Phrase

A phrase (Greek ?????, sentence, expression, see also strophe) is a group of words that functions as a single unit in the syntax of a sentence.

Formal definition

A phrase is a syntactic structure which has syntactic properties derived from its head.

Related Topics:
Syntactic - Head

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

For example the house at the end of the street is a noun phrase. Its head is house, and its syntactic properties come from that fact. It contains prepositional phrase at the end of the street, which acts as an adjunct. At the end of the street could be replaced by another adjunct, such as white, to make the phrase the white house. Of the street, another prepositional phrase, acts as a complement of end. Each phrase has a word called its head which gives it its syntactic properties.

Related Topics:
Noun phrase - Prepositional phrase - Adjunct - Complement

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~