1. Phrase and clause

According to the traditional grammar syntax is a part of grammar which is concerned with the relationships of words in sentences, the ways they are put together to form sentences. The basic units of syntax are phrases and sentences.

The term “phrase” was introduced in the second half of the 18^th century to denote the “word combination” in English.

Early English syntax concerned itself only with the study of word combinations: their structure and the relations between the elements. The term was accepted by the 19^th century grammarians denoted any combination of two or more words including that of the subject and predicate. But later when the term “clause” came to be defined as the syntactic unit containing a subject and a predicate, a term “phrase” was used to denote any combination except a combination of words which made up a clause. It might be a combination of two or more notional words or a form word and a notional one.

O. Jesperson used the term “phrase” for a combination of words with together form a sense unit.

2. Types of phrases

B. Ilyish: The type “noun + noun” is a most usual type of a phrase in Modern English. It can be subdivided:

• “noun in the common case + noun” : silver watch, London Bridge;

• “noun in the genitive case + non”: sister’s flat.

Another very common type is “adjective + noun”, which is used to express all possible kinds of things with their properties.

The type “verb + noun”. In the vast majority of cases the noun denotes an object of the action expressed by the verb, but in a certain number of phrases it denotes a measure, rather than the object, of the action: walk a mile, sleep an hour, wait a minute, etc.

The types “verb + adverb”, “adverb + adjective”, “noun + preposition + noun”, etc.

Prof. E. Kruizinga (he) distinguished close and loose syntactic groups. In a close group there is a syntactically leading element (Poor John); in a loose group both elements are independent of each other (ladies and gentlemen).

Classification of phrases are based on the presence or absence of the head word. Most scholars divide phrases into headed (Poor John) and non-headed (in the house). There exist classifications proceeding from the grammatical characteristics of the head word: a noun phrase (a red rose), a verbal phrase (to run quickly), an adjective phrase (very beautiful), an adverbial phrase (very coldly), a prepositional phrase (in front of), etc.

There exist classifications based on coordination or subordination (husband and wife, his pretty wife)

Relations between the components

The syntactical relations between the components of a phrase fall into 2 main heads: agreement (concord) and government.

AGREEMENT. B. Ilyish says: agreement is a method of expressing a syntactical relationship, which consists in making the subordinate word take a form similar to that of the word to which it is subordinate. In Modern English this can refer only to the category of number: a subordinate word agrees in number with its head word if it has different number forms at all. The pronouns this / that which agree in number with their head word.

As to the problem of agreement of the verb with the noun or pronoun denoting the subject of the action (a child plays), it is a controversial problem. Usually it is treated as agreement of the predicate with the subject, that is, as a phenomenon of sentence structure.

GOVERNMENT. It is a certain form of the subordinate word required by its head word, but not coinciding with the form of the head word itself – that is the difference between agreement and government.

The only thing that may be termed government in Modern English is the use of the objective case of personal pronouns and of the pronoun who when they are subordinate to a verb or follow a preposition: me, him, her, us, them are required if the pronoun follows a verb (find, invite).

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