words that function together as a unit (Carnies definition). Constituency captures the intuition of relatedness words can have, and their relationships. Constituents can be embedded into each other to form larger constituents in a hierarchical structure. Constituency tests aim to find groups of words functioning as units & prove the constituency hypothesis NONE are foolproof or work with all sentences; failure does NOT mean it is not a constituent!

Constituency tests for English:

Note: there are more tests (see wiki, Carnie) but these are the ones we covered in the lecture (Sentence used: Jennifer likes the dress in the shop.) Clefting A type of movement where the words placed between it was that, form a constituent, leaving a trace behind the cleft sentence has the structure it + conjugated form of to be + XP + subordinate clause, where XP is usually an NP but can also be a PP, AdvP or AdjP Usually, ungrammaticality = not a constituent (there are exceptions, e.g. John thought that it would rain) It was Jennifer who t liked the dress in the shop. It was the dress in the shop that Jennifer liked t. Passivisation Thematic roles are switched (agent & patient), only applies to whole NPs Does not always work, e.g. John thinks it will rain The dress in the shop was liked by Jennifer. Pronoun substitution/replacement Smallest constituent = a single word, so replacing a group of words by one means that they form a constituent Note: meaning has to be as closely related as possible to make sure you arent just dropping the parts that are optional according the phrase structure rules Pronouns substitute nouns/NPs, but other pro-forms can be used (e.g. pro-verb replaces a VP by do) She liked the dress in the shop. She liked it. Fronting/topicalisation This operation moves the tested unit to the front of the sentence; highlighting phrasal constituents and leaving a trace Topicalisation of adjuncts is common in English, less common for arguments The dress in the shop, Jennifer likes t. WH-fronting

A type of fronting where the WH-word leaves a gap in the sentence where the constituent was Related to the sentence fragment/stand alone test (not covered, mentioned by Carnie) the answer to the question can stand alone. Works with NPs, adjuncts (e.g. adverbs), predicative adjectives, What does Jennifer like t? Which dress in the shop does Jennifer like t? Who t likes the dress in the shop?