Immediate Constituent Analysis

What is a constituent?



A constituent is one of two or more grammatical units that enter syntactically or morphologically into a construction at any level. Let's take this example from English:
• You eat bananas
This sentence contains the following constituents:
Immediate constituents
• you
• eat bananas
Ultimate constituents
• you
• eat
• banana
• -s


• Definition of Immediate Constituent

An immediate constituent is any one of the largest grammatical units that constitute a construction. Immediate constituents are often further reducible.
Here are some examples of immediate constituents from English:

• In the complex noun phrase the dog that killed the cat, each of the following items are immediate constituents:
• the
• dog
• that killed the cat
Immediate Constituent Analysis


It is an approach that has some descriptive aims. The technique which is used in this approac...