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23. The Phrase
The word-group (phrase) is a grammatical unit formed by a combination of two or more notional words, which doesn’t constitute a sentence. The notional words are connected syntactically within the structure of the sentence (cold water, reads a book). They may belong to any part of speech. A word group as such has no intonation, as it is one of the most important features of the sentence. As to syntactical connection English phrases are classed as follows:
1. subordinate word-groups (fine weather, to write a letter, fond of reading)
2. co-ordinate word-groups (brother and sister, neither here nor there, king dear)
3. predicative word-groups (weather permitting, for u to go)
Coordinate phrases may be
1) syndetic and 2) asyndetic
3) copulative and 4) appositive
e.g. harsh and loud (1,3), the city of Rome (2,4), they all (2,4).
Appositive phrases may be close and loose 1) Wilson the writer; 2) Tolstoy, the great Russian writer, is dead.
Predicative word-groups
Predicative word-groups consist in two parts: a subjectival and a predicatival.
e.g He didn’t want for me [subjectival] to come [predicatival].
The relations between the subjectival and the predicatival are similar to those of the subject and the predicate. There is no correspondence in person and number between the predicatival and subjectival. Predicative word-groups like other word-groups are semantic and grammatical units; cannot function as independent sentences as they do not express communications.
The person (thing) expressed by the subject of the sentence and the subjectival are different: Val likes you to look nice. The subject ‘Val’ and the subjectival ‘you’ denote different persons.
Classification of predicative word-groups
There are bound and absolute predicative word-groups:
1) bound predicative word-groups are grammatically connected with the verb-predicate of the sentence, functioning as subject, object, predicative, adverbial, or with the noun (attribute), the subjectival is unusually having a dependent form (him, their, John’s), they are not isolated. E.g. They watched him running down the slope (object).
2) Absolute predicative word-groups are always isolated expressing an additional (parallel) quality. They are usually connected by means of intonation with the whole sentence and not only with the verb predicate, the subjectival of the absolute construction denotes a person or a thing other than the object. E.g. The situation being urgent, we had to go ahead.
Absolute Predicative Word Groups
1) Nominative (isolated) absolute constructions. e.g. Her mother remaining in bed, Dinny dined alone with her aunt.
2) Prepositional absolute constructions (with,without) e.g. I simply couldn’t sit with Hubert on my mind.
Syntactical Relations between the Components of Phrase
They may be divided into 3 groups: 1) agreement; 2) government; 3) adjoinment. Agreement is a means of syntactical relationship between words which implies that the use of one form necessitates the use of the other.
1) an adjunct word agrees in number with its headword (a noun) E.g. this (that) book – these (those) books.
2) a singular subject requires a predicate in the singular, a plural subject requires the predicate in the plural. E.g. I am a student. There are 2 books on the table. But in modern english there is sometimes a conflict between form and meaning, in these cases the predicate doesn’t agree with the subject. My family are early risers. My family is small.
Government is a means of connecting words consisting in the use of a certain case form of the adjunct required by its headword.
The use of the objective case of personal pronouns and of the pronoun ‘who’ when they are subordinate to a verb or follow a preposition: e.g. I saw him (her, them). Whom did u see there?
We also find government between the head-nouns and the attributive adjunct noun. E.g. The boy’s mother; the student’s answer.
Adjoinment is such a way of connecting words when they are joined to one another without any specail forms by only their position and combinability. It is found in the following cases:
Adverbs are joined to the verb. E.g. they walked slowly.
Adjectives, participles, pronouns (when used as attributes) are joined to their head-nouns. E.g. a small room.
Adverbs are joined to adjectives or other adverbs: very interesting, very well.
The Theory of Phrase
The theory of phrase or word combination in linguistics has a long tradition going back to the 18-th century. According to Russian scholars the term ‘word combination’ (словосочетание) can be applied only to such groups of words which contain at least two notional words forming a grammatical unit. Thus Soviet linguists restrict the use of the term ‘word combination’ to combination of notional words. Western scholars hold a different view of the problem. They consider that every combination of two or more words constitutes a unit which they term ‘phrase’. In other words, western linguists do not limit the term ‘phrase’ to combination of notional words and do not draw a sharp distinction between the two types of word-groups such as ‘wise men’ and ‘to the lighthouse’. The first and the most important difference of opinion on the question between soviet and western scholarsconcerns the constituents of the word groups forming grammatical units.
Another debatable problem in soviet linguistics was whether a predicative combination of words forms a word combination.
It is generally known that a sentence is based on predication and its purpose in communication. A word combination has no such aim. Word combinations are more like words because they are employed for naming things, actions, qualities and so on. In contrast with soviet linguists some western scholars make no difference between subject – predicate combinations of words and other word combinations, though some western theories bear considerable resemblance to Russian ideas.
There’s no traditional terminology in the works of English and American scholars discussing combinations of words; and different terms are used to express the same idea (phrase, combination of words, cluster of words, word group).
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