Immediate Constituent Analysis: What to Know

Immediate Constituent Analysis is a theory that was developed by an American structural linguist, Leonard Bloomfield. But before we get into the nitty gritty of immediate constituent analysis, let us, first, look at what is meant by a constituent.

Constituent

A constituent is a word or group of words that are expressive of a single idea. That is, a constituent refers to any instance where a word or a group of words function as a whole unit denoting or representing a single idea, concept or phenomenon. For example;

1. The word: 'Boy' is a constituent.

2. The phrase: 'The boy coming here' is a constituent.

3. The clause: 'He is a Boy' is also a constituent.

So that, basically, is what a constituent stands to mean. Every constituent is made up of one or more constitutes. Constitutes refers to the element or elements that form a constituent. For instance, the word: 'Boy' is a constituent made up of one constitute, while the phrase: 'The boy coming over here' is a constituent made up of five constitutes.

Immediate Constituent Analysis 

Now to the meaning of immediate Constituent Analysis. Immediate constituent analysis, therefore, refers to a system of analysis that involves the grouping of elements in a sentence according to relation groups. That is, a process whereby constituents in a sentence are grouped according to the relationship they share with other words they co-occur with. 

The relationship that exists between words in a sentence is what makes it possible for them to be segmented into various groups that form independent constituents. Take for instance; 

1. The boy is dancing outside.

2. Mr. John works very hard.

3. She laughs at every joke. 

Each of the three sentences above can be grouped into two based on the traditional grammar method. They can be grouped into subject and predicate where the subject group stands for the actors and the predicate stands for description of their actions. For instance, in example 1;

'The boy' forms the subject, while 'is dancing' forms the predicate. The predicate is made up of every element in a sentence starting from the verb, excluding the subject.

So by dividing up the sentence in example one into two constituents popularly known as NP (noun phrase), and VP (verb phrase), we can then go further to break them down to their final level as lexical categories—words. So the noun phrase: 

'The boy' will be further broken down into two, namely; determiner: The, and noun: boy. The predicate constituent will also be broken down into two where 'is' will be classified under inflection if represented on a tree diagram, and 'dancing' will be represented as a verb. 

So this is how sentences are analyzed using the immediate constituent analysis method. They are grouped with related elements in a sentence with which they co-occur. However, there are rules that guide these grouping. For instance;

'Boy is' is an ungrammatical grouping because both elements do not express meaning in association as there is no relationship between them except for when they function as constituents of a sentence. But 'is dancing' can easily be grouped together as verb phrase and further split because they share a relationship that is grammatically permissible—they are verbs.

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