DE: 201

Mr. Nahoda, A.M

The State University of Zanzibar

(SUZA)

PLEASE................

switch off or silence your phone

PHRASE COURSE OBJECTIVES 1 To be able to define phrase 2 to identify different types of English

phrase 3 To analyse different types of phrases

WHAT IS A PHRASE?

A phrase is a sequence of words which functioned as a unit and which does not contain a subject or predicate structure

A phrase is a sequence of words that forms a sub part of a sentence.

Examples:

i. I put it on the chair.

ii. He arrived at supper time.

iii. All the children went to the fair.

WHAT IS A PHRASE? A phrase is grammatical unit which is smaller

than a clause A phrase is cluster of word smaller than a

clause forming a grammatical unit. Clause is the largest grammatical unit smaller

than a sentence Sentence is the largest purely grammatical

unit in a language Sounds Words Phrase Clause

Sentence

Is it easy to define phrase?1. The tall man standing at the corner is

my dearest friend.

2. He is dead.

3. When I opened the cracked glass door the electricity went off.

No. 1,2, and 3 are all sentences

The words in red make a phrase

The words in green make a clause

The words in white are also sentences

Question the definition Were all the sentences larger than clause? Was The Clause larger than the phrase? Were the sentences larger than phrase in

all cases?

1. The tall man standing at the corner is my dearest friend.

2. He is dead

3. When I opened the cracked glass door the electricity went off

Is it easy to define phrase? In linguistics technical terms are defined

based on structure, function or both. Some modern linguists extend the term

phrase to a word which functions in the same way as, or can replace, a phrase.

A predicate consisting of one word is often called a verb phrase

Thus one word can be called a phrase!

Examples

All the children went to the fair.

1.Phrase 2. Phrase 3.Phrase

1. Noun Phrase

2. Verb Phrase

3. Prepositional phrase

= They went to it.

Which is the most correct definition of phrase? a phrase was defined as a sequence of

words which functioned as a unit: and which did not contain a subject and a predicate structure

A phrase is grammatical unit which is smaller than a clause

A phrase is a sequence of words that forms a sub part of a sentence

Phrase redefined

For our purpose we shall define phrase as a grammatical arrangement of words which function as a unit and with the exception of verb phrase, it self does not contain a finite verb.

WHAT IS A PHRASE? There are five types of phrases:-

1. Noun phrases: The man in the moon is a foolish myth.

2. Adjective phrases: She was very pleasant.

3. Verb phrases: We shall be arriving by train.

4. Preposition phrases: He is in big trouble.

5. Adverb phrases: I only set off last week.

REFERENCES:

Crystal, D (1995) The Cambridge encyclopaedia of the English Language. Cambridge. Italy

Harley, Heidi (2006) English word a linguistics introduction . Blackwell publishing: Australia

Todd, Loreto (1995) An Introduction to Linguistics. Longman: UK

Todd, Loreto and Hancock, Ian (2005) International English usage. Routledge: London

ASANTENI