PHRASES
Modern syntactic theory can
be a very technical affair. We shall try to keep things relativel y simple
here, but some abstract analysis is unavoidable. In particular it will be assumed
that the words of a sentence form natural groupings or phrases. This is the basic insight behind what is known as phrase structure grammar, which is a
method of syntactic analysis that has been popular for the last half century.
A phrase is classified
according to the word that is its principal item (normally called the head) and which determines how the
phrase functions in the containing sentence. Thus a noun phrase (‘NP’ for
short), for example, can be defined as a noun together with any adjacent determiners,
adjectives or prepositional phrases, as in el
chico ‘the boy’, mi casa ‘my
house’, el vestido azul ‘the blue
dress’, un café con leche ‘a white
coffee’.
In the same spirit, a
prepositional phrase (‘PP’ for short) normally comprises a preposition and a
following noun or NP (or some item functioning as such); e.g. con leche in un café con leche ‘a white coffee’ or de tu padre in Hablaron de tu
padre ‘They spoke about your father.’
An adjectival phrase (‘AP’)
is made up of an adjective and any adjacent adverbs or PPs; e.g. sumamente inepto ‘exceedingly inept’, igual a ti ‘identical to you’.
Finally, a verb phrase
(‘VP’) consists typically of a verb together with any associated NPs (excluding
the NP that supplies the verb’s subject), PPs or adverbs. For example, the VP
in sentence (1) below is bebió el vino
(verb + NP), while in (2) it is comió el
huevo con un tenedor (verb + NP + PP):
(1) El chico bebió el vino.
‘The boy drank the wine.’
(2) El chico comió el huevo con un tenedor.
‘The boy ate the egg with a
fork’.
There are other phrasal
categories, but NPs, PPs, APs and VPs are the ones that will be mentioned most
frequently in this book.
Now that we have rough
definitions of some of the main phrasal categories, a few illustrations can be
given of how to analyse sentences. In doing this, a common notational technique
will be used that involves enclosing the constituents of a sentence between
labelled brackets. For example, sentence (1) can be analysed, at one level, in
the following way:
[NP El chico] [VP bebió el vino]
The verb phrase bebió el vino can in turn be split up
into a verb (denoted by ‘V’) and an NP:
[V bebió] [NP el
vino]
Finally, the NP el
[D el] [
To take another example,
sentence (2) can be analysed first into the NP El
[NP El chico] [VP comió el huevo
con un tenedor]
The VP comió el huevo con
un tenedor can then be split up into a verb, an NP
and a PP:
[V comió] [NP el
huevo] [PP con un tenedor]
The PP con un tenedor can in turn by analysed
into the preposition con and the NP un tenedor:
[P con] [NP un
tenedor]
Finally, as before, the NPs
break down into a determiner and a noun:
[D el] [N huevo]
[D un] [N tenedor]
Our third and final example
illustrates the use of an AP:
(3) Este
destornillador es completamente inútil.
‘This screwdriver is
completely useless.’
The sentence above splits
up, in the first place, into the NP este destornillador
and the VP es completamente inútil:
[NP Este
destornillador] [VP es
completamente inútil]
The NP obviously has the
structure [D este] [N destornillador], while the structure of the VP is as follows:
[V es] [AP completamente inútil]
The AP completamente inútil can itself be broken up into the adverb completamente and the adjective inútil:
[ADVB completamente] [A inútil]
Words
Used as Phrases
As the preceding remarks
suggest, the concept of a phrase is crucial to syntactic analysis. In normal
usage, the term ‘phrase’ refers to a sequence of two or more words. But in the
technical sense in which it is used in modern syntax, ‘phrase’ can also be
applied to a single word if it has the function of a phrase in a sentence. For
example, the noun casas ‘houses’ in
(4) below has an identical role in its sentence to the full NP muchas casa in (5). Accordingly, though casas is a single word, in sentence (4)
it counts as an NP for the purpose of syntactic analysis.
(4) Compraron [NP
casas].
‘They bought houses.’
(5) Compraron [NP
muchas casas].
‘They bought many houses.’
Similarly, a proper name
such as Pedro or
(6) [NP Madrid/La capital de España]
tiene 5 millones de habitantes.
‘Madrid/The capital of
(7) Me gusta ir a [NP Madrid/la capital de España].
‘I like going to Madrid/the
capital of
Finally it is worth noting
that a pronoun can have phrasal status also. Thus él ‘he’ in (8) below functions as the subject NP of the verb vive:
(8) [NP Él] [VP vive muy bien].
‘He lives very well.’