Document Type : Research

Authors

• Seyed Mohammad Hosseini-Maasoum ¹
• Maliheh Eslami ²

¹ Associate Professor, Payame Noor University, Tehran, Iran

² M.A. in Linguistics, Payame Noor University, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

A constituent is a chain or structure made up of one or more words, which function as a whole i.e. a single unit, in syntactic operations. Almost all syntactic operations are applied to constituents. Any failure to detect them properly will not only lead to structural ambiguity but also make the analysis of the syntactic processes virtually impossible. It is here that a strong need is felt for a special device to detect the structures. Constituency tests are tools applied in the formal syntactic tradition and hence, in Minimalism, for the detection of constituents and the borderlines between them. So far, constituency tests and their applications in syntactic analyses have been substantially discussed in English resources on syntax (Radford, 1997; 2006; 2009; Carnie, 2001; Kim & Sells, 2007; Tallerman, 2011), but they have only been occasionally and briefly addressed in Persian sources although constituent detection is one of the first steps in fundamental syntactic investigations.
Tests such as coordination, ellipsis, topicalization clefting, sentence fragment etc. have been frequently discussed in terms of how successful they are in detecting main categorical constituents. The results show that these tests are not absolute devices for the detection of borders between constituents. In other words, not all of them are successful in detecting all constituents. On the other hand, their efficiency may vary cross-linguistically. For example, as Hosseini-Maasoum (2022) puts it, a test like coordination is equally successful in Persian and English while a test like topicalization may be more efficient in English than in Persian.

Keywords

• Syntactic constituents
• Constituency tests
• Extraposition
• syntax
• Persian