Phrase structures
Analysing phrases is a basic language analysis skill.
Can you understand what is meant by the graphic above if you are
given this example?
The old man almost certainly had lived through very interesting
times
Click here for an answer.
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| Noun phrase | Adverb phrase | Verb phrase | Prepositional phrase | ||
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| Preposition | Adjective phrase | Noun phrase | |||
| The old man | almost certainly | had lived | through | very interesting | times |
You will see that two of these phrases consist of only one word. In language analysis, one word counts as a phrase.
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The structure of a phrase |
To explain this, we will take a simple noun phrase:
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| the old man in the boat |
Phrases come in three parts like this:
- The Head
- In a noun phrase this will be the noun, in a Verb phrase it
will be the verb, in an Adjective phrase, it will be the
adjective and so on. This is the part of the phrase which
cannot be omitted. In one-word phrases, this is the only
part.
In our example, the Head is man. - The pre-Head string
- This is a pre-modifier and is optional.
In our example, the pre-Head string is made up of a determiner (the) and an adjective (old). - The post-Head string
- This is also optional and is a post-modifier.
In our example, the post-Head string is a prepositional phrase made up of a preposition (in) plus a noun phrase which consists of a determiner (the) plus a noun (boat).
Removing the pre-Head or post-Head strings is
possible because you end up with a simple noun, man which can
function alone as the subject of a verb. Removing the Head leaves nonsense:
*the old in the boat
It is true
that removing the determiner often leaves an inaccurate phrase in
English but that is to do with how articles are used in the
language. Other languages, such as Russian and the Chinese
languages, manage quite well without them.
Now we can look briefly at each sort of phrase and see how it is constructed.
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The noun phrase |
The noun phrase normally functions as the subject or object of a
verb. In our first example,
The old man almost certainly had lived through very interesting
times
we have two noun phrases:
- the old man – a pre-modified noun (determiner plus adjective) with no post-modification
- very interesting times – one plural noun with pre-modification by an adjective phrase, made up of an adverb and an adjective
Noun phrases can be much more complex than this and be very long. For example:
The long-awaited train for London and the airport which was very late finally arrived at the over-crowded platform under the bridge
In this sentence, we have two examples of noun phrases, both of
which have pre-Head strings and post-Head strings. In other
words the Heads (train and platform) are both pre- and
post-modified.
The noun train is pre-modified by:
The long-awaited
(determiner plus adjective)
and post-modified by:
for London
(preposition and its noun-phrase complement, London)
The noun platform is pre-modified in the same way with:
the over-crowded
(determiner plus adjective)
and post-modified by:
under the bridge
(preposition plus its complement noun phrase)
For more on modification of noun phrases, see
the guide.
The Head of a noun phrase is not always a noun:
- He arrived late – a simple, unmodified pronoun as the noun phrase
- Those are what I want – a demonstrative pronoun as the noun phrase
- These with the blue pattern are better – a post-modified demonstrative pronoun as the noun phrase
- Four arrived together – a numeral as a noun phrase
- Anyone who needs help will get it – a post-modified pronoun as the noun phrase
- Those two don't need to wait – a numeral pre-modified with a demonstrative as the noun phrase
- My brother, James, is not here – a complex noun phrase with two nouns in apposition, the first pre-modified by a genitive
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Elements of the noun phrase |
Apart from the Head of the phrase, which must be a noun or a pronoun and which must be present, we can find a variety of elements included in an analysis of the noun phrase.
- Determiners
- Articles as in:
the money
a woman - Demonstratives as in:
this house
those problems - Interrogatives as in:
whose car
which table - Possessives as in:
my question
their furniture - Quantifiers (and distributives) as in:
some money
every child
- Articles as in:
- Adjective phrases
- before the noun as in:
the poor old fishermen - after the noun as in:
the chairman elect
- before the noun as in:
- Prepositional phrases, which may be multiple, as in:
the house by the river near the bridge - Whole sentences which modify as in:
the money we took out of the bank
(Guides to all these sorts of modification of the head noun are on this site for those who look.)
These can be combined into complex noun phrases such as:
this spacious and well ordered house recently
on the market and overlooking the park in a quiet road
half the children waiting for their test results
their old car in the car park outside the school
and so on.
This leads us to the next question.
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Why is it important to find the Head? |
Take a moment to think about that and then click here.
This is important for learners because noun phrases function as
single nouns in the syntax of the language. They are the
subjects and objects of verbs and determine the form of
the verb among other things. Identifying them is a key skill
to unwrapping meaning.
In academic and technical texts in particular, long pre- and
post-modified noun phrases are common and the ability to access the
meaning of such texts requires identification of the Head of the
noun phrase. Much of the pre- and post-modification can often
be ignored if the general meaning is all you want.
For example, if we have a noun phrase such as
the holiday money they had saved up for a
year in the box on the mantelpiece in their living room
we can ignore most of the modification if we can locate the Head
money and then we can move on to the verb.
The ability to do this (which comes, of course, with a little
directed practice) saves the learner from trying to understand other
items such as mantelpiece, save up and so on which
potentially block comprehension.
Giving your learners this sort of practice is often a quicker way to
instill good reading and listening habits than just having lots of
random practice of the skills.
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The adverb phrase |
| walking slowly away |
If you have followed the guide to word class, you'll know what adverbs do. There are also guides to adverbs and adverbials on this site so this is not the place to explain the difference.
Commonly, adverb phrases consist of an unmodified Head. Pre-modification is also quite common and post-modification is possible but rarer:
- She ran quite quickly – a pre-modified adverb phrase of manner post-modifying the verb phrase
- That's completely idiotic – a single-word adverb phrase pre-modifying an adjective
- Luckily for her, the train arrived early – an adverb phrase with a post-modifying post-Head prepositional phrase (for her). There is also the post-modification of the verb with the adverb phrase, early.
- He spoke loudly but wholly incoherently – an adverb coordinated with the conjunction but to an adverb phrase
Adverb phrase pre-Head strings are usually other adverbs and adverb phrase post-Heads are often prepositional phrases.
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The verb phrase |
| He bravely dived into the freezing water |
Verb phrases often consist of single verbs but can get quite complicated with pre-modifying adverb phrases and post-modifying adverbials, often prepositional phrases:
- He arrived – a one-word verb phrase
- She slowly realised the truth – a verb phrase (realised) with an adverb phrase pre-Head (slowly) and a noun-phrase post-Head as its object (the truth)
- He can't come at that time – a verb phrase, come, with a pre-Head consisting of a modal auxiliary verb (can) and a negator (n't) and a post-Head prepositional phrase (at that time)
- Never talk like that again! – a verb phrase with a pre-Head negator (Never) and two post-Head adverbials (like that and again)
- He
eventually started to enjoy himself at the party – a
verb phrase with a pre-Head adverb phrase (eventually) and a post-Head
non-finite verb phrase (to enjoy
himself) followed by a second post-Head
prepositional phrase (at the party)
Strictly, the word himself is the object of the verb, not part of the verb phrase itself.
We should note here that, strictly speaking, a verb phrase consists only of verb forms but such phrases may be considered single constituents inclusive of any adverbials because the adverbial is so often embedded in the verb phrase. So, therefore, is enjoying, may be enjoying, has been enjoying etc. are all verb phrases but has eventually enjoyed is a verb phrase with an embedded adverbial phrase.
Many verbs require a post-head noun
phrase. They are always transitive. Some, ditransitive,
verbs can take two post-Head noun phrases. For example:
I gave him the money (two post-Head noun phrases, him
and the money)
She
lit the fire in the living room (one post-Head noun phrase, as
the object of the verb, the fire) and
a post-Head prepositional phrase, in the living room)
Some verbs cannot have a post-Head noun phrase because they are
intransitive. For example,
He yawned loudly (a post-Head adverbial
phrase only)
He dived into the pool (a post-Head prepositional phrase, not a
noun phrase)
Some verbs can do both. For example,
She smoked rapidly (an intransitive verb phrase with a post-Head
adverb phrase, rapidly)
She rapidly smoked a cigarette (a
transitive use of the verb with a pre-Head adverbial modifier,
rapidly, and a
post-Head noun phrase, a cigarette)
There is
a guide to transitivity on this site, linked below.
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Elements of the verb phrase |
As with all phrases, the Head must be present and, of course, it
must be a verb. The verb does not, however, have to be finite.
In many analyses, such as ones used elsewhere on this site, a verb
phrase is defined as only containing verbs but
other analyses will include additional elements, like this:
- Noun phrases as in e.g.:
play the piano - Prepositional phrases as in e.g.:
walk to the corner - Sentences as in e.g.:
did what he told me to do - Auxiliary verbs:
- primary as in:
have argued
didn't like
was repaired - modal as in:
can understand
must go
used to enjoy
- primary as in:
- Adverbs as in:
boldly go
drive carefully - Noun phrases as in:
opening the box
to eat the chocolates
Whether we allow a verb phrase to contain this additional elements and still be a verb phrase per se is a matter of choice but there is some sense in such an analysis because the phrases form single sense units and language chunks which can be prefabricated for use in fluent speech.
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The prepositional phrase |
There is a separate
guide to
prepositional phrases on this site, linked below.
Here, it's enough to note that these phrases usually consist of a
Head (the preposition) and the post-Head string (usually a noun
phrase) that is called the preposition complement here but in some
analyses, it is referred to as the object of the preposition
because, slightly unusually, a prepositional phrase contains both
the preposition and its object / complement obligatorily.
Some
examples will do:
- He waited at the station on the South bank – two prepositional phrases containing the preposition itself (at / on) and the noun complements (the station / the South bank)
- He lives at 350, 22nd Street – a prepositional phrase with the preposition, at, and a compound noun complement (22nd Street)
- At four o'clock, the fun begins – this prepositional time phrase pre-modifies the verb but is separated from it by the noun phrase. It can be shifted to the end with no loss in meaning but users of the language may front it for emphasis.
In our analyses on this site, we do not define a phrase such as
the word outside as in
we waited outside
as a preposition but as an adverb modifying the verb because there
is no complement or object.
In:
we waited outside the restaurant
we do have a proper prepositional phrase, naturally.
In less strict analyses, the word outside in the first
example may be called an intransitive preposition.
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The adjective phrase |
Adjective phrases are often single adjectives but they can have a pre-Head (usually an adverb phrase) and may have a post-Head (often an adverbial or a prepositional phrase but sometimes a non-finite verb phrase):
- Jean was happy – a one-word adjective phrase, happy, used predicatively (after the noun and linked to it by a copular verb)
- A truly enormous aeroplane came into land – an adjective phrase pre-modified by the pre-Head adverb phrase
- He is oddly afraid of cats – this adjective phrase has the pre-Head adverb phrase, oddly, but it must have a post-Head noun phrase. There are a few adjectives that do this and they include: fond (of), conscious (of), uncertain (of), tantamount (to) etc.
- I'm pleased to say that he has arrived – an adjective phrase with a non-finite verb-phrase post-Head
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Phrases within phrases |
Many of the examples in this guide contain wheels within wheels.
For example, a sentence such as:
The obviously completely crazy woman with the flaming red hair is clearly going to make a very long speech to us all
contains phrases within phrases. When you have sorted it all out, click here.
| It looks like this: | |
| The obviously completely crazy woman with the flaming red hair |
is the subject noun phrase consisting of:
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| is clearly going to make | is the
verb phrase consisting of the verb make which has a pre-Head adverb phrase
clearly as well as the split pre-Head is going to
formulation to denote tense. Technically, verb phrases only include verb forms such as, e.g., is going to make but, for teaching purposes, it often makes sense to consider an embedded adverb as part of the verb phrase. |
| a very long speech to us all | is the object noun phrase consisting
of
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That's all quite complicated and not the level of analysis that
most learners need. Teachers, however, need to be able to do
this in order to present language clearly and at a level of
complexity that the learners can manage.
Unpacking all the data is something native speakers do almost
unconsciously, of course.
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Stress |
This guide is mostly to do with phrase structure but would be incomplete without some mention of stress.
We can, of course, stress any of the words in a phrase to signal its importance. For example, compare:
- I went to London with my brother
- I went to London with my brother
In sentence 1., the stress falls on the first syllable of
London signifying that the speaker considers this the most
important (i.e., probably new) information. In sentence 2.,
the stress falls on the first syllable of brother because
the speaker wants to emphasise the importance of that piece of
information.
We can, naturally, stress any of the elements in the sentence to
show its significance:
- I went to London (not she)
- I went to London with my brother (not am going)
- I went to London with my brother (not from)
- I went to London with my brother (not Amsterdam)
- I went to London with my brother (not separately from him)
- I went to London with my brother (not his brother)
- I went to London with my brother (not my sister)
These are examples of special stress used for emphasis and, as such
phenomena occur in all languages, most learners do not find it too
challenging.
What we need is some kind of general, canonical rule for our
learners so they know which bit of the phrase to stress.
If you have followed the guide to intonation on this site, linked below, you will be familiar with the concept of tonic stress which usually falls towards the end of a tone unit. Where would you put the stress normally (not for special emphasis) on the following? Click on the graphic when you have an answer.
The general rule is that in a pre-modified phrase, the stress will fall on the Head.
Now try this set. Where would you normally expect the stress to fall?
In post-modified phrases the natural stress will fall on the Head of
the modifier (spoke, suddenly, help).
As most prepositional phrases contain a
post-Head noun or pronoun complement, that means the stress falls on the noun.
That explains the stressing of us and
road.
What happens when a phrase contains both a pre- and a post-modifier?
In line with the tendency to place tonic stress towards the end, the main stress is as shown but note that a secondary, lighter stress occurs on the Head of the preceding, post-modified phrase.
Unless you can recognise Heads, pre-Heads and post-Heads, of course, you can't identify any of this. That means you can't teach it consistently and your learners won't stress things appropriately.
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Teaching implications |
All the above is not just an exercise in categorisation and nitpicking; it actually has significant implications for the way we present language.
- All languages exhibit these fundamental units of meaning and learners will actively look for patterns in the language we present. If we present overly complex phrase structures, especially at lower levels, we make that identification harder and less productive.
- Phrases, rather than individual words, are, arguably, the units we use to put language together in our heads. If that's the case, being able to distinguish between phrase types will be a key skill when it comes to using a language.
- Being able to parse a sentence into its constituent phrases
makes understanding it much simpler because we know what or who
is doing what to what or whom.
For example, if we encounter:
The grumpy old man in the deckchair suddenly and for no reason shouted at the kids with the football
and we know about phrase structure, we can reduce the sentence to:
The man shouted at the kids
and then it's simple to get the gist of what we read or hear. And that's often all we need to function effectively in English. - Knowing that a simple noun will be the Head of a noun phrase, a verb the Head of a verb phrase and so on allows learners to decide what in the pre- and post-modifying text can safely be ignored for the purposes of understanding the gist.
- Knowing what the head of a phrase is allows learners to stress the elements accurately in speech.
| Related guides | |
| intonation | for an explanation of tonic stress |
| modification | for more on modification of noun phrases |
| adverbs | for a guide to this word class |
| clauses | for a general guide to clause structures |
| nominal clauses and phrases | for an analysis of the ways clauses can act as noun phrases |
| transitivity | for some consideration of types of verbs |
| syntax | for the general guide to phrase and clause analysis which focuses on the elements within phrases |
| prepositional phrases | for more on these with links to other guides |
| constituents | for a guide to how phrases can be ambiguous and how to disambiguate them |