True or false: If a sequence of words is a constituent in one sentence, then that sequence of words is a constituent in all other sentences in that variety of English.

Question

BlackTom AI · Accepted Answer

Constituency is a structural property assigned by a particular syntactic parse, not an intrinsic label on a fixed string of words. Key concepts: a constituent is a phrase (NP, VP, PP, etc.) that functions as a unit in a sentence; constituency is diagnosed with tests such as substitution (replace the string with a pro-form), movement (fronting), and coordination (conjoining with a phrase of the same type). These tests show whether a string behaves as a single unit in that sentence’s structure.

Step-by-step reasoning:
1. Apply the notion: take any sequence of words (e.g., "old men"). In one sentence, the parser may group them as a single NP: "We saw the old men." Substitution: "We saw them" works, so "the old men" is a constituent there.
2. In another sentence, the same string can be split by structure: "The old men and women left." One parse is [(the old men) and (women)] where "old men" is a constituent; another parse is [the old (men and women)] where "old" modifies the whole conjunction and "old men" is not a constituent. Thus whether "old men" counts as a constituent depends on the sentence’s syntactic structure and chosen parse.
3. Tests can yield different results in different sentences. For instance, movement/fronting that succeeds in one sentence may fail in another because the string is not a single syntactic unit there.

Why the correct answer is correct: Because constituency depends on phrase structure and syntactic context, a particular sequence can be a constituent in one sentence and not in another. Constituency is not a sentence-independent property of a word sequence.

Why the other option is incorrect: Claiming that a sequence that is a constituent in one sentence must be a constituent in all sentences ignores structural ambiguity and differing grammatical configurations; empirical constituency tests routinely show variation.

Conclusion: The correct choice is False, which matches the provided answer.

True or false: If a sequence of words is a constituent in one sentence, then that sequence of words is a constituent in all other sentences in that variety of English.单项选择题

类似问题

Consider the following sentence: What is the largest possible constituent (in terms of number of words)?

You own a bond that pays $64 in interest annually. The face value is $1,000 and the current market price is $1,021.61. The bond matures in 11 years. What is the yield to maturity?

Which of the following statements is CORRECT?

It will cost $9,600 to acquire an ice cream cart that is expected to produce cash inflows of $3,600 a year for three years. After the three years, the cart is expected to be worthless. What is the payback period?

更多留学生实用工具

智能学习助手

风格化写作助手

论文查重助手

文献引用助手

课堂转译助手

课堂笔记助手

Quiz搜索助手

学校历年真题

智能刷题助手

智能匹配练习

希望你的学习变得更简单