Phrase-structure

Chapter XI

The ways in which word-combinations (phrases) as non-communicative units are constituted may be described as "Minor" Syntax in contrast to "Major" Syntax dealing with linguistic units of communicative value.

The syntactical description of any language is facilitated by isolating certain recurrent units of expression and examining their distribution in contexts.

English syntax is a many-layered organisation of relatively few types of its basic units. A twofold or binary structure is one of the most striking things about its grammatical organisation.

According to the ways in which phrases are used and constituted, two main types of English phrases can be distinguished: headed (endocentric) and non-headed (exocentric).

The terms "endocentric" and "exocentric" for syntactic constructions were introduced by L. Bloomfield.

"Every syntactic construction shows us two (or sometimes more) free forms combined in a phrase, which we may call the resultant phrase. The resultant phrase may belong to a form-class other than that of any constituent. For instance, John ran is neither a nominative expression (like John) nor a finite verb expression (like ran). Therefore we say that English actor-action construction is exocentric: the resultant phrase belongs to the form-class of no immediate constituent. On the other hand, the resultant phrase may belong to the same form-class as one (or more) of the constituents. For instance, poor John is a proper-noun expression, and so is the constituent John; the forms John and poor have, on the whole, the same functions. Accordingly we say that the English character-substance construction (as in poor John, fresh milk and the like) is an endocentric construction" ¹.

Headed phrases have this peculiarity: all the grammatical functions open to them as phrases can also be exercised by one expression within them. They may be regarded as expansions of this expression, called the head of the group and it is possible to substitute the head for the group or the group for the head within the same grammatical phrase (i. e. in the same context) without causing any formal dislocation of the overall grammatical structure. For instance, in fresh fruit is good the headed

¹ L. Bloomfield. Language. New York, 1969, p. 194.

word-group fresh fruit serves as subject; in I like fresh fruit, it serves as objective complement. If we substitute the head expression fruit for fresh fruit in either case, the grammatical frame subject, verb, complement will remain formally undisturbed.

Fresh fruit is good. Fruit is good. I like fresh fruit. Similarly: I like fruit.

All this nice fresh fruit is good. Fruit is good. Singing songs is fun. Singing is fun. I like singing songs. I like singing.

In these sets of examples, the head expression fruit and singing are freely substitutable grammatically for the word-groups of which they are constituents. In both cases, then, the italicised word-groups are headed groups.

Syntactic relations may be signalled by the following devices:

a) Word-order, i. e. the position of words relative to each other in the utterance.

b) Prosody-combinations of patterns of pitch, stress and juncture. Patterns of pitches and terminal junctures are called intonation patterns; patterns of stresses and internal junctures are often referred to as super- fixes.

c) Function words — words with little or no lexical meaning which are used in combining words into larger structures (prepositions, con- junctions,relative pronouns).

d) Inflections which adapt words to fit varying structural positions without changing their lexical meaning or part of speech.

e) Punctuation in writing.

It seems practical to classify phrases according to the character of their syntactical arrangement. We shall thus distinguish: 1) subordinate phrases, 2) co-ordinate phrases and 3) predicative (or "nexus") phrases. Every structure may be divided into its immediate constituents:

1) In terms of grammatical organisation, subordinate phrases are binary structures in which one of the members is syntactically the leading element of the phrase. No matter how complicated this twofold or binary structure may be, it can always be divided into two immediate constituents, one functioning as head and the other as modifier.

Adjuncts serve to describe, to qualify, to select, to complete, to extend or in some other way to affect the meaning of the head, e. g.: fresh air, stone wall, writing a letter, perfectly right, awfully tired, etc.

2) Co-ordinate phrases consist of two or more syntactically equivalent units joined in a cluster which functions as a single unit. The units so joined may be any of the parts of speech or more complex structures taking part in grammatical organisation. The joining may be accomplished

by word order and prosody alone, or with the help of conjunctions, e. g.: girls and boys, pins and needles, sooner or later, now and then, etc. 3) Predicative (or "nexus") phrases are such structures in which the syntactic functions of the component' parts differ from the function of the phrase, as a whole, e. g.: the lesson over, circumstances permitting, this done, for them to come, on him to do, etc.

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