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Unit 29: Transformational and Phrase Structure Rules

These morphemes are the ultimate constituents of the sentence. The expression ultimate constituents Notes
implies that these elements are not further analysable at the syntactic level. If we further analyse
them we will enter the realm of phonology. They are immediate because there are no mediating or
interrupting entities between them. These constituents have been organised in a particular order in
the sentence. A jumble of morphemes thrown together at random might have produced a non-sentence.
Away John poor ran.

Each human language has certain permissible ways of organising morphemes in its sentence. Each
language has its linear structure. The sequential ordering of the ultimate constituents shown above
is called the linear of the sentence. Some of the constituents tend to go together. The morphemes
(which are also words in this sentence) ‘door’ and ‘John’ ‘ran’ and ‘away’ are tied together. These
groups of items which go together are called Phrases. Thus morphemes, words, phrases and clauses
are all constituents of sentences though all of them are not ultimate (ultimate constituents are only
morphemes). The phrasal relationship of the various constituents of the above sentence can be shown
in the following manner.
POOR JOHN RAN AWAY

This relation can be shown in brackets as well :
(Poor) (John) (ran) (away)
The initial emphasis is upon pure segmentation, simply dividing the sentence into its constituent
elements without, at first, knowing what these elements are. The principle is 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 units the morpheme. Generally the division is binary except in some cases where
division into three or more points is allowed. This can further be illustrated by the sentence.
A white girl followed the black man.

(((A) ((white) (girl))
(((Follow) (ed) (the) (black) (man)))
The best method of display is to use the principle of the family tree, with the main branching showing
the main division, and so on. In fact, the terms ‘tree diagram’ and ‘branching’ have become technical
terms in IC analysis. For our sentence the tree would be:

A WHITE GIRL FOLLOWED THE BLACK MAN
Simple bracketings or tree diagrams (as given above) do not show the nature and functions of the
constituents. This inadequacy of the model was removed by introducing the notion of labelling.
Labelled bracketing and trees with labelled nodes give us an insight into the syntactic function of the
ultimate and intermediate constituents of sentences. We will take a sentence (The linguist will analyse
a sentence) to illustrate this model. This sentence is represented by the symbol (S). It is composed of
a noun phrase (the linguist) which is composed of an article (A) and a noun (N), and the verb phrase
(will analyze a sentence) which is composed of a verb (V), and a noun phrase (NP); the verb (will
analyze) is composed of an auxiliary (Aux.) and the main verb (MV); and the noun phrase (a sentence)
is composed of an article (A) and a noun (N). The bracketing of these constituents with labels may be
shown in the form of a tree diagram which is also known as Phrase Maker. A tree diagram is in fact
a picture of the phrase structure of the particular sentence.

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