Constituent (linguistics)

The term constituent (Latin of constituens, past participle of constituere ( constitute ) generally refers to a unit that " is part of a larger, more complex unity."

In linguistics, so are parts of a larger linguistic unit called.

In a broader sense, there are constituents " on each layer". Also " components of words ( s) may be referred to as constituents ". Also refer to: IC analysis. Similarly, there are constituents of meanings.

The term comes from the American structuralist linguistics and is mainly associated with Konstituentengrammatiken. The Konstituentenbegriff can also be applied to the dependency structures Dependenzgrammatiken, since dependency structures can be disassembled.

To identify constituents has conducted a series of tests, called Konstituententests.

In the following, it's all about constituents in sentence elements.

Definition

The constituent may be defined as follows:

In a tree structure, a constituent corresponds to the whole tree or a complete subtree of the tree. This definition, therefore each node corresponds to a constituent in the tree.

Constituents in Konstituentengrammatiken

By definition, the following tree of Konstituentengrammatik contains eleven constituents:

The following words and word combinations in the tree are constituents: this tree has exactly eleven, constituents, this tree, exactly eleven, exactly eleven constituents, has exactly eleven constituents, This tree has exactly eleven constituents. However, the tree only shows one of the possible analyzes. In another decomposition of the constituents changes the Wortkombinatorik, eg

This tree contains a constituent less; there is no finite VP constituent, ie has exactly ten constituents does not apply here as a constituent. The decomposition of sentences in constituents may therefore very well lead to different results, depending on what assumptions are placed under the decomposition.

Constituents in Dependenzgrammatiken

The Konstituentenbegriff comes from the American structuralism, which is mainly associated with the work of Leonard Bloomfield, Rulon Wells, and the young Noam Chomsky. But the American structuralism came from the principle of the constituency, ie syntactic structures were based on the principle of constituency. But if you apply the above definition to dependenzgrammatische structures, this may very well also be broken down into constituents. However, the above theorem contains far fewer constituents, only six instead of ten or eleven:

Since the tree has only six knots, it contains only six constituents: this, exactly this tree, exactly six, just six constituents, and this tree has exactly six constituents. A second example of Dependenzbaums underlines the difference:

Since this tree contains twelve nodes, it also contains twelve constituents. The corresponding Konstituenzbaum this set contains far more constituents:

This tree has 19 nodes, ie it contains 19 constituents. It should be noted that the structure of the VP is relatively flat. In a stratified ( = lower) VP there were more than 19 constituents. The comparison of dependence - with Konstituenzstrukturen shows that the understanding of what is considered constituent, depends on whether one assumes dependency or constituency as a basic principle of syntax.