PhrasesBut when we try to move just the N cabbage, the result is ungrammatical,
just as when we tried to pronominalize cabbage in (3):
(3) f. *Cabbage, Fooster hates the.Analogously, when we move cabbage in (3c) in which cabbage occurs
alone, the result is also grammatical:
(3) g. Cabbage, Fooster hates.So, we’ve applied three tests—ability to function as a grammatical rela-
tion, pronominalization, and movement—and all three have yielded the
same results: a phrase may consist of a unified group of words, or of a single
word as long as that word is the phrase’s head.
There is an important methodological precept here: the more arguments
you can marshal in favor of your analysis and definitions, the more confi-
dence you can place in them.
Our new, improved definition of “phrase”: a phrase is a grammatical unit,
intermediate between a word and a clause, which may consist of just one word
(its head) or its head and expressions (including other phrases) that modify or
complement it (see below). This definition retains the traditional distinc-
tions between word and phrase and between phrase and clause. It adds the
requirement that phrases have heads and allows a phrase to consist of just its
head.
In considering word classes, we examined the most important ones first.
In this chapter, we will present the three less complex types first— adverb,
prepositional, and adjective. The reason for this seemingly backwards ap-
proach is that the two major phrase types—noun phrases and verb phras-
es—often include the minor types as subparts. But first we must make a
brief detour to discuss the important distinction between modification and
complementation.
modification and complementation.
The head of a phrase may be modified or complemented by other words,
phrases, or sentences within the phrase. We begin with complementation as
it is perhaps the more easily understood.
When one element in an expression creates the grammatical expectation
that another expression will also occur, the expected element complements
the expecting element. For example, transitive verbs create the expectation
of an object, as in Sheila fractured [her ankle]; bitransitive verbs create the