Is there any paper or resource where various constituency tests are listed and analyzed (besides topicalisation, clefting, pseudoclefting and all those tests that are illustrated on English)?
More specifically, I also want to know evidence for IP (TP), CP and tensed VP in terms of constituency tests, and for PP without using the proform.
Any help is very much appreciated.
The article
Tests for constituents: What they really reveal about the nature of syntactic structure
provides a comprehensive discussion of tests for constituents. I am the author of this article. The article scrutinizes 15 commonly employed tests for constituents that one finds in the syntax literature, documenting their use extensively.
The discussion of the tests is, though, limited to the sentence structures of English. In general, those that employ the tests do so mainly with just English in mind; rarely does one encounter the tests being applied to other languages, and indeed, it is likely that their applicability to other languages is limited. Ideally, each language needs to have its own battery of tests to motivate its syntactic structures.
Concerning the status of IP/TP, it may be difficult to motivate them using tests for constituents, although pro-form substitution seems to work:
(1) John arrived after you arrived.
(2) John arrived after that. (that = you arrived)
Concerning tensed VP, the tests do not for the most part succeed at motivating its existence as a constituent, a fact that is often overlooked by the authors that employ the tests.
