Distributional analysis does not usually stop here, but endeavours to discover relations of units within the frame of the larger ones. The methods used at this step is known as IMMEDIATE CONSTITUENT ANALYSIS or IC ANALYSIS. Its aim is to find which element in a group is the leader. For that the larger unit is presented as a sequence of distributional classes of the smaller units. The method is designed to discover and state the relations existing in a large unit. The method is based on the assumption that every linguistic unit and the sentence in particular can be split into two parts simple association of which immediately produces the (larger) unit. The method is mostly used in Syntax.
The IC procedure is applied to strings of smaller units, morphemes or words, which is by itself a larger unit, a word or a sentence respectively. The units making up the string have indications of the distributional class they belong to. This initial string is then processed either by gradual splitting into smaller strings, each time only two, or the smaller units are grouped into longer strings, and again each such string should be the result of joining only two smaller strings. Splitting or grouping is proceed till we either receive the smallest units (in splitting) or the largest string (in grouping). At each step it means after each split or each grouping the constituent are tested for their relations by cutting each of them off. The procedure is known as deletion. It case the element can be deleted it is subordinated to the one which cannot be deleted. As a result we receive a diagramme, a graph resembling a tree. The graph shows dependence of elements within the larger unit and is called "tree of dependence.
To illustrate the operation of the IC analysis we shall take a simple English sentence and analyse it.