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 Ling 131: Language & Style
 

Topic 2 (session B) - Being creative with words and phrases > Phrases in the structure of sentences

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Session Overview
Uncovering your intuitions about phrases
Playing with phrases
Phrases in the structure of sentences
Being creative with noun phrases: Edwin Morgan
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Phrases in the structure of sentences

Levels of Grammar

We have already noticed that language consists of a variety of levels of organisation (eg phonetics, grammar). Grammar itself is also composed of a number of levels. At the bottom level there are words, which are combined in various ways to create sentences at the top level. Words and sentences are, in fact, related through some intermediate levels of structure (phrases and clauses):

Sentences are composed of one or more clauses (or "simple sentences").
Clauses are composed of one or more phrases.
Phrases are composed of one or more words.

Chuckle Stop !

Consider the sentence,

Using round brackets to indicate the phrases and square brackets to indicate the clauses, we can show the sentence's structure as follows:

The sentence thus consists of two coordinated clauses (ie two simple sentences joined together as one sentence). In the first clause each constituent phrase consists of two words, and in the second clause each phrase consists of one word.

Word Classes and Phrases

So far we have distinguished four major word classes: noun (N), verb (V), adjective (A) and adverb (Adv). We can use these classes to define four of the five kinds of phrases which occur in English sentences:

(1) NOUN PHRASE (NP) = a group of words that has a NOUN as its head (ie as its most important word) and which functions together as a noun:

a student
    the charming student
    that grotty little Linguistics student with dark hair

(2) VERB PHRASE (VP) = a group of words that has a VERB as its head and which functions together as a verb:

    yawned
    had yawned
    had been yawning
    might have been yawning

(3) ADJECTIVE PHRASE (AdjP) = a group of words that has an ADJECTIVE as its head and which functions together as an adjective:

    despicable
    absolutely despicable
    as despicable as possible

(4) ADVERB PHRASE (AdvP) = a group of words that has an ADVERB as its head and which functions together as an adverb:

    quickly
    too quickly
    much too quickly

We use the word class preposition to define the fifth kind of phrase, PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE (PP) = A group of words that consists of a preposition followed by a Noun Phrase:

    in the basket
    up the road
    down his throat

Chuckle Stop !

If we now return to the sentence we looked at above, we can see (i) its structure again, this time with the phrase types marked, and (ii) the overall structure:

      NP                VP                NP                     NP         VP         NP
[ ( The students ) ( might like ) ( this webpage ) ] [ but ( I ) ( hate ) ( it ) ]

 


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