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Simple Phrases

In using sentences like Grammar rocks, we have been evading one of the key facts of the language. Grammar does, of course, rock, and time, for that matter, flies. But most common nouns need something in front of them when singular. A mere adjective won't do the job. Sentence (1) is not Standard English; it needs a word like the "the" in (2):

(1) *Red bear dances.

(2) The bear dances.

Such words are called determiners, a term which one doesn't find in all school handbooks, but which linguists have been pretty much agreed upon for a long time. English arbitrarily insists that singular common nouns be preceded by a determiner in all sorts of situations in which plural common nouns have no such requirement. Native speakers hardly notice this rule, because it comes naturally, but it can pose problems for speakers who come to English from languages with different rules. They may add unnecessary determiners to plural nouns or omit them when required with singular nouns. Even after they have learned the rule, some of the exceptions to the rule can be a problem, leading to sentences like this:

(2) *The life stinks.

Noun Phrases. The determiner and the noun together make up what is called a noun phrase (or NP). For purposes of subject-verb agreement, the noun is still the key part of this phrase, its head, determining whether the NP as a whole is to be singular or plural. In terms of traditional grammar, the head noun of a NP serving as the subject of a sentence is the simple subject of the sentence. The complete subject of the sentence is the full subject NP, the noun and everything that helps modify it in some way, including the determiner, if there is one.

The Reality of Noun Phrases. The notion that the determiner and its head noun are part of the same noun phrase is not just a notion conjured up by mad linguists. The noun phrase is the true sentence constituent, though it may consist of a single noun. One test for this is substitution. Pronouns replace the full noun phrase, not just part of it. In the examples below, unacceptable expressions are marked with an asterick:

(3)	(a) The sock stinks.
	(b) It stinks.
	(c) *the it stinks.
	(d) *it sock stinks.

(4)	(a) The sock stinks.
	(b) Does the sock stink?
	(c) *The does sock stink?
(5)	(a) This time has been precious.
	(b) Has this time been precious?
	(c) *This has time been precious?
(6)	(a) Their day will come at last.
	(b) Will their day come at last?
	(c) *Their will day come at last?

Phrases as the Building Blocks of Sentences. In many ways, phrases are the real building blocks of sentences. We can think of a sentence's subject as its initial noun phrase (NP). A single noun subject is just a noun phrase that consists only of its head noun and lacks any other elements. One advantage of characterizing the subject in this way is that it shows that the phrase structure of a typical subject in a sentence is the same as we will see later when we deal with the objects of the verb. In the same way, we can think of the predicate as a verb phrase (or VP), with the verb as its head. Our tree diagrams should show that the determiner and noun go together and are separate from the predicate:

Specifiers. In many ways, the word "determiner" is really the name for a kind of position at the beginning of a noun phrase which can be occupied by several different sets of words. The most basic determiners are articles, which can only appear in the determiner position. Articles come in two varieties themselves. The, the determiner we've used so far, is called a definite article. As in sentence (7) below, it generally implies that the listener or reader already knows what is being talked about--in sentence (7), which bear is dancing. There are two indefinite articles: a and an, the latter used in front of words beginning with a vowel sound. In sentences (8) and (9), for example, we know what kind of animal is involved but are not singling one out that is already known:

(7) The bear dances.

(8) A bear dances.

(9) An elephant dances.

The technical term for the position of a determiner in a noun phrase is specifier--by "technical term," we mean one that you won't find in school handbooks and shouldn't use in talking to normal people. Verb phrases also have specifiers, words which normally come in front of the verb which heads the phrase. Those are adverbs of frequency, a special kind of adverb which is most at home in this pre-verb position:

(10) The bear often dances.

(11) An elephant always dances.

The kind of words which normally follow an English phrase's head and "complete" its meaning are called complements, a word often equivalent to the traditional term objects. We'll get to them later, but here are a couple of quick examples: In sentence (12), the polka is the complement of the verb dances, while in sentence (13) a beard is the complement of the preposition with:

(12) The bear often dances the polka.

(13) The elephant with a beard sang.

The Inflection Phrase. If the noun is the head of a noun phrase, and the verb is the head of the verb phrase, what is the "head" of the clause that contains them? One answer is the tense/modal constituent we've been calling INFL. This makes sense to linguists because you have to have a modal or tensed verb for an independent clause. The predicate VP would then be the complement of the tense/modal. Following this logic, many linguists use IP (for Inflection Phrase) to stand for independent clauses, even when they were just parts of a sentence-- have taken to using IP in their trees, with just I for the INFL itself. In simple sentences, the tense often winds up being shown on the main verb, but we'll stick an I into our diagram anyway

Just for the Record: Other Names for the Inflection Phrase. Inflection phrases (IP) can also be called Tense Phrases (TP) because the I element houses the tense inflection, or they can be called Agreement Phrases (AgrP) because that tense element must also agree in number with the subject. Some grammars still draw phrase structure trees using S for the IP and AUX for the I element. Be prepared to adopt new labels and remember that the analysis is more important than the nomenclature.

How Much of This Will be on the Test? This is an important section. It introduces two new sentence functions, determiner and adverbial of frequency. As the most common words filling the first function, we have articles (definite or indefinite). As words filling the second function, we have another group of adverbs to go with the intensifying adverbs we've already discussed. The key point, though, is that the structure of noun phrases is the same as phrases in general, with the same basic elements: specifier, head, complement. Independent clauses (whether sentences or not) can be seen as IPs, with the subject as their specifier, the I (the tense/modal element we were calling INFL) as a head, and the verb phrase (predicate) as their complement. From now on, our phrase structure trees should reflect this analysis.