Ana Bertha Camargo Mejía Phrases Author: Ana Bertha Camargo Mejía

Phrase A phrase is a group of words that do not include both subject and a verb. Phrases cannot stand alone as sentences. A phrase typically functions as a single part of speech in a sentence (as a noun, adjective, adverb) e.g. The big beautiful dog is mine. The book is on the table. According to their form, phrases can be classified as:

Prepositional phrases Noun phrases Verb phrases Adjective phrases Prepositional phrases Adverb phrases

Noun phrase The noun phrase is a string of words that all depend or focus in some way on a single noun. The words may be added before or after the noun. The noun is the head. Noun phrases can include any words, often include determiners and other adjectives, which usually appear before the noun. Example: the book the book on the table the ancient book on the table you asked me for

Adjective phrase In an adjective phrase, the headword is an adjective. The pre-head string in an adjective phrase is most commonly an adverb phrase such as very or extremely. Adjective heads may be followed by a post-head string: Example: happy to meet you ready to go afraid of the dark delicious extremely delicious very easy to read

Adverb phrase An adverb may be a single word, such as quickly, here or yesterday. However, adverbs can also be phrases, some made with prepositions, others made with infinitives. Adverbial phrases may occur with more than one word. The extra adverb is called an intensifier. Example: He scored the goal very quickly. well extremely well

Verb phrase The verb phrase in English has a noticeably different structure, since the information it carries about mood, tense, modality, aspect, and voice is quite different from the information carried by a noun phrase. The verb phrase has two functional parts: * the auxiliary, a grammatical morpheme carrying information about mood, tense, modality, and voice; and *the main verb, a lexical morpheme carrying its lexical information and, usually, an inflection. The verb phrase contain a verb as a headword. These phrases are divided into finite verb phrases and non-finite verb phrases. Example: could go (finite) might have done (finite) extremely interesting (non finite-participial) to go home (non finite-infinitive) cigarette smoking (non finite-gerund)

Prepositional phrase It is a phrase consisting of a preposition and a object. The object in a prepositional phrase can be one of the noun structures listed below: Noun (phrase): I sat by my mother. Pronoun: I sat by her. Gerund: She entertains herself by reading. Noun clause: I could tell from what you said that you are not interested in this book. Example: on the table between those objects by my side

GLOSSARY Adjective: a word, phrase or clause that modifies a noun or a noun structure. Adverb: a word, phrase or clause that modifies a verb, and adjective or another adverb. An adverb tells manner (how), place (where), time (when),frequency (how often), degree ( to what degree), or reason (why) an action takes place. Finite verb phrase: These are the forms of verbs which show tense and/or number (e.g. Is, was, has, had, goes, went, walks, walked). Headword: Most important, principal. Non-finite verb phrase: these are the forms of verbs which do not show tense by themselves(e.g., going, to go, gone) and which can act as parts of speech other than verbs. The non-finite verb forms in English are the inifinitive (e.g., to go), the –ing participle (e.g., going), and the past participle (e.g., gone). Noun: a word which names a person, place, thing or idea. Preposition: a word that joins with a noun structure object to form a prepositional phrase. Verb: a word or phrase which express the action or state of being in a sentence.