Grouping words into structures

[...] There is a further structure that we have not yet mentioned. This too can operate as an element in any other structure, but we may look upon it as intermediate between the group and the clause: it is the phrase. It will be remembered that the characteristic of a group is to have a head: great bravery of many kinds has bravery as its head, and bravery can work as well in another structure as great bravery of many kinds can. In a somewhat analogous way came can work as well in another structure as can ought to have come. Thus:

I admire great bravery of many kinds.

I admire bravery.

He ought to have come immediately.

He came immediately.

Groups are for this reason sometimes called endocentric. By contrast, phrases usually consist of a preposition and nominal group or a non-finite verbal group and a norm­al group and thus have no single head. Like clauses and sentences, therefore, they are characteristically what some structural linguists call exocentric. We may compare:

He came immediately.

He came in a short time.

He came to get the car.

Allof these have a structure SVA (Subject, Verb, Adverbial) but in two of them the exponent of A is a phrase. We can now see the structural difference between:

I am going to climb = SV (that is what I am going to do).

I am going to climb = SVA (that is why I am going).

Finally, although it is right and natural to see the structures sentence, clause, phrase, group as forming a hierarchy (from ‘high’ to ‘low’), it is important to remember that any of the last three may be exponent of an element in the structure of the sentence or of each other. This may be illustrated as follows: Group, phrase and clause in sentence structure:

I saw him a few times.

I saw him during the holidays.

I saw him when I was home.

Group, phrase and clause in phrase structure:

Beside the dusty road, he waited...

Sitting beside the dusty road, he waited...

Sitting, while he watched the dusty road, he waited...

Group, phrase and clause in group structure:

The surface of the dusty road seemed…

The man coming up the dusty road seemed...

The man that he saw on the dusty road seemed...

Even so brief a sketch of grammatical structure must not end without some reference to one further — and very well-known — type of grammatical relationship. In addition to the hierarchical structure already explained and illus­trated, there is a coordinatestructure which brings togeth­er items of equal rank in the sense that they operate as though they were a single element from the viewpoint of hierarchical structure. Consider, for example:

(1) The men and women of London (were pleased).

(2) Liking neither the dull street nor the look of this particular house, (he turned away).

(3) When I knew him and while he worked in this office, (he seemed happy enough).

In (1) we have co-ordinate words in group structure. That is to say, the exponent of S in the sentence is the nominal group, the men and women of London; the group structure is ‘head plus postmodification’, and the exponent of the head is the structure of co-ordination, men and women. In (2), on the other hand, we have co-ordinate nominal groups which operate (despite their own differences — the one pre-modified, the other postmodified) as a single element in phrase structure. In (3) we have co-ordinate clauses which are bracketed together as exponent of A in sentence-structure: and again we note that the ‘equality’ of the co-ordinate parts does not lie in their internal structure.