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Outline
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1. Constituency Tests
¤ Substitution
(Last Class)
¤ Movement (Last Class)
n Topicalization, Clefting, Pseudo-cleft
¤ Coordination
¤ Ellipsis/Deletion

LING 2005 – Syntax I 2. Advice for Constituency

Class 3 — Constituent Structure II

Lawrence Cheung

4 Constituency Tests 5 Coordination Test

 Coordination Test Coordination Test
6 7

¨ When two elements are coordinated using a ¨ Consider the examples below.
coordinating conjunction (e.g. and, or, but), the 1. John met her former colleague yesterday.
elements are generally constituents. ⟶ John met Mary and her former colleague yesterday.
¨ That is, in “A and B”, the conjuncts “A” and “B” are 2. The child was asking for help.
⟶ The child was crying and asking for help.
(likely to be) constituents.
3. Is she in the kitchen now?
⟶ Is she in the kitchen or in the bathroom now?
A. “Mary and her former colleagues” 4. Sam walked up the stairs.
B. “talking to John and seeking his advice” ⟶ Sam walked up the stairs and into the hallway.

C. “in the kitchen or in the bathroom” 5. The group moved very slowly.
⟶ The group moved very slowly but very cautiously.
D. “proud of John but sorry for his mistake” ¨ Strings that we generally considered constituents can be coordinated.

Coordination Test Coordination Test

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¨ Consider another set of examples. ¨ Emily gave some meat to her dog. ?
6. John met my former boss yesterday. Ø How would you use the coordination test to test the
⟶ *John met my and hugged my former boss yesterday.
constituency of “some meat to her dog”?
7. The child was asking for help.
⟶ *The child was and old man is asking for help.
8. Is she in the kitchen now?
⟶ *Is she in the kitchen now or bathroom now?
9. Sam rang up his mother.
⟶ *Sam rang up his mother and up his sister.
¨ Observation: Meaningful strings (potential constituents) can
typically be coordinated; strings that we normally do not
consider as a unit tend to fail to undergo coordination.
 Ellipsis/Deletion
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¨ English allows VPs (and to some extent NPs) to be

14 Ellipsis / Deletion deleted in some contexts. The is called VP/NP
ellipsis. Generally, the deleted part is a constituent.

1. You might try it, but I won't ____. (VP)

¤ = You might try it, but I won’t try it.

2. If we could pay the bill, we would ____. (VP)

¤ = If we could pay the bill, we would pay the bill.

Ellipsis/Deletion
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3. Everyone says you can’t be scientific and fun, but we

think you can ____. (VP) 17 Advice for Constituency Test
4. A: That girl in the red coat will not put a picture of Bill
on your desk.
B: Yes, but this girl in the red coat will ____. (VP)

5. John liked Mary’s red dress, but I preferred Lilian’s

____. (NP)
¤ Note that the elided part is “red dress”, which is only part
of the bigger nominal phrase “Lilian’s red dress”.
 Advice for Constituency Tests
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¨ Two steps are involved in constructing a constituency
test for the target string.
¨ Step 1: Set up test sentences.
¤ Note that the goal is NOT to create grammatical
sentences. A test sentence may be judged to be bad. It
is ok even if it is obviously bad to you.
¨ Step 2: Present the test sentences to native speakers
for judgment.
¤ Note that we are supposed to get the native speaker’s
judgment, not yours (if you are not an English speaker).
¨ Step 3: Interpret the results
20 Interpreting Test Results
Judgment of English Test Sentences
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¨ Since most of us are not native speakers of English, I
generally will not ask you to judge the test
sentences in your assignments and on your exams.
They are not the most reliable anyway.
¨ However, what you have to be familiar with is the
construction of test sentences using various
constituency tests and the interpretation of the test
results.
Conflicting Results (Case 1)
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¨ It is not uncommon to get conflicting results on the same
string with different constituency tests. Suppose we want
to find out the constituency of “will wash the dishes”.
¨ Sentence: “He will wash the dishes.”
1. Test #1: He will lay the table and will wash the dishes.
2. Test #2: *It is will wash the dishes that he.
3. Test #3: *Mary thinks that he will wash the dishes, and
will wash the dishes, he.
4. Test #4: *What he does is will wash the dishes.
¨ How should we conclude from the above?
 Conflicting Results (Case 2)
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¨ Another case where we get conflicting results. Suppose
we want to find out the constituency of “me a muffin”.
¨ Sentence: “She will give me a muffin.”
1. Test #1: She will give me a muffin and him a bagel.
2. Test #2: *It is me a muffin that she will give.
Test #3: *No one thinks that she will give me a muffin,
3.
but me a muffin, she will give.
4. Test #4: *What he will give is me a muffin.
¨ What should we conclude from the above?
Interpreting Test Results
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¨ Negative results could be due to the violation of some
other constraints (that have nothing to do with
constituency). Here are some examples of such other
constraints:
a. Proforms are sensitive to the syntactic category.
¤ John opened the letter with great care.
b. “do so” substitution does not seem to go well with
stative predicate. (??John knows French, and Peter
does so too.)
c. English does not allow topicalization when the
resulting sentence only has a bare subject.
d. Clefting does not apply to VPs.
Interpreting Test Results
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¨ It is tempting to conclude that “will wash the dishes” in
Case 1 is not a constituent because of the negative
results on Test #2, #3 and #4.
+ve result
1. Test #1: He will lay the table and will wash the dishes.
2. Test #2: *It is will wash the dishes that he.
-ve result
¨ It should be stressed that negative results only give
some weak support to non-constituency.
Interpreting Test Results
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¨ *It was [eat the muffin] that John did.
¨ While “eat the muffin” fails the cleft test, we don’t
want to conclude that “eat the muffin” is not a
constituent simply because of one negative result.
¨ English clefting seems to have a special restriction that
does not allow a VP to become the focused element.
The negative result is probably due to the violation of
the categorial restriction but NOT the constituency of
“eat the pizza”.
 Look for evidence before the police
convict the suspect in court Guideline
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¨ Guideline for conducting constituency tests

1. Learn about the restrictions of various tests.
1. Motive 2. Apply as many tests as possible. Try not to rely on just
one test.
3. One +ve result on one test is more informative than one
–ve result from another.
4. If we get +ve results on multiple tests, it is quite possible
3. Surveillance
that the string of words at issue is a constituent.
camera 5. If we get –ve results on 1 or 2 tests (and no +ve results),
2. Eyewitness
footage this does not necessarily mean that the string of words at
account
issue is not a constituent. Getting many –ve results would
26 4. Fingerprint provide better support for non-constituency.

Summary of Constituency Readings

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¨ Sentence structure as constituency structure ¨ Required

¨ We depend on a set of constituency tests to provide 1. Sportiche et al. (2014) Ch. 3 Syntactic Analysis
a more objective way of constituent identification. Introduced (you can skip Section 3.5, 3.6.2, 3.8 and
¨ The tests resort to the idea that syntactic processes 3.9)
generally affect words of the same constituent as a ¨ Optional:
whole. Things that are not constituents tend not to 2. Haegeman 2006, Ch. 2, Sect. 1 (p. 72—92)
undergo these processes. 3. If you want to read more about the relation
¨ Be cautious with the interpretation of conflicting between heads and phrases, you can read
results. Negative results are not as informative than Sportiche et al. Ch. 4. Otherwise, you can wait till
positive results. next week.