LING 1000 Lecture 15: Topic 3.4
17 Apr 2017
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Document Summary
The sentence below shows the different constituents in different coloured brackets to show how they group together. It is enlarged so that the colours can be seen. Each constituent is classified according to the main word in it, which linguists call head. In the sentence above, the head of the first np is birds, the head of the second np is seed. Similarly aps are headed by adjectives, and advps by adverbs, pps by prepositions. We can do some tests to find out if a string of words is a constituent: the substitution test. We can substitute a group of words by one word, or by an expression like do so. Np can be substituted by they, the second np can be substituted by it: they see it. The verb can be substituted in a sentence like the birds see the seed, and so do the squirrels: movement test.
