This document provides an overview of immediate constituent analysis in linguistics. It defines immediate constituent analysis as a method that divides sentences into successive layers of constituents until each constituent contains a single word or meaningful part of a word. The document then discusses the history of immediate constituent analysis, noting it was first mentioned by Leonard Bloomfield and further developed by Rulon Wells and Noam Chomsky. It provides some important notes on how to perform constituent analysis and examples analyzing words like "gentlemanly" into their constituents. The document concludes with a short practice test and references.

1. Immediate constituent analysis
Prepared by: Muhammad Yassin Sleman
Supervised by: Mr. Sarwan Hasan
2020-2021
ِ‫ٰن‬‫ـ‬َ‫م‬
ْ
‫ح‬َّ‫الر‬ ِ‫ـه‬
َّ
‫ل‬‫ل‬‫ا‬ ِ‫م‬
ْ
‫س‬ِ‫ب‬ِ‫م‬‫ي‬ِ‫ح‬َّ‫الر‬

2. outline:
 What is immediate constituent analysis.
 The history of immediate constituents.
 Some important notes
 Some examples
 A test
 References

3. What is immediate constituents?
 Immediate constituent analysis, also called Ic Analysis, in linguistics, a
system of grammatical analysis that divides sentences into successive
layers, or constituents, until, in the final layer, each constituent consists
of only a word or meaningful part of a word. (The Editors of
Encyclopaedia Britannica: December 13, 2020)
 An example: In the sentence “The old man ran away,” the first division
into immediate constituents would be between “the old man” and “ran
away.” The immediate constituents of “the old man” are “the” and “old
man.” At the next level “old man” is divided into “old” and “man.”

4. The history of immediate constituents
 immediate constituent analysis or IC analysis was first
mentioned by Leonard Bloomfield. ( Bloomfield, 1933:161).
developed further by Rulon Wells. (Wells, 1947)
The process reached a full-blown strategy for analyzing sentence
structure in the early works of Noam Chomsky. (Chomsky, 1957)

5. Some important notes
If a word ends in an inflectional suffix, the first cut is between this suffix
and the rest of the word: treatment | s .
One of the IC’s should, if possible, a free morpheme: engage | ing
 The meanings of the IC’s should be related to the meaning of the word.
It would be wrong to cut “starchy” like this: star | chy .
 We usually divide a word into two parts of which it seems to have been
composed. Gentleman | ly.

6. Some examples
A word of one morpheme, like blaze, has, of course, just one unitary
part.
A word of two morphemes, like cheerful, is obviously composed of two
parts, with the division between them:
Cheer ful

7. Some examples
A word of three or more morphemes is not made up of a string of individual parts;
• It is built with a hierarchy of twosomes.
•As an illustration, lets us examine the formation of gentlemanly, a word of three
morphemes:
• gentle and man were put together to give gentleman.
• We see that the meaning of gentleman is a composite of these of its two
constituents.
•Now we add –ly, meaning “like”, and get gentlemanly, like a gentleman.
• Now, when we analyze a word we show this process but in reverse.
•We usually divide a word into two parts of which it seems to have been composed.

8. Gentlemanly
Some examples
Gentlemanly
gentleman ly
gentle man

9. The meaning will decide how we divide the word

10. A test
Unlockable
Enlargement
Independent
insupportable

12. References
 Bloomfield, Leonard. 1933. Language. New York: Henry Holt ISBN 0-226-06067-5, ISBN 90-272-
1892-7
 Chomsky, Noam 1957. Syntactic Structures. The Hague/Paris: Mouton.
 Wells, Rulon S. 1947. "Immediate Constituents." Language: 23. pp. 81–117.
 The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, Immediate constituent analysis, Encyclopædia Britannica,
April 10, 2018 , https://www.britannica.com/topic/immediate-constituent-analysis

13. Any question?