subconstituent

English

Etymology

From sub- +‎ constituent.

Noun

subconstituent (plural subconstituents)

1. (linguistics) A part or component of a syntactic, morphological, or phonetic constituent.
   • 1990, John Kingston, Mary E. Beckman, Papers in Laboratory Phonology, →ISBN, page 44:

     In any metrical tree or constituent, the HTE of the subconstituent dominated by l is: a. One register step lower than the HTE of the subconstituent dominated by h when the l subconstituent is on the right; b. at the same register as the HTE of the subconstituent dominated by h when the l subconstituent is on the left.

   • 2000, North Eastern Linguistic Society, NELS: Proceedings of the North East Linguistic Society:

     The dominance relation directly characterizes the property of subconstituency: X dominates Y if Y is a subconstituent of X.

   • 2014, Núria Gala, Reinhard Rapp, Gemma Bel-Enguix, Language Production, Cognition, and the Lexicon, →ISBN, page 479:

     Given two adjacent constituents A and B, two cases must be considered: * A can attach as a left subconstituent of B; * B can attach as a right subconstituent of A, or as a right subconstituent of an active subconstituent of A.

2. (mathematics) One component of an algebra or graph that is made up of the union of several subalgebras or subgraphs.
   • 1999, Journal of algebraic combinatorics - Volume 10, page 79:

     The second subconstituent of a graph with respect to some vertex x is the induced graph on the vertices distinct from x, and that are not adjacent to x.

   • 2008, Terwilliger Algebras of Wreath Products of Association Schemes, →ISBN:

     During 1992 and 1993 Paul Terwilliger introduced a new tool called the subconstituent algebra for studying the underlying structure of association schemes through a series of three papers [21], [22], and [23]. Terwilliger introduced a method for studying commutative association schemes by defining a new algebra that is noncommutative, finite dimensional, semisimple C-algebra. The subconstituent algebra is now popularly referred to as the "Terwilliger" algebra.

3. (physics) A component of an elementary particle.
   • 1993, Nuclei, particles and field, page 2:

     The term prequark has appeared in the literature as a name for subconstituents in composite models [4].

   • 2011, Sylvie Braibant, Giorgio Giacomelli, Maurizio Spurio, Particles and Fundamental Interactions, →ISBN, page 229:

     Apart from hadrons, which are made of subconstituent quarks, electron and positron are “fundamental” objects.

   • 2012, H. Mitter, W. Plessas, Nucleon-Nucleon and Nucleon-Antinucleon Interactions, →ISBN, page 700:

     Subconstituent models of quarks, leptons and the weak gauge bosons [4] sometimes employ the idea of "Chiral Confinement [5] .