[e-mail]_2012-06-24_15-33-11 английский язык / 34 the model of immediate constituents

34 The model of immediate constituents is based on the group-parsing of the sentence which has been developed by traditional grammar together with the sentence-part parsing scheme. It consists in dividing the whole of the sentence into two groups: that of the subject and that of the predicate, which, in their turn, are divided into their sub-group constituents according to the successive subordinative order of the latter. Profiting by this type of analysis, the IC-model explicitly exposes the binary hierarchical principle of subordinative connections, showing the whole structure of the sentence as made up by binary immediate constituents. As for equipotent (coordinative) connections, these are, naturally, non-binary, but, being of a more primitive character than subordinative connections, they are included in the analysis as possible inner subdivisions of subordinative connections.

Thus, structured by the IC-model, the cited sentence on the upper level of analysis is looked upon as a united whole (the accepted symbol S); on the next lower level it is divided into two maximal constituents — the subject noun-phrase (NP-subj) and the predicate verb-phrase (VP-pred); on the next lower level the subject noun-phrase is divided into the determiner (det) and the rest of the phrase to which it semantically refers (NP), while the predicate noun-phrase is divided into the adverbial (DP, in this case simply D) and the rest of the verb-phrase to which it semantically refers; the next level-stages of analysis include the division of the first noun-phrase into its adjective-attribute constituent (AP, in this case A) and the noun constituent (N), and correspondingly, the division of the verb-phrase into its verb constituent (V or Vf — finite verb) and object noun-phrase constituent (NP-obj), the latter being, finally, divided into the preposition constituent (prp) and noun constituent (N). As we see, the process of syntactic IC-analysis contin-ues until the word-level of the sentence is reached, the words being looked upon as the "ultimate" constituents of the sentence.

The described model of immediate constituents has two basic versions. The first is known as the "analytical IC-diagrarn", the second, as the "IС-derivation tree". The analytical IC-diagram commonly shows the groupings of sentence constituents by means of vertical and horizontal lines (see Fig. 4). The IC-derivation tree shows the groupings of

THE	SMALL	LADY	LISTENED	TO prp	ME NP-pro	ATTENTIVELY.
	A	N	V	NP
det	NP		VP					D
NP-subj			VP-pred

sentence constituents by means of branching nodes: the nodes symbolise phrase-categories as unities, while the branches mark their division into constituents of the corresponding sub-categorial standings (see Fig. 5).