Free-word combinations

Grammatical Valency

• The ability of a word to appear in specific grammatical structures, or grammatical contexts

Grammatical Valency

• the minimal grammatical context in which the words are used when brought together to form a word-group is called the pattern of the word-group

Grammatical Valency

• restricted by the part of speech
• e.g. an adjective + noun, infinitive, prepositional group
• a kind man, kind to people, heavy to lift
• limited by the inner structure of the language
• e.g. to propose a plan – to suggest a plan
• to propose to do smth -

Grammatical Valency

• grammatical valency of correlated words in different languages is different
• e.g. enter the room - войти в комнату

Classifications of word-groups

• according to the distribution
• according to the head-word
• according to the syntactic pattern

Word-groups according to distribution

• endocentric – central member functionally equivalent to the whole word-group
• e.g. red flower ( I saw a red flower – I saw a flower)

• exocentric – the distribution of the whole word-group is different from either of its components
• e.g. side by side, grow smaller, John runs

Word-groups according to the head word

• nominal groups
• e.g. red flower
• adjectival groups
• e.g. kind to people
• verbal groups
• e.g. to speak well

Word-groups according to the syntactic pattern

• predicative – have a syntactic structure similar to that of a sentence
• e.g. John went, he works

• non-predicative – do not have a structure similar to a sentence
• e.g. red flower, running John