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Phrase

 

 
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Phrase
 
 
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In grammar
Grammar

Grammar is the field of linguistics that covers the conventions governing the use of any given natural language. It includes morphology and syntax, often complemented by phonetics, phonology, semantics, and pragmatics....
, a phrase is a group of word
Word

A word is a unit of language that represents a concept which can be expressively communication with Meaning . A word consists of one or more morphemes which are linked more or less tightly together, and has a phonetic value....
s that functions as a single unit in the syntax
Syntax

In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing Sentence s in natural languages. In addition to referring to the discipline, the term syntax is also used to refer directly to the rules and principles that govern the sentence structure of any individual language, as in "the Irish syntax"....
 of a sentence
Sentence (linguistics)

In linguistics, a sentence is a grammatical unit of one or more words, bearing minimal syntactic relation to the words that precede or follow it, often preceded and followed in speech by pauses, having one of a small number of characteristic intonation patterns, and typically expressing an independent statement, question, request, command, et...
.

For example the house at the end of the street (example 1) is a phrase. It acts like a noun. It contains the phrase at the end of the street (example 2), a prepositional phrase which acts like an adjective. Example 2 could be replaced by white, to make the phrase the white house.






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In grammar
Grammar

Grammar is the field of linguistics that covers the conventions governing the use of any given natural language. It includes morphology and syntax, often complemented by phonetics, phonology, semantics, and pragmatics....
, a phrase is a group of word
Word

A word is a unit of language that represents a concept which can be expressively communication with Meaning . A word consists of one or more morphemes which are linked more or less tightly together, and has a phonetic value....
s that functions as a single unit in the syntax
Syntax

In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing Sentence s in natural languages. In addition to referring to the discipline, the term syntax is also used to refer directly to the rules and principles that govern the sentence structure of any individual language, as in "the Irish syntax"....
 of a sentence
Sentence (linguistics)

In linguistics, a sentence is a grammatical unit of one or more words, bearing minimal syntactic relation to the words that precede or follow it, often preceded and followed in speech by pauses, having one of a small number of characteristic intonation patterns, and typically expressing an independent statement, question, request, command, et...
.

For example the house at the end of the street (example 1) is a phrase. It acts like a noun. It contains the phrase at the end of the street (example 2), a prepositional phrase which acts like an adjective. Example 2 could be replaced by white, to make the phrase the white house. Examples 1 and 2 contain the phrase the end of the street (example 3) which acts like a noun. It could be replaced by the cross-roads to give the house at the cross-roads.

Most phrases have a central word which defines the type of phrase. This word is called the head
Head (linguistics)

In linguistics, the head is the word that determines the syntax type of the phrase of which it is a member, or analogously the word stem that determines the semantic category of a compound of which it is a component....
 of the phrase. Some phrases, however, can be headless. For example, the rich is a noun phrase composed of a determiner and an adjective, but no noun.

Phrases may be classified by the type of head they take

  • Prepositional phrase (PP) with a preposition as head (e.g. in love, over the rainbow). Languages that use postpositions instead have postpositional phrases. The two types are sometimes commonly referred to as adpositional phrase
    Adpositional phrase

    An adpositional phrase is a linguistics term that includes prepositional phrases and postpositional phrases . The difference between the two is simply one of word order....
    s.
  • Noun phrase
    Noun phrase

    In grammar, a noun phrase is a phrase whose Head is a noun or a pronoun, optionally accompanied by a set of modifiers.Noun phrases are very common linguistic typology, but some languages like Tuscarora language and Cayuga language have been argued to lack this category....
     (NP) with a noun
    Noun

    In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open class lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition....
     as head (e.g. the black cat, a cat on the mat)
  • Verb phrase
    Verb phrase

    In linguistics, a verb phrase or VP is a syntax structure composed of the predicate sentence element of a Sentence and functions in providing information about the subject of the sentence....
     (VP) with a verb
    Verb

    In syntax, a verb is a word that usually denotes an action , an occurrence , or a state of being . Depending on the language, a verb may vary in form according to many factors, possibly including its grammatical tense, grammatical aspect, grammatical mood and grammatical voice....
     as head (e.g. eat cheese, jump up and down)
  • Adjectival phrase
    Adjectival phrase

    An adjectival phrase or adjective phrase is a phrase with an adjective as its Head . Adjectival phrases may occur as pre- or postmodifiers to a noun, or as predicatives to a verb ....
     (AP) with an adjective
    Adjective

    In grammar, an adjective is a word whose main syntax role is to grammatical modifier a noun or pronoun, giving more information about the noun or pronoun's definition....
     as head (e.g. full of toys)
  • Adverbial phrase
    Adverbial phrase

    An adverbial is a Linguistics term for a single adverb or a group of more than one word operating adverbially, when viewed in terms of their syntax....
     (AdvP) with an adverb
    Adverb

    An adverb is a part of speech. It is any word that modifies any other part of language: verbs, adjectives , clauses, sentence s and other adverbs, except for nouns; modifiers of nouns are primarily determiners and adjectives....
     as head (e.g. very carefully)


Formal definition

A phrase is a syntactic
Syntax

In linguistics, syntax is the study of the principles and rules for constructing Sentence s in natural languages. In addition to referring to the discipline, the term syntax is also used to refer directly to the rules and principles that govern the sentence structure of any individual language, as in "the Irish syntax"....
 structure which has syntactic properties derived from its head
Head (linguistics)

In linguistics, the head is the word that determines the syntax type of the phrase of which it is a member, or analogously the word stem that determines the semantic category of a compound of which it is a component....
.

Complexity

A complex phrase consists of several words, whereas a simple phrase consists of only one word. This terminology is especially often used with verb
Verb

In syntax, a verb is a word that usually denotes an action , an occurrence , or a state of being . Depending on the language, a verb may vary in form according to many factors, possibly including its grammatical tense, grammatical aspect, grammatical mood and grammatical voice....
 phrases:
  • simple past and present are simple phrases, which require just one verb
  • complex verbs have one or two aspect
    Grammatical aspect

    In linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb defines the temporal flow in the described event or state. In English, for example, the past-tense sentences "I swam" and "I was swimming" differ in aspect ....
    s added, hence require additional two or three words


"Complex", which is phrase-level, is often confused with "compound
Compound (linguistics)

In linguistics, a compound is a lexeme that consists of more than one Word stem. Compounding or composition is the word-formation that creates compound lexemes ....
", which is word
Word

A word is a unit of language that represents a concept which can be expressively communication with Meaning . A word consists of one or more morphemes which are linked more or less tightly together, and has a phonetic value....
-level. However, there are certain phenomena that formally seem to be phrases but semantically are more like compounds, like "women's magazines", which has the form of a possessive noun phrase, but which refers (just like a compound) to one specific lexeme
Lexeme

A lexeme is an abstract Unit of Morphology Semantic analysis in linguistics, that roughly corresponds to a set of forms taken by a single word....
 (i.e. a magazine for women and not some magazine owned by a woman).

Semiotic approaches to the concept of "phrase"

In more semiotic approaches to language, such as the more cognitivist versions of construction grammar
Construction grammar

The term construction grammar covers a "family" of theories, or models, of grammar that are based on the idea that the primary unit of grammar is the grammatical construction rather than the atomic syntax unit and the rule that combines atomic units, and that the grammar of a language is made up of taxonomy of families of constructions....
, a phrasal structure is not only a certain formal combination of word types whose features are inherited from the head. Here each phrasal structure also expresses some type of concept
Concept

A concept is a cognition unit of meaning— an abstraction idea or a mental symbol sometimes defined as a "unit of knowledge," built from other units which act as a concept's characteristics....
ual content, be it specific or abstract.

See also


  • Phrase structure rules
    Phrase structure rules

    Phrase-structure rules are a way to describe a given language's syntax. They are used to break a natural language sentence down into its constituent parts namely phrasal categories and lexical categories ....
  • Sentence (linguistics)
    Sentence (linguistics)

    In linguistics, a sentence is a grammatical unit of one or more words, bearing minimal syntactic relation to the words that precede or follow it, often preceded and followed in speech by pauses, having one of a small number of characteristic intonation patterns, and typically expressing an independent statement, question, request, command, et...


External links

  • - The meanings and origins of phrases, sayings, and idioms