Chapter 2 - Grammatical Foundations: Structure(17) a the postwoman [pestered the doctor]
b the postwoman [thinks the doctor is cute]
The fact that we can substitute one phrase for another is an indication that they both
are phrases as they both have the same distribution. But note, the new phrase in (17b)
contains something that could stand alone as a sentence:
(18) the doctor is cute
Hence we have a phrase which contains a sentence. We can represent this situation
easily enough, as in the following structure:
(19) S
P P
the postwoman thinks S
the doctor is cute
Of course, this embedded sentence (traditionally called a clause – though some
linguists do not use the terms sentence and clause with such a distinction these days)
has its own internal structure made up of phrases and words and so the structure can be
fully specified as follows:
(20) S
P P
the postwoman thinks S
P P
the doctor is cute
As we have mentioned, there is recursion in structure and so as sentences can
contain phrases which themselves contain sentences, then these sentences can contain
phrases which contain sentences – and so on, indefinitely. We will provide an example
here with just one more level of embedding to give you some idea of how it works: