Immediates

Immediates is the plural form of immediate and, in scholarly usage, refers to two distinct notions across disciplines: in linguistics, immediates (or immediate constituents) and in philosophy and epistemology, immediacy or immediate data of experience. The term signals items or facts that are given or analyzed directly, without intermediate steps.

In linguistics, immediates denote the immediate constituents of a sentence or utterance—the two or more units that can be combined to form a larger syntactic structure. For example, a simple sentence can be analyzed as having a subject and a predicate as its first-level immediates, with further subdivision into noun phrases, verb phrases, or other subconstituents. Immediate Constituents analysis uses this concept to reveal the hierarchical, binary structure underlying surface strings. The approach has been influential in teaching syntax and in certain parsing theories, though it is complemented or challenged by other frameworks that model long-distance dependencies and deeper hierarchical relations.

In philosophy and epistemology, immediates refer to objects or contents of experience that are apprehended directly, without inference or mediation through signs. This sense of immediacy contrasts with mediate knowledge, which depends on intermediate representations, indicators, or reasoning. Debates surrounding perceptual immediacy address questions about how much of experience is given as it appears and whether all knowledge must pass through some form of mediation. Immediates in this sense underpin discussions of consciousness, perception, and the foundations of knowledge.

Overall, immediates capture the idea of direct, primary components—whether of language structure or experiential content—that serve as the starting point for analysis and interpretation.