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    Mishal Abbasi
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    ICA (Immediate Constituent Analysis) has some inherent limitations as a model for describing language: 1. ICA does not indicate the grammatical functions or roles of constituents in a sentence. It does not label parts of speech. 2. ICA can result in structural ambiguity since it only analyzes surface structure and cannot account for differences between syntactically related sentences. 3. ICA assumes binary divisions in sentences but some sentences have alternative analyses not accounted for in a simple binary structure.

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    ICA weaknesses

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    ICA (Immediate Constituent Analysis) has some inherent limitations as a model for describing language: 1. ICA does not indicate the grammatical functions or roles of constituents in a sentence. It does not label parts of speech. 2. ICA can result in structural ambiguity since it only analyzes surface structure and cannot account for differences between syntactically related sentences. 3. ICA assumes binary divisions in sentences but some sentences have alternative analyses not accounted for in a simple binary structure.

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    1K views2 pages

    ICA Weaknesses

    Uploaded by

    Mishal Abbasi
    ICA (Immediate Constituent Analysis) has some inherent limitations as a model for describing language: 1. ICA does not indicate the grammatical functions or roles of constituents in a sentence. It does not label parts of speech. 2. ICA can result in structural ambiguity since it only analyzes surface structure and cannot account for differences between syntactically related sentences. 3. ICA assumes binary divisions in sentences but some sentences have alternative analyses not accounted for in a simple binary structure.

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    of 2

    2.2.

    Weaknesses of ICA

    In spite of its popularity and scientific rigour, ICA was shown to involve
    inherent limitations because as a model of language description, its descriptive framework
    did not cover all the aspects of language that constitute the knowledge of a native speaker,
    and it contained some analytical inconsistencies.

    1. ICA does not indicate the nature and grammatical functions of the constituent. It
    does not indicate the role or function of constituents as they are not labelled. When
    parsing is done, some implied grammatical information is included (circularity of
    argument)

    To remove this inadequacy, the idea of labelling was introduced by Mark Halliday. He
    introduced 2 types of labels:

    Class Labels (Np, Vp, A (article), Adj (adjective phrase, etc)

    Function Labels (S (subject), O(Object), V(Verb))

    For example:

    (S)
    Poor John ran away

    (NP) (VP)
    Poor John Ran Away

    (Adj) (V)
    Poor Ran

    (N) (Adv)
    John Away

    2. There is Structural ambiguity in ICA. It is also known as Syntactic or grammatical


    ambiguity. This is why in some sentences, it is not always clear where the division
    should be. Because it focuses only on the surface of the sentence (formal properties),
    ICA cannot show the syntactic relationship between sentences which are superficially
    different (active/passive, positive/negative) and fails to show the differences between
    sentences which are superficially similar.

    For example in the sentence, “Annie bumped into a man with an umbrella.”
    We are unsure whether Annie had an umbrella and she bumped into a man or Annie bumped
    into a man who had an umbrella.

    However both the meaning of the sentence are correct but the sentence is ambiguous.

    3. In ICA division is arbitrarily binary, while some sentences may have alternative


    analyses. Any construction at any level will be cut into 2 parts but this is not always
    possible.

    For example in “Old men and women”, the following divisions can be made:

    Old + men + and + women

    Old men + and women

    Old + men and women

    4. The analysis in ICA does not go beyond the morpheme.

    5. ICA cannot handle lexical ambiguity in the sentence. This happens when one word
    in a phrase has more than one meaning.

    For example in the sentence, “This will make you smart”, it is unclear what the word smart
    is indicating (smart body or clever).

    Another example is “At the Bank”. The word bank is unclear in this case (whether it means
    along the river/lake or an institution that deals in money and its substitutes and provides other
    money-related services)

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