Unit 3: Words and Phrases
3.1 Phrases
In order to build clauses and sentences, words are combined into PHRASES. A phrase consists of one or more words. (This is an example of how grammatical terminology must be kept separate from everyday usage, where "phrase" usually means two or more words.) In grammatical analysis (also known as PARSING), phrases are separated by ROUND BRACKETS. Each word in a phrase has a LABEL below the line to indicate its part of speech.
1.
NP
(Elephants)
N
N
VP
(prefer)
V
V
NP
(buns)
N
N
2.
NP
(Sophisticated
Aj
Aj
elephants)
N
N
VP
(may
a
a
prefer)
V
V
NP
(savoury
Aj
Aj
buns)
N
N
Sentence (2) is longer than sentence (1), but its structure is essentially the same; both contain three phrases.
