constellation [Lat. constellatio ‘position of the stars’]

Basic syntactic relation in the description of the hierarchical structure of sentences: between two elements A and B occurring in a linear fashion there holds the relation of constituency, if and only if they are both dominated by a common element C ( domination). Constituent structure grammar is based on this relation. ( dependency)

References

immediate constituent analysis, phrase structure grammar, transformational grammar

A term used in structural sentence analysis for every linguistic unit, which is part of a larger linguistic unit. Several constituents together form a construction: for example, in the sentence, Money doesn’t grow on trees, each word is a constituent, as is the prepositional phrase on trees. Constituents can be joined together with other constituents to form larger units. If two constituents, A and B, are joined to form a hierarchically

phrase structure rule, rewrite rule)

References

immediate constituent analysis

Term introduced by R.B.Lees for partial sentences which are embedded in matrix sentences. Constituent clauses are expanded constituents which are dominated in the tree diagram by an S-node which is not identical with the initial S-node (embedding). The term ‘constituent clause’ corresponds to the traditional notion of dependent or subordinate clause.