No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
The Analysis of Grammatical Constituents
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 April 2026
Extract
1. The principle of descriptive analysis of constructions on the basis of immediate constituents has been recognized by most descriptive linguists, and most of them have employed immediate constituents in analytical procedures, though in some instances not directly so. Linguists have also recognized that there are certain significant features about such constituent elements of constructions. Bloomfield formally treated some of these features and called them taxemes. But not all the significant features of constructions were presented by Bloom-field, and not all the interrelationships of these features have been adequately handled. For example, Bloomfield's four taxemes are not of coordinate value in the description and classification of constituent units.
Information
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © 1948 Linguistic Society of America
References
1 Leonard Bloomfield, Language 166–71 (New York, 1933).
2 K. L. Pike, Taxemes and Immediate Constituents, Lang. 19.65–92 (1943).
3 Zellig S. Harris, From Morpheme to Utterance, Lang. 22.161–83 (1946).
4 For a discussion of the validity of immediate constituents and of the methods by which they are determined, see Rulon S. Wells, Lang. 23.81–117 (1947).
5 Bernard Bloch, Studies in Colloquial Japanese II, Lang. 22.200–48 (1946).
6 Note that by ‘grammatical unit’ we mean any constituent unit in the language which is a functional entity, i.e. every significant functional unit from the morpheme to the utterance.
7 This system of descriptive analysis diverges from that proposed by Rulon S. Wells in that the difference between so-called segmental and suprasegmental features is preserved. Wells (op.cit.) reduces all descriptive features to a linear order (despite certain complications in the assigning of such order). The system presented here attempts to recognize the essentially distinct features in the two levels. The totality of descriptive features is, however, the same, regardless of the grouping which one employs in describing them.
8 K. L. Pike, The Intonation of American English; Ann Arbor, 1945.
9 These have been treated by me in Syntax, published in mimeographed form by the Summer Institute of Linguistics (1946).
10 Bloomfield, Language 233–7.
11 In the writer's speech this suffix occurs in an alternate form /iyən/ in such words as comedian and Abyssinian, but in most forms in which palatalization has not taken place, the form is /yən/, e.g. in Arabian, Italian, librarian. There are optional pronunciations in many words.
12 Historically -ian is an adjectivizing affix, but on a present descriptive level of analysis it seems unwise and unnecessary to consider that all the nouns occurring with this -ian suffix must be treated as adjectives which have been nominalized by a zero nominalizer.
13 This system of intonational notation is taken from Pike, op.cit. The subscript numerals from 2 to 4 indicate three of the four contrastive intonational levels in English. The double solidi indicate terminal pause. The superscribed ° indicates the placement of phrase stress.
14 Compare the homophonous sequence aisle.
15 ‘Coordinate’ does not imply that items are of the same class, but simply that they are not subordinate and that they are of equal tactical rank. Note that some exocentric constructions may be subordinative, e.g. thoroughbred, in which the subordinate constituent thorough is attributive to bred, but in which the construction as a whole does not belong to the same class as the head word.
- 8
- Cited by