What is the aim of IC (immediate constituent) analysis? Make an

What is the aim of IC (immediate constituent) analysis? Make an IC analysis of the following sentence by means a tree diagram.
My mother said Mary liked the handbag.
【正确答案】:

The aim of IC analysis is to discover and demonstrate the interrelationships of the words in a linguistic structure—the sentence or the word combination. The lC analysis views the sentence not just as a linear sequence of elements but as a sequence made up of “ layers" of immediate constituents, each lower-level constituent being part of a higher-level constituent.Through IC analysis , the internal structure of a sentence may be demonstrated clearly, and ambiguities,if any, will be revealed.
We can analyze the sentence like this :