Лекции по теоретической грамматике английского языка. Тивьяева И.В. - 74 стр.

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Lecture 10

The Phrase: Principles of Classification

1. The phrase as the basic unit of syntax. Differential features of the phrase and

of the sentence.

2. Types of phrases. The traditional part of speech classification of phrases.

Nominative classifications of phrases.

3. Types of syntactic relations.

1. The phrase as the basic unit of syntax.

Differential features of the phrase and of the sentence

One problem concerning the phrase is the absence of a universal term.

Before the 20th century the word “phrase” was used to denote this linguistic

phenomenon, however, it was dismissed by H. Sweet who considered it too vague.

There appeared new terms, such as “word group” and “word cluster”. Later L.

Bloomfield restored the past status of “phrase”, and currently this term is widely

used by American linguists.

Another problem is connected with the definition of the phrase. Despite the

fact that the phrase, along with the sentence, is a basic unit of syntax, there is no

universally accepted definition of the phrase. Some scholars define the phrase as a

combination of at least two notional words which do not constitute the sentence

but are syntactically connected. However, the majority of Western linguists and

Russian researchers Prof. B. Ilyish and V. Burlakova believe that a combination of

a notional word with a functional word can be treated as a phrase as well, that is

they term “phrase” every combination of two or more words, which is a

grammatical unit but is not an analytical form of some word. The problem is

disputable since the role of functional words is to denote some abstract relations

and they are devoid of nominative power. On the other hand, such combinations

are syntactically bound and they should belong somewhere. We shall adhere to the

view supported by B. Ilyish and V. Burlakova.

Despite all the controversies regarding the essence and nature of the phrase,

the most adequate interpretation seems to be as follows: the phrase is any