Phrasal Categories: (syntactic labels): NP, VP, PP, Adj, Adv, Det, Linear order and internal hierarchical structure. Just as morphemes have morpheme categories, and words have word categories, phrases have phrasal categories.
• Phrasal categories, just like word categories, are ultimately much more useful than just individual phrases, for the study of sentence structure. A phrasal category is directly determined by the category of the word which the phrase is about. Such a word is called thehead of the phrase. How to determine a phrasal category:
The concept of a “head”
• The head of a phrase is the main word of that phrase. It is essentially what the entire phrase is about.
• The category of a phrase is directly determined from the category of its head.
To see how this works, consider the following example sentence, with the phrases marked out in brackets:
(1) [The tiny woman] [went [to [the store ] ] ]
Sentence (S) = The tiny woman went to the store
Phrase 1 = the tiny woman
Phrase 2 = went to the store
Phrase 3 = to the store
Phrase 4 = the store
What is the head of Phrase 1?
In other words, what is Phrase 1 mainly about? What does it refer to in the real world?
It is essentially talking about a woman. The other words the and tinygive us more information about the woman but this is extra information. The main word in the phrase is woman.
So, the head of Phrase 1 is woman.
Determining the phrase category
What is the category of woman? It is a noun.
• The category of the phrase is determined by the word category of its head.
• The word category of the head is: Noun.
• Therefore, the phrasal category of Phrase 1 is: Noun Phrase (NP, for short).
Similarly, in Phrase 2, the head is: went because this is the main information.
That the woman went to the store (and not somewhere else) is extra information. So, the head of Phrase 2 is: went. The word- category of went is verb. So, Phrase 2 is a Verb Phrase (VP).
In Phrase 3, the head is: to. Even if it doesn’t seem so obvious, the phrase is actually talking about the woman going to a place, so the head of this phrase is to. The category of to is preposition. So,Phrase 3 is a Prepositional Phrase (PP).
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