IC ANALYSIS
Introduction(Historical
Background – semantic fallacy Vs synchronic description)
Traditional Grammar uses meaning as the
primary goal of linguistic analysis, and it has not an adequate notion of a
linguistic rule and appeals only to intuition.
The Structuralists ignored meaning and
emphasized that the language should be studied in a mechanical way, and a
linguist should therefore discover the various constituents of language as a
botanist discovers the petals of a flower.
The definition of many of the parts of
the speech was based on meaning and this was objected by the Structuralists,
since meaning is not objectively verifiable. Noun is defined as ‘the name of a
person, place or thing’ yet cannot include ‘blue’ and ‘red’ in the list of
nouns although they are the names of colour. Verb is defined as ‘that which
denotes an action or process’ but ‘action’ , ‘destruction’ are not verbs though
they denote action.
An interrogative sentence is defined as
‘the one that asks a question’, but ‘Would you pass the salt?’ is a request not
a question. These definitions are based on meaning and not on form.
To the Structuralist, grammar is a
discovery of the organization of a sentence unto its immediate and ultimate
constituents.
IC
Analysis – Definition:
-
Immediate Constituent
Analysis is one of the strong methods of analyzing a sentence linguistically.
-
It aims at finding out
the ‘ultimate constituent’(morphemes) of a sentence and their relationship with
one another.
-
IC Analysis a term
introduced by the US linguist Leonard Bloomsfield in 1933 in linguistics, is a
system of grammatical analysis that divides sentences into successive layers or
constituents until in the final layer, each constituent consists of only a word
or meaningful part of word.
Poor John ran away Layer 2
-
Here the IC analysis
attempts to break down constituents into subparts that are in some sense
grammatically relevant.
-
Bloomsfield shows a
sentence is seen not as a sequence or a string of elements, Poor + John + ran +
away, but as being made up of ‘layers’ of constituents.
-
Bloomfield’s IC
analysis illustrates how a sentence can be split up into their immediate
constituents and which in turn analyzable into further constituents.
-
The initial emphasis
was upon pure segmentation, simply dividing the sentence into its constituent
elements without, at first, knowing what these elements were.
The
principle was that we take a sentence and cut it into two and then cut those
parts into two and continue with this segmentation until we reach the lowest
unit- the morpheme.
Generally
the division is binary except in some cases where division into three or more
points is allowed.
Terms – Immediate,
ultimate, larger construction, linear structure:
(i)
The noun, IC has one
meaning – a constituent of a sentence at the first step in an analysis. At each
stage of division, the two constituents are the IC’s of that particular
construction. They are immediate because there are no mediating or interrupting
entities between them.
Poor John ran away Layer 2 IC2
(ii)
The morphemes are the
ultimate constituents of the sentence. The expression ultimate constituent
implies that these elements are not further analyzable at the syntactic level.
If we further analyze them we will enter the realm of phonology.
(iii)
These constituents have
been organized in a particular order in the sentence, a jumble of morphemes
thrown together at random might have produced a non-sentence(eg.Away John poor
ran). The
sequential ordering of the ultimate constituents is called the linear of the
sentence.
(iv)
A construction may be
defined as any significant group of words or morphemes.
Morphemes,
words, phrases, clauses are all constituent of sentences though all of them are
not ultimate constituent except for morphemes. The phrasal relationship can be
showed in the following manner.
(Sentence)
(Subject) (Predicate)
M(det.)/article Noun main verb Noun
phrase
Nut
(noun) -s
( Plural morpheme)
Representing IC
analysis:
The
hierarchical organization of constituents in IC analysis is comparable to that
of a nation consisting of the hierarchy of states, districts, towns, villages,
families and individual members in the families. The entire utterance/sentence
may be compared to a nation, and at the lowest level, the morphemes may be
compared to individual members.
Simple bracketing or
tree diagrams does not show the nature and
functions of the constituents. This inadequacy was removed by introducing the
notion of labeling. Labelled bracketing
and tress with labeled nodes gives us an insight into the syntactic
function of the ultimate and immediate constituents of sentences.
The
tree diagram is also known as ‘Phrase Maker’, as infact it picturises the
phrase structure of a particular sentence.
Aux. mainverb A
N
Nodes:
a point at which classes branch into sub-class
Branches:
the lines that lend down from one point to the next lower point
[((The)(boy)(((munch)(ed))((the)(nut)(s))))]
[((poor)(John))((ran)(away))]
These
labels are categorical or formal, indicating the category to which each
constituent belongs.
Functional
labels like subject, predicate, object, etc., can be used to label the
constituents, such labels sows the relationships among the constituents which
formal labels cannot. An NP(noun phrase) for instance can function as Subject
or Object.
In
terms of the functions of the constituents, construction can be grouped into
five types – structure of
predication/modification/complementation/subordination/coordination)
Using IC analysis to
disambiguate simple sentences:
IC
analysis can account for certain types of ambiguities to an extent. Sometimes
we come across sentences to which more than one structure can be assigned
having therefore more than one meaning –‘ambiguous sentences’.
Old men and women old
men and women
Old/men and
women
Old men/ and
women
The
difference in meaning cannot be attributed to any one of the ultimate
constituent but results from a difference in the way they are associated with
one another. Ambiguity of this kind is referred to as ‘Syntactic ambiguity’,
not all syntactic ambiguity is satisfactorily accounted for in terms of
constituent structure.
They can fish They can fish
Auxillary (can) main verb (fish)
They
/ can fish.
They/can/fish.
Similarly
we can make ‘Egyptians cotton shirt’
unambiguous by having the first cut either after ‘Egyptian’(a cotton shirt made
in Egypt) or after ‘cotton’(shirt made of Egyptian cotton).
Egyptian/
cotton shirt
Egyptian
cotton/ shirt
Slightly,
more difficult is ‘He said he was coming today’. If ‘today’ belongs with ‘said’
the first cut is presumably after ‘coming’; if it belongs with ‘coming’ the cut
shall be made after ‘said’:
He
said he was coming / today.
He
said/ he was coming today.
‘Flying
planes can be dangerous.’ The sentence can mean two things: (i) the action of
flying planes can be dangerous, and (ii) planes which fly can be dangerous.
Flying/
planes can be dangerous. Flying
planes/ can be dangerous.
DEEP AND SURFACE
STRUCTURES:
Any grammatical analysis can
be divided into two parts, one of which is about the superficial or apparent
structure of sentences, the other about the sentences' underlying structure.
For example, we can take the following pair of sentences:
John
is easy to please.
John
is eager to please.
Syntactically both these sentences seem to be alike but they are
not so. Considering the meaning implied in these sentences, we find that the
function of John is that of subject in one case and that of object in the other.
Both these sentences have identical surface structures but different deep
structures. The surface structure is actually produced structure. It refers to
the sentence as it is pronounced or written. The deep structure is the abstract
structure that allows the native speaker of a language to know what the
sentence means. It may then be said that the deep structure expresses the
semantic contents of a sentence, whereas the surface structure of a sentence
determines its phonetic form. Transformation functions as a link between deep
structure of sentences and their surface structures. For example
Surface
structure
Deep structure
Visiting
doctors can be nuisance. 1.We
visit doctors. It can be nuisance.
2. Doctors visit us. They can be nuisance.
Two
superficially different sentences are shown in these examples.
Raj
broke the window.
The
window was broken by Raj.
In
traditional grammar, the first is called an active sentence, focusing on what
Raj did, and the second is a passive sentence, focusing on ‘The Window’ and
what happened to it. The distinction between them is a difference in their
‘surface structure’, that is, the different syntactic forms they have as
individual English sentences. However, this superficial difference in form
disguises the fact that the two sentences are very closely related, even
identical, at some less superficial level.
The
other ‘underlying’ level, where the basic components (noun phrase + verb + noun
phrase) shared by the two sentences can be represented, is called their ‘deep
structure’. The deep structure is an abstract level of structural organization
in which all the elements determining structural interpretation are
represented. That same deep structure can be the source of many other surface
structures such as ‘It was Raj who broke the window.’ And ‘Was the window
broken by Raj?’ In short, the grammar must be capable of showing how a single
underlying abstract representation can become different surface structures.
Semantics is that branch of linguistics that studies
meaning. The word is derived from
the Greek noun
‘sema’
which means ‘signal’ and the verb’ semains’
which means signify. Semantics may be
described as a
Study relating to signification or meaning.. It is
the study of the relationship between a referent and its
referend, between a signifier and its signified. It is
difficult to explain what we mean by a
meaning. With a
baby
learning to speak, we point out to its
father and say daddy. For some days the
child will call all adult
men
daddy and it is only later that it comes
to realize that it refers exclusively to one man, its father. Until this
realization
is complete the child cannot be said to have learnt the word daddy. Unless we
come across their usage and begin to use
them in sentences of our own we have not learnt the meaning of these words.
A
word has different meanings. The fundamental meaning is lexical or denotative
meaning. The lexical
meaning
is what we find in the dictionaries. For example we know the meaning of Dog. It is a domestic pet
animal.
We can understand the meaning of the
word dog without having any dog in mind. In constructions ‘My
dog
is an alsation’ the refernce is not to any dog but to a particular dog. The
meaning becomes referential.
There
is a contextual meaning. Honourable has its clear lexical meaning. Bur in
Antony’s speech the term is
ironically
used.
Connotation - Association
A
word can have different connotations. The same word can signify different
things to different people through
various
associations. For example we may not
like certain persons. If our dislike is intense and deep we
develop
such an aversion that we may hate the
very name. Many Jews l hate the name of Hitler because of
his atrocities on the Jews Similarly the name Teresa can provoke positive associations.
Collocation
A
word on its own is powerful. But in combination with other words it can be more
powerful. Mummy is
effective but ‘Dear dear darling mummy’ can be much
more evocative. Collocation simply means putting
together
two or more words or phrases together. Loving kindness, tender love, the most
unkindest cut, are
powerful
connotations. .Collocations can change the meaning of words. Maiden may be a
woman but a
maiden
speech is the first speech and a maiden over is an over in which no run is
conceded by the bowler. A
cover
drive, long corner, free hit, free kick are collocations used in the register
of sports. White race is In fact
pinkish
grey .white wine id pale yellow or gold.
White night is sleeplessness. White lie is a forgivable lie.
Collocations
have to be used carefully. Antique and
elderly may belong to the same semantic field and their
nucleus
meaning is old. We can say an anique
table and an elderly man. But antique gentleman and an
elderly
table are not permissible. A predictable collocation is called cliché. A cliché
is used so frequently that it
has
become hackneyed or meaningless. – the burning question, at the end of the day,
in respect of, under the
circumstances,
in accordance with, on account of.
A
wholly unexpected collocation can be arresting. Instead of burning hot an
expression like freezing hot, or
collocations
like vociferous lobster, condensed moonlight can be interesting.
Another
type of collocation is one in which the meaning can’t be deduced from the words
that make up the
collocation.
Blowing up one’s own trumpet is to boast and to accept a remark with ‘a grain
of salt’ is not to
entirely
believe. Phrasal verbs like Put up with are of the same kind.
Semantic field
A
set of words have the same nucleus meaning. They belong to the same semantic
field. The meaning of a
word
in a semantic field is partly derived from the existence of other words of a
similar nature. Part of the
meaning
of Bus is derived from that it is not a car or van or a coach. Part of the
meaning of a flat is it is
not
a cottage or mansion or palace or hut or villa. In a language like Swahili in
which there is only one word for
a
moving vehicle ( gari) that word has a wider range of meaning. When we describe
a woman as Pretty we
know
that she is not beautiful or good looking and part of the meaning of the word
is derived by excluding
words
with similar sense.
In
certain fields we have a strictly regulated set of items, the use of one
excludes others. There are a regular
set of terms to designate military ranks. A
sergeant is not a private or lieutenant, or colonelk or captain and
major. Part of the meaning of sergeant is
derived from excluding other ranks.
We
may not have a strictly regulated semantic field. For example a car company can
call a model Super. We
may
think that it is the best. Then we may come to know that they have better
models named Classic, Deluxe
and
super is inferior to the other two. The car manufacturer has chosen his own semantic field and unless we
know
the whole field we can’t interpret a word properly.
A
good room in a big hotel will be better than the Deluxe of an ordinary hotel.
Terms like Luxury, De luxe, first
class or good in the description of a hotel will
have no meaning unless we know all the words in the semantic
field.
The
range of words in any semantic field will vary according to the culture of the
society. In English we have a
word
with a restricted semantic field, the other words in the same semantic field
may be dromedary or
Bactrian.
When it comes to horse there is considerable range. Horse is much used in Eng
there will be a wider
semantic
field for camel. This can pose problems to a translator. In a language with
just one word for horse,
how
to translate the word Nag. As it is said by
Dr.Johnson words change their manners when they change
their
country.
Morphemes
The
‘word’ is the basic building block of language: traditional grammars of English
used to take words as the smallest unit of their analysis. Modern Linguistics
recognizes that words can be divided up into smaller units called ‘Morphemes’.
Two sorts of word
When we look at the shape of English words, we can
see that there are two sorts of word.
There are words that seem to exist as wholes:
elephant, tomato, chalk, frog, obey, marmalade.
There are words that can be broken down into
smaller pieces, some of which they share with other words: lovely, unbreakable,
disappearance.
Lovely has a base part, love,
with -ly added.
Other words also have this -ly ending:
swiftly, coldly, cheerfully, stupidly.
Unbreakable can be
broken into three sections. The base is break. We will refer to this as
the stem of the word. The prefix un- has been added on to the
front of the stem, and the suffix -able has been attached to the
end of the stem.
|
un-
|
Break
|
-able
|
|
(prefix)
|
(stem)
|
(suffix)
|
The words that can stand alone without any
attachments (for example, break) are called free morphemes.
The attachments that cannot stand alone (for
example, un-) are called bound morphemes.
Different kinds of attachment
There are two kinds of bound morpheme.
Inflectional morphemes
Albert worked at home and illustrated books.
Albert worked at home and illustrated books.
In the sentence above, the words worked, illustrated,
and books all show the process of inflection. The attachments -ed
and -s are called inflections or inflectional morphemes.
They add extra information to the word without fundamentally changing it.
In the case of -ed on worked and illustrated,
the inflection tells us that the action is in the past tense. In the case of -s
on books, it tells us about number - that there is more than one book.
Derivational morphemes
Margaret was unhappy about Scooty's disappearance.
Margaret was unhappy about Scooty's disappearance.
In the sentence above, the words unhappy and
disappearance illustrate the process of derivation. The
attachments un-, dis- and -ance are all derivational
morphemes.
Derivational morphemes can change the meaning
of a word.
happy -> unhappy
appear -> disappear
happy -> unhappy
appear -> disappear
Derivational morphemes can change word
classes.
disappear (verb) -> disappearance (noun)
disappear (verb) -> disappearance (noun)
Morphemes are not the same as syllables,
although morpheme boundaries and syllable boundaries often coincide, as in slow+ly.
A morpheme is the smallest element of meaning in a word. Elephant is one morpheme, elephants is two; neighbour
is one morpheme, neighbourhood is two.
|
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Morphemes Inflection Derivation Suffix Prefix Suffix Their book+s were un + read + able.
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Classification of
Morphemes:
Lexical and
Grammatical Morphemes:
Ronald W Langacker in his book, ‘Language and
Its Structure’ has divided ‘morphemes’ into two classes: Lexical and
grammatical.
|
Lexical Morpheme are forms like boy, write,
pen
|
Grammatical Morpheme are forms like some,
with, an
|
|
Lexical Morpheme are noun, adjective,
adverbs
|
Grammatical Morpheme are elements like
preposition, articles, conjunctions, forms indicating number, gender, tense…
|
|
They have more or less independent meaning
so that one or a series of lexical forms in isolation can be fairly
meaningful.
|
|
However, the distinction between lexical and
grammatical morphemes is artificial and inadequate. ‘Hood’ is lexical morpheme
in ‘She wears a hood’ but not in ‘Childhood’. Even small grammatical
morpheme such as {-ly} in ‘rapidly’ and the {-er} in ‘teacher’ have definite
semantic content. Hence, the necessity of a more rationalistic division of
morpheme.
Free Morphemes and
Bound Morphemes:
Morphemes are the minimum grammatical forms of
a language. Some of them can occur alone, others cannot.
Forms which do not occur alone are ‘bound
morpheme’ and those which occur alone are ‘free morpheme’.
Free Morpheme:
cat, rat, go, black
Bound Morpheme: -ness, -less, pre-, up-, de-,
con-, -er
Happy – unhappy ( un- + free form); love –
loves (free form + -s)
Roots and Stem:
Roots:
1. The root morpheme is that part of the word
which is left when all the affixes have been removed.
2. Root morpheme may be bound or free.
3. Root morpheme is potentially unlimited in a
language, because language goes on creating new words or borrowing ‘loan words’
from other languages.
4. The criterion of determining the root is its
indivisibility into constituent morphemes by matching its parts with the parts
of other words in the language.
Stem:
The form to which an
affix is attached is called a ‘stem’.
Unhappy : un-(affix)
+ happy (stem); natural: natur(stem) + -al(affix)
Affixes:
In a
word like ‘unfaithful’, ‘faith’ is the root, the ‘un’ and ‘ful’ are affixes.
‘un-‘ is a prefix, whereas ‘-ful’ is the suffix.
(i)
All affixes are bound morphemes, for they cannot occur alone.
A word which
consists of only one free root morpheme is called ‘monomorphemeic’. Eg.: cat,
rat, dog
The words containing
more than one root are called ‘polymorphemeic’ Eg. Air-craft
They can co-occur
with or without affixes they are often called ‘compound words’.
(ii)
Roots and affixes may be of any structure and length, though affixes generally
tend to be shorter than roots.
(iii)
The affixes is the recurrent formative morpheme of words other than
roots.
(iv)
Affixes are of three types: prefix, infix and suffix. Affixes which
are attached at the beginning of the stem are called ‘prefixes’ Eg. Unhappy,
irregular. Affixes which are attached at the end of a stem are called
‘suffixes’. Eg. Going, goodness, believed.
They are also
affixes which are inserted in the middle of a stem, such affixes are called
‘infixes’. We cannot give any example in English. Eg. Latin word ‘rump’=
weak.; root : rup,
and the imperative infix is ‘-m-‘.
Diagrammatic
representation of the manner in which suffixes, infixes and prefixes combine
with stems
Inflectional and Derivational Affixes:
Both inflectional
and derivational morphemes are suffixes; they are bound morphemes following a
root. Inflection and derivation are therefore the subcategories of suffixes.
But they differ from each other.
Inflectional
affixes: Inflections change the form of a word. Walk, walks, walked, walking
are different forms of the same word.; and therefore –s, -ed. –ing are
inflectional affixes.
The inflectional
changes made in the form of a word serve to indicate grammatical relations such
as number, gender, tense, etc.
Eg. In ‘walked’, the
inflection ‘-ed’ indicates tense. ‘Believe’ and ‘believed’ are different forms
of the same word and ‘-ed’ is an inflection.
A representative
sample of the inflectional affixes in English are given below:
|
Verb
|
Noun
|
Adjective
|
|
Walked
(-ed), walking(-ing), walks(-s), written(-en)
|
Boys(-s),
boy’s(-‘s)
|
Brighter
(-er), brightest (-est)
|
In English
inflectional affixes are usually suffixes.
Derivational Affixes: Derivation is a process of word formation. Derivational affixes
create new words.
Kind and Kindly are
different words and ‘-ly’ is a derivational affix.
Happy and Unhappy
are different words and ‘un-’ is a derivational affix.
Believe and
Disbelive are different words and ‘dis-’ is a derivational affix.
Derivational Affix
may be either prefixes or suffixes.
|
Inflectional
Affix
|
Derivational
Affix
|
|
Inflections
change the form of the word.
|
Derivation
is a process of word formation, wherein new words are formed.
|
|
Walk,
walks, walked: the inflection changes shows different forms of the same word,
showing the different grammatical relations.
|
Happy
and unhappy: are the two different words ‘-ly’ is the derivational suffix.
|
|
In
English inflectional and affixes are usually suffixes.
|
Derivational
affixes may be either prefixes or suffixes.
|
|
An
inflection suffix occurs at the end position in a form is possible after an
inflection.
|
The
suffixes which may be followed by other suffixes/
|
|
Eg.
Develop + s
|
Eg.
Developments: develop+ment+s(root, derivational, inflectional)
|
Class Maintaining and Class Changing Derivational Suffixes:
Derivational
suffixes can be sub-classified into two types: the class maintaining and the
class changing derivational suffixes.
The class
maintaining derivational suffixes are those which produce a derived form of the
same class as the underlying form; they do not change the class of a part of
speech. Eg. Boyhood, childhood, kinship: -hood, -ship are class maintaining
derivational suffixes. In these examples, they produce nouns, out of nouns
after suffixation.
The class changing
derivations are those that produce a derived form of another class. In teacher,
boyish, development, national; -er, -ish, -ment, -al are class changing
derivational suffixes. In teacher, a verb teach has become a noun after
suffixing the –er. In boyish, a noun boy has become an adjective after
suffixing the ‘-ish’.
|
Some
derivational affixes like -ly, -ness
etc. change the class(the part of speech) of the stem. They are called ‘class
changing derivations’. Eg. Good(adj) : goodness(-ness)(noun)
|
Some
derivational affixes like –hood, -ship, etc do not bring about a change of
class. They are called ‘class maintaining derivations). Eg. Likely and
unlikely(adj.) man and manhood (noun)
|
Bound Bases: Bound bases are those morphemes which serve as roots for derivational
forms but which never appear as free forms. ‘-clude’ is the bound base n
conclude, preclude, include, exclude…. and similarly ‘-ceive’ in receive,
perceive, deceive…
Classification of Morphemes in English
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