Structure(12) S
P P
the postwoman pestered P
the doctor
We see here that the sentence has even more internal structure as a phrase may also
contain another phrase.
Indeed, once we recognise the notion of a phrase, we can see them in many
positions. For example, a string consisting of the preposition on and its nominal
complement Wednesday can be replaced by the noun yesterday demonstrating that
they have the same distribution. Thus, on Wednesday is also a phrase in the sentence:
(13) the postwoman pestered the doctor [on Wednesday]/yesterday
This suggests we have the following structure for this particular sentence:
(14) S
P P
the postwoman pestered P P
the doctor on Wednesday
Moreover, in the phrase on Wednesday, the noun Wednesday can be replaced by
the words his birthday, indicating that this is also a phrasal position:
(15) the postwoman pestered the doctor on Wednesday/[his birthday]
(16) S
P P
the postwoman pestered P P
the doctor on P
his birthday
1.3 Sentences within phrases
From what we have said so far we might think that English expressions are organised
with sentences at the top, phrases in the middle and words at the bottom. Unfortunately
things are not quite so regular. As we have seen, sentences can appear within
sentences. A typical way for this to happen is to have a sentence as part of a phrase
which itself is part of the bigger sentence. For example, instead of the phrase pestered
the doctor in (12) we might have another phrase: