For example, we could have a question and answer sequence:"There's no money in that," he said. Substitution also can be seen with what is called anaphora, where a single item substitutes for an earlier mentioned item, in question and answer sequences or in long sentences. We can see from this that the words the rich brown atmosphere form a phrase, as do the words back rooms, the mansion and in the mansion. The rich brown atmosphere was peculiar there. It was peculiar to back rooms in the mansion of a Forsyte that it was the rich brown atmosphere. The rich brown atmosphere was peculiar to back rooms in the mansion of a Forsyte If we can substitute a set of words with a single other word, without changing the overall meaning, then we can say that those words form a phrase.įor example, looking back at the earlier sentence, we can substitute various of the phrases for single words: One of the simplest tests for phrases is what is called the substitution test. What sorts of formal tests can we find to decide whether something is a phrase or not? Substitution test But that is not going to work if we have to describe a language which we don’t know very well. Likewise in the mansion seems to go together as a unit (often referred to as a constituent), more than the mansion of.įor our native language we could rely on intuition to decide about phrases. For example, the words the rich brown atmosphere seem to go together more closely than, say atmosphere was peculiar.
![2 word phrases about hands 2 word phrases about hands](https://www.wow4u.com/graphics/theheavens-min.jpg)
Īll speakers of English would agree that in this sentence, some of the words go together with each other more closely than others. (4)] ]VP ]Ĭonsider the following sentence:The rich brown atmosphere was peculiar to back rooms in the mansion of a Forsyte. Using square brackets to group the words in constituents together, the constituent structure of The shaft of a passing cab brushed against his shoulder may be represented as in (4) (‘S’ stands for ‘sentence’.)
![2 word phrases about hands 2 word phrases about hands](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/16/1e/99/161e9912bf37e78a3ad6983a17d91d36.jpg)
In each of these alternative forms, a combination of words from the original sentence which one might intuitively put together in a single unit also occurs together as a unit, and this can be taken as evidence that they are in fact constituents.