Delahunty and Garvey
Clause Patterns and Modifications of Basic Clause Patterns, we examine the
ways in which phrases form clauses. Our discussion here will treat the five
major phrase types in English:
- Adverb Phrase (AdvP)
- Prepositional Phrase (PP)
- Adjective Phrase (AP)
- Noun Phrase (NP)
- Verb Phrase (VP)
We will discuss each of the five types in a similar way. First, we will exam-
ine their basic functional patterns; then how those functions are realized by
structural possibilities; and, where appropriate, we will explore some of the
complexities associated with each type of phrase. Whenever such complexi-
ties lead us to topics considered in another chapter, we will provide a brief
commentary and defer fuller treatment to a later time.
what is a phrase?.
Traditionally “phrase” is defined as “a group of words that does not contain
a verb and its subject and is used as a single part of speech.”
This definition entails three characteristics: (1) it specifies that only a
group of words can constitute a phrase, implying that a single word cannot;
(2) it distinguishes phrases from clauses; and (3) it requires that the groups
of words believed to be a phrase constitute a single grammatical unit. We
accept (2) and (3), but must revise (1).
We reject the claim that single words cannot constitute phrases. First, a
word and a phrase may play identical grammatical roles in a clause, as (1)
and (2) demonstrate:
(1) Most of the members of the genus avis fly.
(2) Birds fly.Most of the members of the genus avis is the subject of (1) and birds is the sub-
ject of (2), showing that single words and phrases can function identically
in clauses. There are two inferences that we can draw from this fact: (a) a
subject can consist of either a single noun or a noun phrase, or (b) subjects
are phrases, and so whatever functions as a subject must be a phrase. If we
assume (a), then whenever we define subject (and any other grammatical
function, such as predicate, direct object, indirect object, etc.), we must
always specify that it can be expressed as a word or as a phrase. Linguists