Types of Phrases

7 Key excerpts on "Types of Phrases"

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  eBook - PDF

  Introducing English Syntax

  A Basic Guide for Students of English

  • Peter Fenn, Götz Schwab(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  4 Phrases and their structure (I) 4.0 Phrases As we saw in the last chapter, the phrase is the most basic unit in sentence analysis. It is a structural unit based on word-class, and is the smallest unit that can fill a sentence function. In this chapter we take a close look at what phrases consist of, i.e. what we will call here in a general sense their composition. Like sentences, phrases can be analysed internally in terms of both structures and functions. In other words, the composition of a phrase consists of phrase functions and the struc- tures that fill them. That is, like sentences, phrases can be analysed on the one hand structurally, and on the other hand functionally: (1) Composition of phrase Structures Functions What this means concretely we will see in the following. In this first chapter on the phrase, we will be looking at noun phrases, prepositional phrases, adjective phrases, and adverb phrases. 4.1 The noun phrase Let us look first of all at some typical structural patterns in the noun phrase: (2) a. noun alone trees b. article + noun the trees Phrases and their structure (I) 65 c. article + adjective phrase + noun the big trees d. article + adjective phrase + noun + prepositional phrase the big trees in our garden The minimum that we need in order to form a noun phrase is a single noun, as in (2)a. The rest is just a selection, of course. The prepositional phrase could follow the noun on its own (trees in our garden), for example, or the adjective could be used without the article (big trees). We´re simply looking here at the main pos- sibilities for combining structural elements within a noun phrase. As can be seen in (2)c. and (2)d., other types of phrase unit can also be included, here an adjec- tive phrase and a prepositional phrase. One phrase inside another one is a general phenomenon in syntax. The prepositional phrase itself here (in our garden), for instance, also contains a further noun phrase (our garden).

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  English Words and Sentences

  An Introduction

  • Eva Duran Eppler, Gabriel Ozón(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER 5 Phrase structure 1 In this chapter . . . We are going to move onto the next larger units in language. We are going to turn our attention to the relationships between words and the ways in which these relationships can be captured. We start by linking every word in a sentence to at least one other word in the same sentence, and by describing the grammatical and meaning relations between the words we joined up. From there on, we will introduce different phrase categories, and show that phrasal categories have an internal structure for which the concept of head is crucial. We will explore this first on the pre-modification of nouns (NP), and are then going to demonstrate that the same template can be applied to other Types of Phrases (e.g. AdjP, AdvP). We continue with a discussion of NP post-modifiers, which lead us into other phrase types (e.g. PP). 5.1 Relations between words page 82 5.2 What are ‘heads’ in syntax? 84 5.3 Nouns and the words they combine with 85 5.4 Adjectives and words they combine with 93 5.5 Adverbs and words they combine with 95 5.6 Chapter summary 96 Key terms, Exercises and Further reading 97 In the first four chapters of this book we looked at how morphemes are put together in order to build words, and how these form natural – but fuzzy – classes depending on their morphological, syntactic and semantic similar- ities. In the next chapters we will explore how words are combined in order to build phrases and sentences and how these again form natural classes because of their morpho-syntactic, semantic and pragmatic similarities. The fact that morphemes, words, phrases and sentences form natural classes is great for us as language users, because it saves us a lot of time. Any idea why? 81 Consider how the many uses of the suffix -s economise language learning and use. Having worked through Chapter 2, you should already be able to deter- mine the word class of every word in a given string of words.

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  Linguistic Perspectives on English Grammar

  • Martin J. Endley(Author)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • Information Age Publishing

    (Publisher)

  Linguistic Perspectives on English Grammar, pages 3–37 Copyright © 2010 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. 3 1 Nouns and Noun Phrases in Linguistic Perspective T his chapter is primarily concerned with one of the major word catego- ries in English, the noun. My aim is to show how linguistics can throw light on the nature of nouns and the functions they typically perform. I will also devote quite a lot of space to discussing certain problematic issues that arise in connection with nouns. As a way of leading into this, however, I want to take a look at a more basic issue, namely, how linguists categorize words in the first place. Throughout the following discussion, and the book as a whole, I treat the term word as if it were a straightforward and unproblematic notion. It should be mentioned at the outset that in reality this is not the case. In fact, in linguistic circles, much ink has been spilt on the nature of words. For our purposes, a working definition might be that a word is “a lexical item involving an association of sound and meaning.” You should keep in mind, however, that this definition conceals an array of difficulties and complexi- ties, discussion of which is beyond the scope of this book. 4  Linguistic Perspectives on English Grammar Categorizing Words A preliminary step in describing the grammar of a language is to agree on a classification of its words. The motivation underlying this effort is simple: By classifying words into groups we are able to make economical generaliza- tions about the language rather than treating each individual word as if it were an isolated item. Words can be classified into various “parts of speech,” or what linguists often call syntactic categories (or lexical categories, or word classes). You are no doubt familiar with these categories already and have probably learned certain traditional definitions.

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  Working with English Grammar

  An Introduction

  • Louise Cummings(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  In chapter 6, different classes of lexical verbs and the post-verbal elements that accompany them are addressed. The discus- sion in chapter 7 on noun phrases asks how a noun phrase can be spotted and guides you on how to locate the head of the phrase. There is also examination of pre-modifiers and post-modifiers in noun phrases. (2) Ballard, K. (2013) The Frameworks of English, Third Edition. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. In chapter 5 of this volume, there is a clear, accessible examination of the five phrase types which are discussed in this chapter: noun phrases; verb phrases; adjective phrases; adverb phrases; and prepositional phrases. The chapter also addresses the embedding of phrases. (3) Altenberg, E. P. and Vago, R. M. (2010) English Grammar: Understanding the Basics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Part II: Kinds of Phrases in this volume contains several units which address the phrase types that are examined in this chapter. These units are Noun Phrases (unit 9), Prepositional Phrases (unit 10), Verb Phrases (unit 11) and Auxiliary Phrases (unit 12). Each of these units contains Test Yourself questions and answers. QUESTIONS PHRASES (1) The following utterances were produced by Lara, a child with normal lan- guage development. In each utterance, a noun phrase is underlined. Identify the pre-modifier and/or post-modifier in each of the underlined phrases. (a) I’m going to get food for the horse (3;00) (b) She’s a horrid people (3;00) (c) I making some little prickles (3;00) (d) I want the little boy to go (3;00) (e) I think it’s up in my attic room now (2;11) (f) That’s a bit of green plasticine (2;11) (g) I want you to make pretend tea for me (3;00) (h) We’re going to that pretend animal farm (3;00) (i) This is a very good place (3;00) (j) That’s not a lovely book (3;00) (2) Only certain words can stand before and after head verbs in verb phrases. The following utterances are produced by children with SLI.

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  Form and Function in Language Research

  Papers in Honour of Christian Lehmann

  • Johannes Helmbrecht, Yoko Nishina, Yong-Min Shin, Stavros Skopeteas, Elisabeth Verhoeven, Johannes Helmbrecht, Yoko Nishina, Yong-Min Shin, Stavros Skopeteas, Elisabeth Verhoeven(Authors)
  • 2009(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  The sim-plest or the one which can be shared by all linguists is that syntax is the study of “how words group together to make phrases and sentences” (Tallerman 1998: 1). Generally the definition also points out that the aims of syntax are “to discover the common properties between languages, and .. ultimately to discover something about the workings of the human brain” (Tallerman 1998: 6). The first part of the above definition implies that when doing syntax we basically ask the following questions: (1) What is a sentence? (2) What are the elements of a sentence? We can find more or less articulated replies to question (1) depending on the theoretical approach; one distinguishing trait between different theo-ries is related to whether we assume a sentence to be connected to the utter-ance or not, that is whether we have a functional perspective - according to which a sentence must be a meaningful unit in discourse - or whether we stick to a formal definition of a sentence in terms of grammaticality judg-ments, as in generative grammar. The more radical differences are certainly to be found in answer to (2) not so much in terms of the nature of syntactic constituents as both functionalists and formalists would agree in consider-ing noun phrases, verb phrases and so on as sentence constituents, but more in terms of its subcomponents. Let us have a look, for example, at Van Valin’s and LaPolla’s (1997: 1) definition of syntax: “the branch of gram-mar dealing with the ways in which words, with or without appropriate inflections, are arranged to show connections of meaning within the sen-tence”; here we find an explicit mention to morphology as this “can be used Linguistic typology and language theory 169 to express ‘who is doing what to whom’ in some languages, while word order does this in others and accordingly the cross-linguistic study of syn-tax cannot be carried out without paying serious attention to morphology” (Van Valin and LaPolla 1997: 2).

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  Phases

  Developing the Framework

  • Ángel J. Gallego(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • De Gruyter Mouton

    (Publisher)

  Introduction: A framework of phases for linguistic theory* Ángel J. Gallego 1. Introduction Linguistic theory relies on some notion of compositionality, the interpreta-tion of complex units being dependent on the interpretation of smaller ones. Within generative grammar, this leading idea took form under the so-called phonological cycle , with Chomsky et al.’s (1956) pioneering work on stress, later on extended in Chomsky & Halle (1968), and quickly adopted in the domains of morphology, semantics, and syntax, where different cyclic con-ditions were argued to regulate derivational dynamics (see Lasnik 2006 and Uriagereka 2011 for recent discussion). Chomsky (2000) revamps the cycle under the rubric of phase , trying to accommodate it within a minimalist, ‘from below’, approach to the Faculty of Language (henceforth, FL). As has often been noted in the literature (Boeckx & Grohmann 2007), current phases roughly correspond to bounding nodes (Chomsky 1977) and barriers (Chomsky 1986) of earlier frameworks, hence posing the question of how this—apparently terminological—twist can help us approach language from more precise angles. The answers that Chomsky has offered in his writings have been interpreted in different ways, giving rise to varying—sometimes even conflicting—perspectives on what phases are and do (see Gallego 2010 for a summary). The goal of this volume is to provide the reader with a sample of those approaches, the results they have achieved, and the matters that are still un-der debate. Discussion is organized as follows: Section 2 reviews some of the conceptual and empirical arguments that have been offered to motivate phases; these fall into two broad categories, interface conditions and compu-tational efficiency, and, as will be shown, they fail to provide a stable char-acterization of phases.

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  Linguistics of American Sign Language, 5th Ed.

  An Introduction

  • Clayton Valli, Ceil Lucas, Kristin J. Mulrooney, Miako Villanueva(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Gallaudet University Press

    (Publisher)

  PART FOUR SYNTAX 89 UNIT 14 Introduction In the phonology and morphology sections, we saw that languages combine smaller units to create larger units. In phonology, the building blocks are individual features; in morphology, the building blocks are units of meaning. Now we turn to syntax, where the building blocks are words and signs and the structures we are building are phrases and sentences. Just as phonology is the study of the rules for combining features and phonemes, and morphology is the study of the rules for combining morphemes, syntax is the study of the rules for combining words to form sentences. Remember that linguistic rules are not prescriptions of what is right or wrong, but rather descriptions of what users of a language do and do not do, based on scientific analysis. One of the features of language that makes it distinct from other communica- tion systems is its productivity. The number of sentences that can be produced in a language is infinite, but each language has a finite set of rules for making sen- tences. Users of a language know these rules and use them to produce new sen- tences and to understand the sentences used by other people. The set of rules in a language is called grammar, and the linguistic study of these rules is called syntax. Sometimes the users of a language cannot explain the rules of their language, but they know when a rule has been broken. They recognize grammatical and ungrammatical sentences. People sometimes make mistakes when they are using their language, and very often they correct themselves as they are using language. But just because they make mistakes does not mean that they do not know the rules. There is a difference between a user’s competence in a language and a user’s per- formance in a language. Competence is what a person knows about the language and performance is how the person uses the language.

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