My Paper, SYNTAX: ICs Analysis

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A. Background

English sentences, basically, consist of subject and predicate. It is quite impossible when a sentence is not made up of a subject and a predicate called by a sentence. It may be a group of words, known as a phrase, or a group of words that consists of subject and predicate, known as a clause, but does not follow the Standard English sentence.

The Standard English sentence functionally organizes the word arrangement so that it can be regarded as a good sentence. For instance, it is not true that all words can place the position of subject and predicate. Noun is one of the word classifications that can place the position of subject and verb is one of the word classifications that can place the position of predicate.

It is, however, a broad discussion of English grammar. In the contrary, syntax has different way of view in considering English sentence. Now, just take look at the discussion of Immediate Constituent Analysis (IC Analysis) that analyzes a sentence into its smallest constituents that make up a sentence so that we can comprehend what constituent parts make a sentence.

B. Theory Base

As the basis of my discussion, firstly, I will represent some definitions and theories related to my discussion as follows:

1. Definitions:

a. Constituents are structural units, which refer to any linguistic form, such as words or word groups.

b. Constituent is a unit of grammatical structure, e.g. the sentence: “The lights went out,” consists, at one level, of two constituents, the NP (the light) and the VP (went out). (Irwansyah, 2009; page 1)

c. The ultimate constituents are the smallest meaningful units which any given construction can be broken down to, consisting of, a morpheme at the morphological level and a word at the syntactic level.

d. The linguistics procedure which divides sentences into their component parts or constituents in this way is known as constituent analysis. (Irwansyah, 2009; page 13)

e. The segmentation of the sentence up into its immediate constituents by using binary cuttings units its ultimate constituents are obtained is an important approach to the realization of the nature of language called Immediate Constituent Analysis (IC Analysis).

2. Theories:

a. Tree structures express a fundamental insight of syntactic analysis. That insight is that sentences do not simply consist of strings of lexical categories. Rather, within any sentence, words are grouped together to form phrases, which then combine with each other to form still larger phrases and so on. (Roza, 2008; page 10)

b. Immediate constituent analysis has its limitations. It is not possible to analyze such structures, for example, some sentences that are structurally similar but semantically they are different.

c. When the same string of words can be associated with more than one tree structure, it is said to be structurally ambiguous.

d. The X – bar theory:

CHAPTER II

DISCUSSION

A. Analyzing A Sentence By Using Tree Structure

Let’s see this sentence “I take my cloth”. We will know the constituents and ultimate constituent as follows:

“I” and “take my cloth” are the constituents, while “I”, “take”, “my”, and “cloth” are the ultimate constituents because we cannot divide it again into smallest constituent.

To see clearly the segmentation or division of the sentence, let’s see the tree diagram in analyzing the sentences “my sister tells me a story” and “my sister tell a story for me”.

Diagram 1.

This sentence is made up of a NP (my sister) and a VP (tells me a story). VP consists of VP (tells me) that is made up of a verb (tells) and a noun (me) and NP (a story) that is made up of modifier (a) and noun (story) as in diagram 1. Here, ‘me’ is the indirect object (2^nd object) and ‘story’ is the direct object (1^st object). This diagram shows the analysis of two objects in a sentence as in diagram 1.

Diagram 2.

This sentence is made up of a NP (my sister) and a VP (tells a story for me). VP consists of a verb (tells), NP (a story) that is made up of modifier (a) and noun (story) and PP (for me) that is made up of a preposition (for) and a noun (me). This sentence semantically is the same with in the picture two. However, as I explained, there is a preposition (for) and a noun (me) that make up into PP as in diagram 2.

B. Limitation of IC Analysis

There are, however, some sentences that are structurally similar but semantically they are different. An oft quoted example is:

1. Robert is easy to flatter.

2. Robert is eager to flatter.

Such sentences cannot be explained by IC analysis unless they are broken up into simple pairs of sentences. In the case of (1) and (2) above, one would have the following groups:

1. (It) is easy. Someone flatters Robert.

2. Robert is eager. He wants to flatter.

C. The Same String of Words (Ambiguous)

Let’s compare the two tree diagrams to see the ambiguous of the sentence “I bring new pens and pencil”.

Diagram 3.

Diagram 4.

The diagram 3 means that I bring new pens and any type of pencils. While the diagram 4 means that I bring either new pens or new pencils. If so, this sentence is structurally ambiguous because it can be associated with one or more tree structure.

CHAPTER III

CLOSING

A. Conclusion

1. Constituent analysis divides a sentence into its constituent. A sentence usually consists of two constituents, NP and VP that each of will consist of another constituent or ultimate constituent.

2. Constituent analysis has its limitation in analyzing a sentence such as some sentences that are structurally similar but semantically they are different.

B. Suggestion

1. It is good to teach constituent analysis to the students of university, especially in ambiguous, so that they can improve their writing ability by attempting no ambiguous sentences in their writing.

2. To learn constituent analysis, it is better to learn both grammar and constituent analysis together so that we know the different discussion between them of constructing and analyzing a sentence.