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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.
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.
Predicates may also be collective or distributive. Collective predicates require their subjects to be somehow plural, while distributive ones do not. An example of a collective predicate is "formed a line". This predicate can only stand in a nexus with a plural subject: The students formed a line. — Collective predicate appears with plural ...
Horn's classification of Neg-raising predicates [11] Class of predicate Examples Opinion think, believe, suppose, imagine, expect, reckon, feel, guess Perception seem, appear, look like, sound like, feel like Probability be probable, be likely, figure to Volition want, intend, choose, plan Judgement
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. The verbs that license small clauses are a heterogeneous set, and fall into five classes:
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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.
In generalized phrase structure grammar (GPSG), [16] many of the phrase structure rules generate the class of verbs with a particular valence. For example, the following rule generates the class of transitive verbs: VP → H NP [love] H stands for the head of the VP, that is the part which shares the same category as the VP, in this case, the ...