Phrase
In
grammar, a
phrase (
Greek φράση,
sentence, expression, see also
strophe) is a group of
words that functions as a single unit in the
syntax of a
sentence.
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), 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.
Each phrase has a word called its
head which links it to the rest of the sentence. In English the head is often the first word of the phrase.
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 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)
*
Adjectival phrase with an
adjective as head (e.g.
full of toys)
*
Adverbial phrase with
adverb as head (e.g.
very carefully)
A
phrase is a
syntactic structure which has syntactic properties derived from its
head.
For example
the house at the end of the street is a
noun phrase. Its head is
house, and its syntactic properties come from that fact. It contains
prepositional phrase at the end of the street, which acts as an
adjunct.
At the end of the street could be replaced by another adjunct, such as
white, to make the phrase
the white house.
Of the street, another prepositional phrase, acts as a
complement of
end. Each phrase has a word called its
head which gives it its syntactic properties.
Phrase: Australian Hip-hop performer
A complex phrase consists of several words, whereas a simple phrase consists of only one word. This terminology is especially often used with
verb phrases:
* simple past and present are simple verb, which require just one verb
* complex verb have one or two
aspects added, hence require additional two or three words
"Complex", which is phrase-level, is often confused with "
compound", which is
word-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 (i.e. a magazine for women and not some magazine owned by a woman).
In more
semiotic approaches to language, such, as for instance, the more cognitivist versions of
construction grammar, 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
conceptual content, be it specific or abstract.
For example
prepositional phrases express a
figure-ground relation in which the prepositional complement is the ground, the preposition itself specifies the relation, and the precedent element is the figure.
Thus, in semiotic approaches to phrasal structure, a phrase not only has a specific formal configuration, but is also characterized by a recognizable (abstract or specific) semantic content.
See
phrase structure rules,
syntax,
grammar.
*
Cliché*
Grammatical construction*
Idiom*
Proverb*
Set phrase*
Stock phrase*
Online utility - which finds most frequent phrases and words from arbitraty text.
