Concluding Comments

We finish the discussion in this chapter with five general comments. The first is simply that the tests of transposition and substitution apply inside clauses, although they are often said to apply inside sentences. This is one reason why the clause is a useful unit for our analysis; it enables us to handle the fact that sequences of words occur in different positions and to apply the tests to sequences whose status is not clear. Ellipsis too applies inside a clause, but its operation takes two or more clauses into account, since it deletes phrases that are repeated from one clause to the following one.

The second comment concerns the different types of phrase. The labels ‘noun phrase’, ‘prepositional phrase’ and ‘adjective phrase’ are in general use. A phrase with a noun as its head is a noun phrase, for example, her colleague who was collecting the exam scripts ; a phrase with a preposition as its head is a prepositional phrase, for example to Alan ; a phrase with an adjective as its head is an adjective phrase, for example exceedingly sorry about the mistake. Sequences such as quickly and unbelievably quickly constitute adverbial phrases, that is, phrases in which the adverb – here, quickly – is the head.

The third comment concerns the fact that phrases can contain other phrases. The phrase to Alan, discussed just above, is also a prepositional phrase containing a noun phrase, which happens to consist of one word, Alan. The phrase the rather intriguing results of the examination is a noun phrase. Its head is results, a noun which is modified by the, by rather intriguing and by of the examination. Rather intriguing is an adjective phrase whose head is the adjective intriguing. This adjective is modified by rather. There are two more phrases inside the large noun phrase. One
is the prepositional phrase of the examination, with the preposition of as its head. The other is inside the prepositional phrase and is the noun phrase the examination. This example, the rather intriguing results of the examination, is instructive; it shows how a phrase may have more than one phrase inside it – rather intriguing, of the examination, and the examination are all inside the noun phrase the rather intriguing results of the examination ; it shows how a phrase can contain a phrase of the same type – the noun phrase the examination is inside the larger noun phrase the rather intriguing results of the examination.

Equally, in spontaneous speech, speakers typically do not pause between clauses. When they do pause, they are just as likely to do so in the middle of clauses, in the middle of phrases or even in the middle of words, depending on rapidity of speech, emotional state, whether the speaker has just run up a flight of stairs or has been sitting quietly in an armchair, and so on. All these properties of speech point to the arrangement of words into phrases, phrases into clauses and so on as something abstract. Linguists put the arrangements, the structure, into their analysis of particular clauses, but ordinary native speakers of a given language carry knowledge of the arrangements in their heads. Faced with a line of words on the page or a sequence of sounds produced by a speaker, readers and hearers invest the sequence with structure; they ‘read’ into it the words, the organization of words into phrases and so on.