Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
In linguistics, a verb phrase (VP) is a syntactic unit composed of a verb and its arguments except the subject of an independent clause or coordinate clause.Thus, in the sentence A fat man quickly put the money into the box, the words quickly put the money into the box constitute a verb phrase; it consists of the verb put and its arguments, but not the subject a fat man.
Some theories of syntax adopt a subject-predicate distinction. For instance, a textbook phrase structure grammar typically divides an English declarative sentence (S) into a noun phrase (NP) and verb phrase (VP). [4] The subject NP is shown in green, and the predicate VP in blue.
[2]: 26 For example, the it-cleft construction has it as a dummy subject, followed by a head VP containing a form of the verb be + a complement corresponding to the predicand + a relative clause whose head corresponds to the predicate. So, the example above as an it-cleft is It was Jo who did it.
What does and does not qualify as a small clause varies in the literature: the example sentences in (8) contain (what some theories of syntax judge to be) small clauses. [9] In each example, the posited small clause is in boldface, and the underlined expression functions as a predicate over the nominal immediately to its left, which is the subject.
Inverse copular constructions challenge one of the major dogmas of the theory of clause or sentence structure, i.e. that the two basic constituents of a sentence - the noun phrase (NP) and the verb phrase (VP) - are associated with the logical/grammatical functions of subject and predicate (cf. phrase structure rules and sentence). In fact ...
In the most typical cases, the predicand corresponds to the subject of a clause, and the predicate corresponds to a verb phrase (VP) that is the head of the clause. But there are also form-meaning mismatches, where the predicand is not a subject or where the predicate is not the head of the clause. Also, not every utterance has a predicand.
If there is a difference between these concepts, it resides with the status of the subject argument. Traditionally, predicates are interpreted as NOT subcategorizing for their subject argument because the subject argument appears outside of the minimal VP containing the predicate. [12] Predicates do, however, c-select their subject arguments, e.g.
S for sentence, the top-level structure in this example. NP for noun phrase. The first (leftmost) NP, a single noun John, serves as the subject of the sentence. The second one is the object of the sentence. VP for verb phrase, which serves as the predicate. V for verb; in this case, it's the transitive verb hit.