Phrases and their types. Syntactical relations between the components of a phrase

A narrower definition: a phrase is a unity of 2 or more notional words. A wider definition: phrase - any syntactic group of words. Phrases may be built by:

- combining notional words (out of),

- notional and functional words (in the corner),

- functional words (out of).

Notional phrases are more independent structurally and semantically, other types function as part of notional phrases. A phrase is naming unit. A phrase may have a system of forms. Each component of a phrase may undergo grammatical changes without destroying the identity of the phrase. The naming function of the phrase distinguishes it from the sentence, whose main function is communicative. Therefore the structure N+V is traditionally excluded from phrases. A phrase is usually smaller than a sentence, but it may also function as a sentence (N+V), and it may be larger than a sentence, as the latter may consist of one word.

Phrases may be classified partly by their inner structure (syntactic relations between the components, morphological expression and position of components, or by order and arrangement) and partly by their external functioning (distribution, functions of the components).

The components of the phrase can be connected by different types of syntactic relations. H.Sweet: the most general type of relation is that of the modifier and modified (headword and adjunct), or the relation of subordination. He also distinguished the relation of coordination.

The syntactic theory of O.Jespersen can be applied to phrases and sentences. The theory of three ranks is based on the principle of determination. In the word-group a furiously³ barking² dog¹ 1 is independent and is called a primary, 2 modifies 1 and is called a secondary, 3 modifies 2 and is called a tertiary. A secondary may be joined to a primary in two ways: junction and nexus. These terms are used to differentiate between attributive and predicative relations (relations between the subject and the predicate), or the relations of subordination and interdependence.

The structural theory of word-groups (L.Bloomfield), divides word-groups into two main types: endocentric (headed) and exocentric (non-headed). The criteria for distinguishing between them are distribution and substitution..An endocentric group has the same position as its headword: An old man came in. - A man came in.

The distribution of an exocentric group differs from the distribution of its components: A man came

Classification of phrases according to the types of syntactic relations between the constituents.

3 types of syntactic relations within word-groups: subordination, coordination, interdependence. Accordingly, phrases are usually classified into subordinate, coordinate and predicative. Sometimes a fourth type, appositive phrases, is mentioned.

Subordination:

1) agreement (concord);

2) government;

3) adjoinment;

4) enclosure.

Predicativity - the correlation of the thought expressed in the sentence with the situation of speech. Its components are modality, time and person, expressed by the categories of mood, tense and person.

Means of expressing predicativity: predicate verb, subject-predicate group (predication), intonation. Predication constitutes the basic structure of the sentence. A sentence may contain primary and secondary predication. I heard someone singing. The group someone singing is called the secondary predication, as it resembles the subject-predicate group (= the primary predication), structurally and semantically: it consists of two main components, nominal and verbal, and names an event or situation. But it cannot be correlated with reality directly and cannot constitute an independent unit of communication, as verbals have no categories of mood, tense and person. The secondary predication is related to the situation of speech indirectly, through the primary predications.

Types of morphemes.

Free morphemes, like town and dog, can appear with other lexemes (as in town hall or dog house) or they can stand alone, i.e., "free".Bound morphemes like "un-" appear only together with other morphemes to form a lexeme. Bound morphemes in general tend to be prefixes and suffixes. Unproductive, non-affix morphemes that exist only in bound form are known as "cranberry" morphemes, from the "cran" in that very word.Derivational morphemes can be added to a word to create (derive) another word: the addition of "-ness" to "happy," for example, to give "happiness." They carry semantic information.Inflectional morphemes modify a word's tense, number, aspect, and so on, without deriving a new word or a word in a new grammatical category (as in the "dog" morpheme if written with the plural marker morpheme "-s" becomes "dogs"). They carry grammatical information.Allomorphs are variants of a morpheme, e.g., the plural marker in English is sometimes realized as /-z/, /-s/ or /-ɨz/.