4.

The Phrase

4.1. Types of phrase

When examining a clause in English, one can sense that it is made up of words or groups of
words connected by relations that turn them into units (see 2.6.). To understand how such
relations work, look at the examples below:
The dog| ate| the treat|.

SVO pattern

The big friendly dog of my neighbour on the third floor| ate| the tasty treat on the table near the
window that gave on the park in front of the Old Catholic Cathedral|.
SVO pattern
The two clauses, though very different in length, are both SVO clauses, and have exactly the same
clause elements: subject, verb, and object.
The difference then should rest at phrase level, because syntactic functions in the clause are
realised by phrases. Indeed, every clause element consists of a grammatical unit, called phrase.
Both the dog and the big friendly dog of my neighbour on the third floor are noun phrases that
fulfil the function of subject.

Notice: Romanian speakers of English have to be aware of the fact that phrase and fraz
are false friends, because they look and sound similar, but differ significantly in meaning.

The head is the most important element of the phrase, the word that cannot be omitted without
destroying the phrase itself. To put it differently, if the clause pattern is the minimal structure of a
clause, the head is the minimal structure of a phrase.
The head determines the relationships and the behaviour of the phrase as a whole. In the two
examples above, both subjects consist of nouns phrases. They are recognized as noun phrases
because the central element in both is the noun dog and, consequently, each phrase behaves as a
noun.
The table below contains an example for each of the five types of phase in English.
type

example

word-class of head

1. noun phrase

a nice chat

noun: chat

2. verb phrase

must have been dreaming verb: dreaming

3. adjective phrase

very nice

adjective: nice

4. adverb phrase

very calmly

adverb: calmly

5. prepositional phrase of the language

preposition: of

It is important to note that the number of phrase types (five) is smaller than the number of wordclasses (ten). For comparison, they are put side by side below:
type of phrase
noun phrase (NP)

examples
(the friendly) dog

word-classes
nouns

examples
dog

verb phrase (VP)

adjective phrase (AdjP)
adverb phrase (AdvP)
prepositional phrase (PpP)
------

go
(very) nice
(very) slowly
to the dog
------

verbs
adjectives
adverbs
prepositions
pronouns
numerals
conjunctions
determiners
interjections

go
nice
slowly
to
it
five
and
the
ouch

Pronouns, numerals, conjunctions, determiners, and interjections do not have a corresponding

phrase (there is no example of Pronoun Phrase or Numeral Phrase). As for pronouns and
numerals only, sometimes they can occupy the position of head of a noun phrase ([NP I] love his
novels! [NP I]'ve read [NP five].) or, in the case of numerals, of an adverb phrase (He came [AdvP
fifth] in the car race.)
We already know that each phrase, except the prepositional phrase, can consist of the head only.
To see how that works, let us look again at the bracketed noun phrases in the examples above:
the dog and the big friendly dog of my neighbour on the third floor. The longer phrase can be
contracted to the head only dog by removing in turns all the determinatives and modifiers, or
can be expanded into a longer sequence by adding the modifiers back. If we scale the phrase as
below, it becomes obvious that depending on where we start from, top down or bottom up,
various head dependents can be added/ removed before and after the head.
[the dog]
[the big friendly dog]
[the big friendly dog of my neighbour]
[the big friendly dog of my neighbour on the third floor]
Each object in the two examples above also consists in a noun phrase: the treat and the tasty treat
on the table near the window that gave on the park in front of the Old Catholic Cathedral,
respectively, and the difference in length between them is even more outstanding. By arranging
them on the same pyramidal scale, it becomes obvious that a phrase that consists of other
elements besides the head can be analyzed in more than one way. This happens because, in
English, phrases can be embedded (see 2.6.3).
[NP [det the] treat]
[NP [det the] [AdjP tasty] treat]
[NP [det the] [AdjP tasty] treat [PpP on the table]]
[NP [det the] [AdjP tasty] treat [PpP on the table] [PpP near the window]]
[NP [det the] [AdjP tasty] treat [PpP on the table] [PpP near the window] [that-Cl that gave on the park]]
[NP [det the] [AdjP tasty] treat [PpP on the table] [PpP near the window] [that-Cl that gave on the park] [PpP in front of the Old Catholic
Cathedral]]

As we can see, the treat on the first line is a noun phrase, which on the line below is combined
with an adjective tasty, then with a prepositional phrase, on the table, which in turn is

combined with that gave on the park, to which in front of the Old Catholic Cathedral is added,
and such additions can potentially go on endlessly.
Notice that within a phrase, we can even add a clause like that gave on the park, as in the
window that gave on the park. Such occurrences, obtained by adding further phrases, or even
clauses, within the basic structure of a phrase, are examples of embedding (see 2.6.3.). The fact
that a phrase may contain another (embedded/nested) phrase or clause is one of the main features
of English phrases.
4.2. Syntactic functions of phrases
Another feature that describes phrases is the fact that there are two types of syntactic relations
that apply to them. As we have seen, phrases can have syntactic functions in the clause - they can
realise subjects, verbals, objects, complements or adverbials. At the same time, the phrases that
are embedded within other phases can have syntactic functions in the phrase they belong to.
The table below presents the major syntactic functions the different phrase types can have at
clause and phrase level.
phrase type syntactic function in clause
noun phrase subject; direct object; indirect object; subject
complement; object complement, adverbial
verb phrase verbal
adjective
subject complement; object complement
phrase
adverb
adverbial
phrase
prepositional adverbial
phrase

syntactic function in phrase

complement of preposition in PpP;
premodifier in NP; apposition to other NP
premodifier in NP; postmodifier in NP; head in
NP
modifier in AdjP, AdvP
postmodifier in NP; complement in AdjP;
premodifier in NP

Examples for each situation above will be provided and discussed in the following sections.