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3.1 What is a phrase?

Instruction: Click on the card and slide it to the left to read the information.

A phrase is a structure usually composed of more than one word, but it does not present a subject-predicate construction. There are different classifications for the types of phrases, and to name their categories they all consider the most important word that the phrase contains, which is called the head; in other words, the “entire phrase refers to whatever the head refers to” (Fromkin et al., 2017). For example, in the phrase “the red carpet”, the head would be the word ‘carpet’, because the phrase is about the carpet, and the word ‘carpet’ is a noun; therefore, it is a noun phrase.
Sometimes, there are different names for the same type of phrase, for example, noun or nominal phrases and pronoun or pronominal phrases. In other cases, some categories include two different types of phrases, for example, adpositional phrases include prepositional (for example, “in the meantime” is a prepositional phrase, as it is introduced by a preposition) and postpositional ones, which do not occur in English.

Also, it is important to mention collocations as a type of phrases. Collocations are fixed phrases or ‘lexical’ phrases which “in academic discourse are an important area of fluent discourse production and comprehension, and also of importance of shared knowledge within professional discourse communities” (Wiprayanti, 2023, p. 32). They, of course, can be classified into different types of phrases, also according to the head of the phrase.

In some cases, gerunds, participles, infinitives and appositives are considered as types of phrases, but by and large, it is the word classes (see 2.2) that are considered to identify the most important word in a phrase.

A phrase is a structure usually composed of more than one word, but it does not present a subject-predicate construction. There are different classifications for the types of phrases, and to name their categories they all consider the most important word that the phrase contains, which is called the head; in other words, the “entire phrase refers to whatever the head refers to” (Fromkin et al., 2017). For example, in the phrase “the red carpet”, the head would be the word ‘carpet’, because the phrase is about the carpet, and the word ‘carpet’ is a noun; therefore, it is a noun phrase.

Sometimes, there are different names for the same type of phrase, for example, noun or nominal phrases and pronoun or pronominal phrases. In other cases, some categories include two different types of phrases, for example, adpositional phrases include prepositional (for example, “in the meantime” is a prepositional phrase, as it is introduced by a preposition) and postpositional ones, which do not occur in English.

Also, it is important to mention collocations as a type of phrases. Collocations are fixed phrases or ‘lexical’ phrases which “in academic discourse are an important area of fluent discourse production and comprehension, and also of importance of shared knowledge within professional discourse communities” (Wiprayanti, 2023, p. 32). They, of course, can be classified into different types of phrases, also according to the head of the phrase.

In some cases, gerunds, participles, infinitives and appositives are considered as types of phrases, but by and large, it is the word classes (see 2.2) that are considered to identify the most important word in a phrase.

Stop and think Taking into consideration that phrases are usually classified according to the class of the most important word that they include, what types of phrases can you mention?

Check the answer

Noun, pronoun, adjective, adverb, verb, and prepositional.

LAS Activity 301. Phrases

Instructions

The following phrases are the ones from the Getting Started activity. Classify them into the corresponding category.

Examples

Type of phrase

Very good! You are ready to continue.

Please, try to answer the exercise again.

Please check the correct answers.