Glossary of Grammatical and Rhetorical Terminology
In English grammar, a phrase was a group of several words functioning as an important unit within a phrase or clause. A phrase is commonly recognized as a grammatical unit at a level between a word and a clause.
a term is made up of a head (or headword)-which determines the grammatical characteristics of the unit-and more than one elective modifiers. Phrases may incorporate additional phrases inside them.
Common forms of terms consist of noun terms (including good friend), verb expressions (drives thoroughly), adjective expressions (very cold and dark colored), adverb expressions (quite slowly), and prepositional terms (in beginning).
Advice and Observations
“Sentences are divided into categories of terminology that belong together. Including, during the nice unicorn ate a delicious meal, the, nice, and unicorn form one such group, and a, delicious, and meal form another. (We know this intuitively.) The number of keywords is called a phrase.
i»? “In the event that important the main expression, i.e. the pinnacle, are an adjective, the term was an Adjective expression; in the event the most critical the main term is actually a noun, the phrase was a Noun expression, and so forth.” – Elly van Gelderen
Types of Phrases With Examples
- Noun Phrase”Buy a huge vibrant environmentally friendly pleasures equipment!” – Paul Simon, “the top sunny Green pleasures equipment,” 1966
- Verb Phrase”Your grandfather may be disappearing for a little while.” – Ellen Griswold when you look at the flick “holiday,” 1983
- Adjective Phrase”it is usually the most effective rules to dicuss the truth-unless, needless to say, you might be an extremely close liar.” – Jerome K. Jerome, “The Idler,” February 1892
- Adverb Phrase”Movements born in hatred rapidly take on the attributes in the thing they oppose.” – J. S. Habgood, “The Observer,” Might 4, 1986
- Prepositional Phrase”i really could dancing to you till the cattle get back. On next consideration, I would quite dancing because of the cows till your get home.” -Groucho Marx in “Duck soups,” 1933
“Prepositional expressions vary from the other four different term because a preposition cannot stand alone because head word-of a phrase. Although a preposition still is the head term in a prepositional phrase, it should become followed closely by another element-or prepositional complement-if the expression is to be full. More typically, the prepositional supplement are going to be a noun term.” – Kim Ballard
A Widened Definition of Phrase
A prototypical phrase try a team of keywords creating a device and consisting of a head or “nucleus” alongside more words or term groups clustering around it. If the mind in the phrase is actually a noun, we speak of a noun expression (NP) (for example. those beautiful houses built in the 1960s). When the head is actually a verb, the phrase try a verb term (VP). Inside following sentence, the VP is in italics and the verb mind is in bold:
“a term is probably complex. Quite simply, the phrase normally regularly make reference to ‘one-word terms,’ in other words. non-prototypical terms that contains a head just. Thus the sentence Jill smokes are a variety of a noun phrase and a verb term.”- Renaat Declerck, Susan Reed, and Bert Cappelle
Terms, Nesting Terms, and Conditions
“expressions comparison with conditions, that they perform, however, resemble. . An important function of a clause is that it offers all of the aspects of a probably separate sentence, specifically a verb and often a subject, as well as perhaps items, as well. A part of a sentence with only these hardware would-be known as a clause instead a phrase. A phrase can consist of a verb, without its matter, or it es R. Hurford
- Conjoining smaller phrases by a combination, such as and, but or or
- Nesting a smaller sized term inside a more substantial one
Hurford’s types of nesting an inferior expression inside a more substantial one as an integral part of they [the nested term is in italics]:
- May well in all probability feel coming
Specialized Frameworks
“Noun terms and prepositional terms may have specially complex structure in authored texts, with a number of levels of expression embedding. Actually, the complexity of words is an extremely impressive assess for contrasting the complexity of syntax in different registers of English. The most basic tissues occur in dialogue together with complexity increase through fiction and paper writing, with scholastic crafting revealing the best difficulty of phrase structure.” – Douglas Biber, Susan Conrad, and Geoffrey Leech
