Linguistic Phrase
A linguistic phrase is a syntactic phrase within a natural language syntax that is not a linguistic clause.
- Context:
- It must be associated with a Phrasal Category, such as:
- a noun phrase (NP, such as "a deep, aggressive root system");
- a Verb Phrase (VP), such as "ran home" ;
- an Adjectival Phrase (AP), such as "filled with clouds" ;
- a Prepositional Phrase (PP), such as "in the park" ;
- an Adverbial Phrase (AdvP), such as “very quietly”;
- It can be a:
- a Gerund Phrase, such as "I enjoy [nagging Bill]" ;
- a Participial Phrase, such as “He is [arranging the salad]” and "The salad was [arranged by the chef]”
- an Infinitive Phrase, such as “I want [to buy you a new car].”
- It can be within a Linguistic Expression.
- It can be a Mention (refer to a Meaning).
- It can be recognized by a Chunking System.
- It has no Subject-Predicate combination, and so, unlike a Clause, cannot stand alone as a Sentence.
- It can have a similar Grammatical Function as a Natural Language Clause, and thus be difficult to distinguish between the two of them.
- It can have Phrasal Meaning.
- ...
- It must be associated with a Phrasal Category, such as:
- Example(s):
- “Mary and Jim” is a noun phrase composed of two Nouns and a Conjunction.
- “enjoy” is a Verb Phrase composed of a single Intransitive Verb.
- “eating strawberries”, a Gerund Phrase.
- “during sunset", a Prepositional Phrase.
- “hidden from all others”, a Participial Phrase.
- “enjoy eating strawberries during sunset hidden from all others” is a Verb Phrase composed a Transitive Head Verb.
- in a Contract Model Language.
- …
- Counter-Example(s):
- a complete NL Sentence, such as: “I went home”.
- “I home”, because it is not in the English Syntax.
- “I went”, because it is not a syntactic unit (intransitive verbs, such as went, requires an object).
- See: NL Syntactic Structure, Clause, Phrase-Structure Grammar, Utterance, Predicate Phrase.
References
2011
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrase
- In everyday speech, a phrase may refer to any group of words. In linguistics, a phrase is a group of words which form a constituent and so function as a single unit in the syntax of a sentence. A phrase is lower on the grammatical hierarchy than a clause.[1]
For example, the house at the end of the street is a phrase. It acts like a noun. It can further be broken down into two shorter phrases functioning as adjectives: at the end and of the street, a shorter prepositional phrase within the longer prepositional phrase. At the end of the street could be replaced by an adjective such as nearby: the nearby house or even the house nearby. The end of the street could also be replaced by another noun, such as the crossroads to produce the house at the crossroads.
Most phrases have an important word defining the type and linguistic features of the phrase. This word is the head of the phrase and gives its name to the phrase category.[2] For example the phrase the massive dinosaur is a noun phrase because its head word (dinosaur) is a noun. The head can be distinguished from its dependents (the rest of the phrase other than the head) because the head of the phrase determines many of the grammatical features of the phrase as a whole.
Phrases may be classified by the type of head taken by them:
- Prepositional phrase (PP) with a preposition as head (e.g. in love, over the rainbow). Languages using postpositions instead have postpositional phrases. The two types are sometimes commonly referred to as appositional phrases.
- Noun phrase (NP) with a noun as head (e.g. the black cat, a cat on the mat)
- Verb phrase (VP) with a verb as head (e.g. eat cheese, jump up and down)
- Appositive It renames noun as a pronoun and is always placed between commas (e.g. “Bob, my annoying neighbor, is short")
- Absolute Modifies the entire sentence and is linked with commas. (e.g. “Mike threw the book, his eyes are red")
- In everyday speech, a phrase may refer to any group of words. In linguistics, a phrase is a group of words which form a constituent and so function as a single unit in the syntax of a sentence. A phrase is lower on the grammatical hierarchy than a clause.[1]
2009
- WordNet.
- Phrase: an expression consisting of one or more words forming a grammatical constituent of a sentence.
- ↑ Kroeger, Paul (2005). Analyzing Grammar: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 35. ISBN 978-0-521-01653-7.
- ↑ Kroeger, Paul (2005). Analyzing Grammar: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 37. ISBN 978-0-521-01653-7.