This document discusses constituent analysis (IC analysis), a method for analyzing sentence structure by breaking sentences into sequential constituents or groups of words. It describes how IC analysis was developed by linguists like Bloomfield and Chomsky. The key aspects covered are: - IC analysis breaks sentences into constituents joined by horizontal lines in a construction - Constituents can be immediate or ultimate and labels are used to indicate class and function - Tree diagrams visually represent the hierarchical constituent structure with nodes and branches - Ambiguity can arise from structures that have more than one possible interpretation

1. I C ANALYSIS & AMBIGUITY
Dr. Abha Pandey

2. INTRODUCTION
 IC analysis is a method of sentence analysis first
mentioned by Leonard Bloomfield and developed
further by Rulon Wells.
 The process reached a full blown strategy for
analyzing sentence structure in the early works
of Noam Chomsky. The practice is now
widespread.
 Most tree structures employed to represent the
syntactic structure of sentences are products of
some form of IC-analysis.

3. I C ANALYSIS
I C analysis is based on the notion
that a sentence is just not a linear
string of words but a sequence of
components or groups of words.
It is a system of grammatical analysis
that break up sentences into
sequential layers, or constituents.
Constituents consist of only a word or
a meaningful part of word.

4. CONSTITUTE, CONSTITUENT AND
CONSTRUCTION
 When they are joined by horizontal line , they are
said to be in ‘construction’ with each other .
 The construction establishes relationship between
the constituents.
 The concepts of constitute, constituent and
construction are of immense importance for
analysis.
 Examples:
 Her new hat - constitute
 her, new, hat - constituents
 posessive+ adjective, noun - construction

5. IMMEDIATE AND ULTIMATE CONSTITUENTS
 The constituents of a constitute are its immediate
constituents. The ultimate constituents (Ucs) are the
constituents which cannot be further analyzed.
 The analysis starts with the whole sentence being
divided into its principal parts: subject and
predicate.( NP+VP) which are further divided into
sub parts. Example:
 He resented her unkind remark.
He + resented her unkind remark
resented + her unkind remark
her + unkind+ remark
He resent+ed she+ poss un+kind +remark
We have eight ultimate constituents .

6. MODES OF REPRESENTATION
 Poor John
NP
lost his watch
VP
 [s[NPPoor John][VP lost his
watch]]
 S NP-VP

7. I C ANALYSIS

8. LABELS
One of the limitation of the I C analysis
it does not indicate the nature and
grammatical function of the
constituent.
This was removed by Mak Haliday by
labeling the constituents: Class labels
and functional labels.
Class labels: NP, VP, Art., Adj, etc.
Functional labels are S, V O

9. TREE DIAGRAM
Structural description of the sentence “The man will hit the
ball,” assigned by the rules of a simple phrase-structure
grammar.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

10. LABELS
S- sentence node.
N P- Noun phrase node.
VP is Verb phrase node.
Lines that connect the S node with NP
and VP nodes are called branches.
S is called mother node.
NP and VP are daughter nodes.
NP and VP nodes are sisters.

11. NOUN PHRASE
 Noun phrase
 A personal pronoun (he), A demonstrator (that), or a
wh word( what) may constitute a noun phrase by
itself.
 Exception: The rich, The poor, infinitives-To believe
is to see, That clause also work as noun phrases-
as subject.
 Noun phrase is a constitute, its constituents are:
 Head word alone,
 Premodifier + headword
 Headword + post modifier,
 Pre modifier + headword + postmodifier

12. DIAGRAMMATIC REPRESENTATION OF A
NOUN PHRASE- PRE MODIFIERS
NP
Pre-determiner determiner ordinal quantifier
 Adj phrase classifier Noun

Intensifier adjective

13. AMBIGUITY
Some sentences can be ambiguous
For eg.
She took the baby out of the water
and threw it away.
Flying planes can be dangerous.
Syntactic ambiguity, also called
amphiboly or amphibology, is a situation
where a sentence may be interpreted in
more than one way due to ambiguous
sentence structure.

14. AMBIGUITY
In English grammar, syntactic
ambiguity is the presence of two or
more possible meanings within a
single sentence or sequence of words.
Also called structural
ambiguity or grammatical ambiguity.
Compare with lexical ambiguity (the
presence of two or more possible
meanings within a single word).

15. SYNTACTICAL/ STRUCTURAL AMBIGUITY
 The intended meaning of a syntactically
ambiguous sentence can often (but not always)
be determined by context.
 Example : The shooting of hunters was terrible.
 It could mean: The way animals were shot by the
hunters.
 The fact that hunters were shot was terrible.
 Passivization removes the ambiguity:
 Syntactic structures and semantics should be
included as an integral part of the grammatical
anlysis of languages.

16. TYPES OF AMBIGUITY
 In speech and writing, there are two basic
types of ambiguity:
(1) lexical ambiguity (the presence of two
or more possible meanings within a single
word);
(2) syntactic ambiguity (the presence of
two or more possible meanings within a
single sentence or sequence of words). C
analysis can help to account for ambiguity
of certain constructions

17. THE END