Question

英语函授本科生 《英语语言学》作业题 1.what’s your understanding of language?W

Answer 1

“IC analysis” is a new approach of sentence study that cuts a sentence into two(or more) segments.This kind of pure segmentation is simply dividing a sentence into its constituent elements without even knowing what they really are .What remain of the first cut are called “immediate constituents”,and what are left at the final cut are called “ultimate constituents”.For example,“John left yesterday” can be thus segmented:“John| left | | yesterday”.We get two immediate constituents for the first cut (|),and they are “John” and “left yesterday”.Further split(||) this sentence generates three “ultimate constituents”:“John”,“left ” and “yesterday”.