What is a constituent?

Definition
	A constituent is one of two or more grammatical units that enter syntactically or morphologically into a construction at any level.

Examples (English)
	The sentence You eat bananas contains the following constituents: Immediate constituents you eat bananas Ultimate constituents you eat banana -s

Kinds
	Here are some kinds of constituents:
	What is an immediate constituent? What is an ultimate constituent? What is a construction? What are discontinuous constituents? What is a morpheme? What is a zero?

Sources
	Crystal 1985 68
	Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, and Svartvik 1985 38
	Mish 1991 281

Context for this page:

Concept module: constituent
In overview module: Glossary (Linguistics): C
In modular book: Glossary of linguistic terms, by Eugene E. Loos (general editor), Susan Anderson (editor), Dwight H., Day, Jr. (editor), Paul C. Jordan (editor), and J. Douglas Wingate (editor)
In bookshelf: Linguistics

This page is an extract from the LinguaLinks Library, Version 5.0 published on CD-ROM by SIL International, 2003. [Ordering information.]

Page content last modified: 5 January 2004

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