E.G. The furniture became covered in dust.

9 The theory of phrase

Syntax- is a part of Grammar, which treats of phrases & sentences. We say “phrase” about every combination of 2 or more words, which is a gram. unit, but it is not an analytical form of some word, e.g. the Perfect forms of verbs. The elements of a phrase may belong to any part of speech, some scholars insist that a phrase must contain at least 2 notional words, which do not form a sentence. Western scholars consider that every combination of 2 or more words makes a phrase. So they don’t see great difference between the groups “wise men” & “to the lighthouse”

Another problem concerns the question whether a predicative combination of words(subject-predicate relationship) forms a phrase, but predication refers more to a sentence, than to a phrase, as its purpose is communication. Phrases have no such aim, because they are used only to name things, actions, qualities & so on. Unlike the sentence, phrases have no intonation. Western scholars make no difference between subject-predicate combinations of words & other phrases. There’s no traditional terminology to name phrases. Different terms are used to express the same idea (phrase, combination of words, cluster of words, word group).

E. phrases are classed as follows: subordinate word-groups (fine weather, to write a letter, fond of reading); co-ordinate word-groups (brother & sister, neither here nor there, King Lear); predicative word-groups (weather permitting, for u to go)

Subordinate word-groups fall into 2 parts: the head (an independent component) & the adjunct (a dependent component) a good [adjunct] book [head] Subordinate word-groups can be classified:

a)According to the head-word: nouns groups: a sleeping night;

verb groups: to work hard; adj. groups: extremely clever, rich in oil; adverb groups: quite near, very quicklyl; pronoun groups: some of the students.

b)According to the structure: simple [unextended] word-groups consisting of 2 notional words: a good book, fond of reading; Complex [extended] word-groups consisting of more than 2 notional words: a very good book.

The gram. relations between words in a word-group are primarily expressed by means of word order, prepositions (a good book, the cover of the book). The structure of a word-group in E. must be gram.ly complete because of the absence of inflexions. In noun groups the prop-words one (ones), that (those) are extensively used in E.: He is a doctor, & a great one.In verb groups after a transitive verb the formal ‘it’ often occurs in E.: I like it here. He found it impossible to utter the next word.

Coordinate phrases: syndetic / asyndetic;copulative & appositive e.g. harsh & loud (1,3), the city of Rome (2,4), they all (2,4).

Appositive phrases may be close & loose 1) Wilson the writer; 2) Tolstoy, the great Rus. writer, is dead.

Predicative word-groups consist in 2 parts: a subjectival & a predicatival. He didn’t want for me [subjectival] to come [predicatival]. The relations between the subjectival & the predicatival are similar to those of the subject & the predicate. There is no correspondence in person & number between the predicatival & subjectival. Predicative word-groups like other word-groups are semantic & gram. units; cannot function as independent sentences as they do not express communications. The person (thing) expressed by the subject of the sentence & the subjectival are different: Val likes you to look nice. The subject ‘Val’ & the subjectival ‘you’ denote different persons.

Syntactical Relations between the Components of Phrase may be divided into 3 groups: 1) agreement; 2) government; 3) adjoinment. Agreement is a means of syntactical relationship between words which implies that the use of one form necessitates the use of the other. an adjunct word agrees in number with its headword (a noun) E.g. this (that) book – these (those) books. A singular subject requires a predicate in the singular, a plural subject requires the predicate in the plural. E.g. I am a student. There are 2 books on the table. But in modern E. there is sometimes a conflict between form & meaning, in these cases the predicate doesn’t agree with the subject. My family are early risers. My family is small.

Government is a means of connecting words consisting in the use of a certain case form of the adjunct required by its headword. The use of the objective case of personal pronouns & of the pronoun ‘who’ when they are subordinate to a verb or follow a preposition: e.g. I saw him (her, them). Whom did u see there? We also find government between the headnoun & the attributive adjunct noun. E.g. The boy’s mother; the student’s answer.

Adjoinment is such a way of connecting words when they are joined to one another without any specail forms by only their position & combinability. It is found in the following cases: Adverbs are joined to the verb. E.g. they walked slowly. Adj.s, participles, pronouns (when used as attributes) are joined to their head-nouns. E.g. a small room.

Adverbs are joined to adj.s or other adverbs: very interesting, very well.