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Phrase
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For other uses, see Phrase (disambiguation).

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In everyday speech, a phrase may be any group of words, often carrying a

special idiomatic meaning; in this sense it is roughly synonymous with
expression. In linguistic analysis, a phrase is a group of words (or possibly
a single word) that functions as a constituent in the syntax of a sentencea
single unit within a grammatical hierarchy. A phrase appears within a
clause, although it is also possible for a phrase to be a clause or to contain
a clause within it.
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External links

Common and technical use[edit]

There is a difference between the common use of the term phrase and its
technical use in linguistics. In common usage, a phrase is usually a group
of words with some special idiomatic meaning or other significance, such
as "all rights reserved", "economical with the truth", "kick the bucket", and
the like. It may be a euphemism, a saying or proverb, a fixed expression, a
figure of speech, etc.
In grammatical analysis, particularly in theories of syntax, a phrase is any
group of words, or sometimes a single word, which plays a particular role
within the grammatical structure of a sentence. It does not have to have any
special meaning or significance, or even exist anywhere outside of the
sentence being analyzed, but it must function there as a complete
grammatical unit. For example, in the sentence Yesterday I saw an orange

bird with a white neck, the words an orange bird with a white neck form
what is called a noun phrase, or a determiner phrase in some theories,
which functions as the object of the sentence.
Theorists of syntax differ in exactly what they regard as a phrase; however,
it is usually required to be a constituent of a sentence, in that it must
include all the dependents of the units that it contains. This means that
some expressions that may be called phrases in everyday language are not
phrases in the technical sense. For example, in the sentence I can't put up
with Alex, the words put up with (meaning 'tolerate') may be referred to in
common language as a phrase (English expressions like this are frequently
called phrasal verbs) but technically they do not form a complete phrase,
since they do not include Alex, which is the complement of the preposition
with.

Heads and dependents[edit]

In grammatical analysis, most phrases contain a key word that identifies the
type and linguistic features of the phrase; this is known as the head-word,
or the head. The syntactic category of the head is used to name the
category of the phrase;[1] for example, a phrase whose head is a noun is
called a noun phrase. The remaining words in a phrase are called the
dependents of the head.
In the following phrases the head-word, or head, is bolded:
too slowly Adverb phrase (AdvP); the head is an adverb
very happy Adjective phrase (AP); the head is an adjective
the massive dinosaur Noun phrase (NP); the head is a noun (but see below for
the determiner phrase analysis)

at lunch Preposition phrase (PP); the head is a preposition

watch TV Verb phrase (VP); the head is a verb
The above five examples are the most common of phrase types; but, by the
logic of heads and dependents, others can be routinely produced. For
instance, the subordinator phrase:
before that happened Subordinator phrase (SP); the head is a subordinating
conjunctionit subordinates the independent clause

By linguistic analysis this is a group of words that qualifies as a phrase, and

the head-word gives its syntactic name, "subordinator", to the grammatical
category of the entire phrase. But this phrase, "before that happened", is
more commonly classified in other grammars, including traditional English
grammars, as a subordinate clause (or dependent clause); and it is then
labelled not as a phrase, but as a clause.
Most theories of syntax view most phrases as having a head, but some
non-headed phrases are acknowledged. A phrase lacking a head is known
as exocentric, and phrases with heads are endocentric.

Functional categories[edit]

Some modern theories of syntax introduce certain functional categories in

which the head of a phrase is some functional word or item, which may
even be covert, that is, it may be a theoretical construct that need not
appear explicitly in the sentence.
For example, in some theories, a phrase such as the man is taken to have
the determiner the as its head, rather than the noun man it is then
classed as a determiner phrase (DP), rather than a noun phrase (NP).
When a noun is used in a sentence without an explicit determiner, a null
(covert) determiner may be posited. For full discussion, see Determiner
phrase.
Another type is the inflectional phrase, where (for example) a finite verb
phrase is taken to be the complement of a functional, possibly covert head
(denoted INFL) which is supposed to encode the requirements for the verb
to inflect for agreement with its subject (which is the specifier of INFL), for
tense and aspect, etc. If these factors are treated separately, then more
specific categories may be considered: tense phrase (TP), where the verb
phrase is the complement of an abstract "tense" element; aspect phrase;
agreement phrase and so on.
Further examples of such proposed categories include topic phrase and
focus phrase, which are assumed to be headed by elements that encode
the need for a constituent of the sentence to be marked as the topic or as
the focus. See the Generative approaches section of the latter article for

details.

Phrase trees[edit]
Many theories of syntax and grammar illustrate sentence structure using
phrase 'trees', which provide schematics of how the words in a sentence
are grouped and relate to each other. Trees show the words, phrases, and,
at times, clauses that make up sentences.[2] Any word combination that
corresponds to a complete subtree can be seen as a phrase.
There are two established and competing principles for constructing trees;
they produce 'constituency' and 'dependency' trees and both are illustrated
here using an example sentence. The constituency-based tree is on the left
and the dependency-based tree is on the right:

The tree on the left is of the constituency-based, phrase structure grammar,

and the tree on the right is of the dependency grammar. The node labels in
the two trees mark the syntactic category of the different constituents, or
word elements, of the sentence.
In the constituency tree each phrase is marked by a phrasal node (NP, PP,
VP); and there are eight phrases identified by phrase structure analysis in
the example sentence. On the other hand, the dependency tree identifies a
phrase by any node that exerts dependency upon, or dominates, another
node. And, using dependency analysis, there are six phrases in the
sentence.
The trees and phrase-counts demonstrate that different theories of syntax
differ in the word combinations they qualify as a phrase. Here the
constituency tree identifies three phrases that the dependency tree does
not, namely: house at the end of the street, end of the street, and the end.
More analysis, including about the plausibilities of both grammars, can be
made empirically by applying constituency tests.

Confusion: phrases in theories of syntax[edit]

The common use of the term "phrase" is different from that employed by
some phrase structure theories of syntax. The everyday understanding of
the phrase is that it consists of two or more words, whereas depending on
the theory of syntax that one employs, individual words may or may not
qualify as phrases.[3] The trees in the previous section, for instance, do not
view individual words as phrases. Theories of syntax that employ X-bar
theory, in contrast, will acknowledge many individual words as phrases.
This practice is because sentence structure is analysed in terms of a
universal schema, the X-bar schema, which sees each head as projecting
at least three levels of structure: a minimal level, an intermediate level, and
a maximal level. Thus an individual noun (N), such as Susan in Susan
laughed, will project up to an intermediate level (N') and a maximal level
(NP, noun phrase), which means that Susan qualifies as a phrase. (The
subject slot in the sentence is required to be filled by an NP, so regardless
of whether the subject is a multi-word unit like the tall woman, or a single
word performing the same function, like Susan, it is called an NP in these

theories.) This concept of the phrase is a source of confusion for students

of syntax.
Many other theories of syntax do not employ the X-bar schema and are
therefore less likely to encounter this confusion. For instance, dependency
grammars do not acknowledge phrase structure in the manner associated
with phrase structure grammars and therefore do not acknowledge
individual words as phrases, a fact that is evident in the dependency
grammar trees above and below.

The verb phrase (VP) as a source of

controversy[edit]

Most if not all theories of syntax acknowledge verb phrases (VPs), but they
can diverge greatly in the types of verb phrases that they posit. Phrase
structure grammars acknowledge both finite verb phrases and non-finite
verb phrases as constituents. Dependency grammars, in contrast,
acknowledge just non-finite verb phrases as constituents. The distinction is
illustrated with the following examples:
The Republicans may nominate Newt. - Finite VP in bold
The Republicans may nominate Newt. - Non-finite VP in bold
The syntax trees of this sentence are next:

The constituency tree on the left shows the finite verb string may nominate
Newt as a phrase (= constituent); it corresponds to VP 1. In contrast, this

same string is not shown as a phrase in the dependency tree on the right.
Observe that both trees, however, take the non-finite VP string nominate
Newt to be a phrase, since in both trees nominate Newt corresponds to a
complete subtree.
Since there is disagreement concerning the status of finite VPs (whether
they are constituents or not), empirical considerations are needed.
Grammarians can (again) employ constituency tests to shed light on the
controversy. Constituency tests are diagnostics for identifying the
constituents of sentences and they are thus essential for identifying
phrases. The results of most constituency tests do not support the
existence of a finite VP constituent.[4]

See also[edit]

Clause
Constituent (linguistics)
Dependency grammar
Finite verb
Head (linguistics)
Non-finite verb
Phrase structure grammar
Sentence (linguistics)
Syntactic category
Verb phrase
X-bar theory

1
2

Jump up ^ Kroeger 2005:37

Jump up ^ For a good introduction and discussion of phrases and the tree
structures that represent phrases, see Sobin (2011:29ff.).
Jump up ^ Finch (2000:112) sees a phrase consisting of two or more words;
individual words do not count as phrases.
Jump up ^ Concerning the inability of most constituency tests to identify finite VP
as a constituent, see Miller (2011:54f.) and Osborne (2011:323f.).

3
4

Notes[edit]

References[edit]

Finch, G. 2000. Linguistic terms and concepts. New York: St. Martin's
Press.
Kroeger, Paul 2005. Analyzing grammar: An introduction. Cambridge
University Press.
Miller, J. 2011. A critical introduction to syntax. London: continuum.
Osborne, Timothy, Michael Putnam, and Thomas Gross 2011. Bare phrase
structure, label-less structures, and specifier-less syntax: Is Minimalism
becoming a dependency grammar? The Linguistic Review 28: 315-364.
Sobin, N. 2011. Syntactic analysis: The basics. Malden, MA: WileyBlackwell.

External links[edit]
Look up phrase in
Wiktionary, the free
dictionary.

The Phrase Finder - The meanings and origins of phrases, sayings, and
idioms
Phrases.net - A large collection of common phrases that can be heard and
translated to several languages.
Phras.in - An online tool that helps choosing the correct phrasing, based on
web results frequency.
phraseup* - A writing assistant that helps with completing sentences by
finding the missing words we can't recall.
Fraze.it - A search engine for sentences and phrases. Supports six
languages, filtered by form, zone, context, etc.
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Categories: Syntactic categoriesPhrases

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