Chapter 13: Constituency - Some Additional Tests Flashcards
Coordination test, including Right Node Raising
‘Only constituents can be co-ordinated.’
- This involves the linking of two or more strings by a coordinating conjunction.
RNR ‘Only constituents can undergo RNR’
e.g. Ellie swept–, and and Anna mopped –, the floor
- Because DO are always on the right hand branch inside V’, they are called ‘right nodes’. In the e.g. ‘the floor’ has been raised from the position indicated by the dashes and one copy of the NP has been placed at the end of the sentence.
Cleft and Pseudocleft Test
Only constituents can occur in the focus position of a cleft or pseudocleft sentence.
Insertion Test
Parenthetical elements can only occur between S-constituents. S-constituents are constituents that are immediately dominated by S.
e.g. Ellie will, however, give £100 to charity.
? Ellie will give, however, £100 to charity.
In the ungrammatical e.g. the parenthetical element interrupts the main verb and the DO which are not S constituents but constituents of VP. This also shows that a modal verb must be an S-constituent and therefore belongs on the I-node.
Constituent Response Test
Only constituents can serve as responses to open interrogatives.
e.g. Anna carefully baked the bread at home.
Who baked the bread (at home)? - Anna.
Where did Anna bake the bread? - At home.
How did Anna bake the bread? - Carefully (at home)
That these strings can be responses shows that they are constituents.
Somewhere Else Test premise
If a string of words whose constituent status is unclear occurs as a constituent in some other construction, then this constitutes a weak support for the possibility of analysing it as as a constituent for the first construction as well.
Meaning Test
When constituency can be established on semantic grounds. (should be used with syntactic test).
e.g. Ellie wants the floor to be mopped.
Ellie doesn’t want just ‘the floor’ but wants it in a mopped state, therefore ‘the floor to be mopped’ is a consituent as the whole phrase acts as the DO.
parenthetical elements
Individual words or phrases that are no syntactically integrated into the sentence but often relate to the sentence as a whole from the point of view of meaning/ They are typically sentence adverbs such as however, probably and frankly.
Somewhere Else Test example
[That this government is cruel] is clear.
– can be –
It is clear [that is government is cruel]. (insertion of dummy it)
It is clear. (replaced by proform it).
That this government is cruel is clear to all.
This was clear to all: that this government is cruel.
It is clear to all that this government is cruel.
This data is a weak confirmation that the that-clause is a constituent. It doesn’t prove it, like the Movement and Substitution tests do, but it supports those claims. It concludes suggestive evidence for the constituency of the that-clause.
