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In grammar, a phrase (Greek φράση, sentence, expression, see also strophe) is a group of words that functions as a single unit in the syntax of a sentence. Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Wiktionary (a portmanteau of wiki and dictionary) is a multilingual, Web-based project to create a free content dictionary, available in over 150 languages. ... Phrase may mean: Phrase in linguistics Phrase (music) Phrase (fencing) Phrase (rapper) Category: ... For the surname, see Grammer. ... Strophe (Greek, to turn) is a term in versification which properly means a turn, as from one foot to another, or from one side of a chorus to the other. ... A word is a unit of language that carries meaning and consists of one or more morphemes which are linked more or less tightly together, and has a phonetical value. ... For other uses, see Syntax (disambiguation). ... In linguistics, a sentence is a unit of language, characterized in most languages by the presence of a finite verb. ...

For example the house at the end of the street (example 1) is a phrase. It acts like a noun. It contains the phrase at the end of the street (example 2), which acts like an adjective. Example 2 could be replaced by white, to make the phrase the white house. Examples 1 and 2 contain the phrase the end of the street (example 3) which acts like a noun. It could be replaced by the cross-roads to give the house at the cross-roads.

Most phrases have a head or central word which defines the type of phrase. In English the head is often the first word of the phrase. Some phrases, however, can be headless. For example, the rich is a noun phrase composed of a determiner and an adjective, but no noun. In linguistics, the head is the morpheme that determines the category of a compound or the word that determines the syntactic type of the phrase of which it is a member. ...

Phrases may be classified by the type of head they take

• Prepositional phrase (PP) with a preposition as head (e.g. in love, over the rainbow). Languages that use postpositions instead have postpositional phrases. The two types are sometimes commonly referred to as adpositional phrases.
• Noun phrase (NP) with a noun as head (e.g. the black cat, a cat on the mat)
• Verb phrase (VP) with a verb as head (e.g. eat cheese, jump up and down)
• Adjectival phrase with an adjective as head (e.g. full of toys)
• Adverbial phrase with adverb as head (e.g. very carefully)

A prepositional phrase (PP) is a linguistic term for a phrase whose head is a preposition. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with adposition. ... A postposition is a type of adposition, a grammatical particle that expresses some sort of relationship between a noun phrase (its object) and another part of the sentence; an adpositional phrase functions as an adjective or adverb. ... A postpositional phrase is a linguistic term for a phrase whose head is a postposition. ... In linguistics, an adpositional phrase is a general term that includes prepositional phrases (which are usually found in head-first languages like English) and postpositional phrases (usually found in head-final languages like Japanese). ... In linguistics, a noun phrase is a phrase whose Head is a noun. ... In English, a noun or noun substantive is a lexical category which is defined in terms of how its members combine with other grammatical kinds of expressions. ... linguistics, a verb phrase or VP is a syntactic structure composed of the predicative elements of a sentence and functions in providing information about the subject of the sentence. ... It has been suggested that Verbal agreement be merged into this article or section. ... An adjectival phrase (AP) is a phrase with an adjective as its head (e. ... talea harris and sophie king are sluts In grammar, an adjective is a word whose main syntactic role is to modify a noun or pronoun (called the adjectives subject, giving more information about what the noun or pronoun refers to. ... An adverbial phrase is a linguistic term for a phrase with an adverb as head. ... An adverb is a part of speech. ...

Formal definition

A phrase is a syntactic structure which has syntactic properties derived from its head. For other uses, see Syntax (disambiguation). ... In linguistics, the head is the morpheme that determines the category of a compound or the word that determines the syntactic type of the phrase of which it is a member. ...

Complexity

A complex phrase consists of several words, whereas a simple phrase consists of only one word. This terminology is especially often used with verb phrases: It has been suggested that Verbal agreement be merged into this article or section. ...

• simple past and present are simple verb, which require just one verb
• complex verb have one or two aspects added, hence require additional two or three words

"Complex", which is phrase-level, is often confused with "compound", which is word-level. However, there are certain phenomena that formally seem to be phrases but semantically are more like compounds, like "women's magazines", which has the form of a possessive noun phrase, but which refers (just like a compound) to one specific lexeme (i.e. a magazine for women and not some magazine owned by a woman). In linguistics, the grammatical aspect of a verb defines the temporal flow (or lack thereof) in the described event or state. ... In linguistics, a compound is a lexeme (a word) that consists of more than one other lexeme. ... A word is a unit of language that carries meaning and consists of one or more morphemes which are linked more or less tightly together, and has a phonetical value. ... Definition A lexeme is an abstract unit of morphological analysis in linguistics, that roughly corresponds to a set of words that are the same in basic meaning. ...

Semiotic approaches to the concept of "phrase"

In more semiotic approaches to language, such as the more cognitivist versions of construction grammar, a phrasal structure is not only a certain formal combination of word types whose features are inherited from the head. Here each phrasal structure also expresses some type of conceptual content, be it specific or abstract. Semiotics (also spelled Semeiotics) is the study of signs and sign systems. ... The term construction grammar (CxG) covers a family of theories, or models, of grammar that are based on the idea that the primary unit of grammar is the grammatical construction rather than the atomic syntactic unit and the rule that combines atomic units, and that the grammar of a language...

See also

• Cliché
• Grammatical construction
• Idiom
• Proverb
• Set phrase

To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... In linguistics, a grammatical construction is any syntactic string of words ranging from sentences over phrasal structures to certain complex lexemes, such as phrasal verbs. ... An idiom is an expression (i. ... For the music piece by Steve Reich see Proverb (Reich) Look up proverb in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... A set phrase is an expression (i. ...

External links

• Online utility - which finds most frequent phrases and words from arbitrary text.
• PhraseExpress Autotext - Windows Freeware which manages common phrases