Tests for phrases

1.4 Tests for phrases

Consider the following sentence:

The rich brown atmosphere was peculiar to back rooms in the mansion of a Forsyte. [59]

All speakers of English would agree that in this sentence, some of the words go together with each other more closely than others. For example, the words the rich brown atmosphere seem to go together more closely than, say atmosphere was peculiar. Likewise in the mansion seems to go together as a unit (often referred to as a constituent), more than the mansion of.

For our native language we could rely on intuition to decide about phrases. But that is not going to work if we have to describe a language which we don’t know very well.

What sorts of formal tests can we find to decide whether something is a phrase or not?

One of the simplest tests for phrases is what is called the substitution test. 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.

For example, looking back at the earlier sentence, we can substitute various of the phrases for single words:

The rich brown atmosphere was peculiar to back rooms in the mansion of a Forsyte

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

The rich brown atmosphere was peculiar there.

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.

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. For example, we could have a question and answer sequence:

"There's no money in that," he said. ‘Yes, he went bankrupt," replied Nicholas.[59, p.66]

In the second sentence here, the word bankrupt has replaced no money, showing us that no money must be a phrase.

While substitution usually works on the basis of a single word, it is also possible to substitute using the phrase do so or so do. We can see this sort of substitution in:

Old Jolyon's hand trembled in its thin lavender glove, and so did his son’s.[59, p.45]

So the words hand trembled in our original sentence form a phrase.

 As well as substitution, another test we can use to see if something is a phrase is what is called the clefting. Cleft sentences have the form

It is/was/will be ____ that/who ____

The important thing for a cleft test is to take the original sentence, and try putting it into this frame, without changing it in any way except for taking one part of it out and putting it in the first slot, and putting the rest of the sentence in the second slot. For example:

The rich brown atmosphere was peculiar to back rooms in the mansion of a Forsyte

It was the rich brown atmosphere that was peculiar to back rooms in the mansion of a Forsyte

Old Jolyon's hand trembled in its thin lavender glove.[59.p.23]

It was Old Jolyon's hand that trembled in its thin lavender glove.

When applying the cleft test, it is important not to change anything about the sentence, except for taking one part out and putting it between it is/was/will be and that/who.

If it is possible to cleft a sentence, then the part of the sentence which occurs between it is/was/will be and that/who forms a phrase. Note that if it is possible to cleft a group of words, then that group of words forms a phrase; but just because you can’t cleft something, that doesn’t mean that it isn’t a phrase. For example, we know that in our original sentence the words the rich brown atmosphere form a phrase, but we can’t cleft it:

It was peculiar to back rooms in the mansion of a Forsyte that the rich brown atmosphere.

Phrases often behave as units for various movement operations, with the entire phrase moving together. For example, we could move the phrase on that shelf in our original sentence:

The rich brown atmosphere was peculiar to back rooms in the mansion of a Forsyte.

To back rooms in the mansion of a Forsyte was peculiar the rich brown atmosphere.

A specific case of movement is the formation of a passive sentences. As we can see the set of words the key and the words in the lock in our sentence must each be a phrase because each set of words moves together under passivization:

Old Jolyon turned the key softly in the lock[59,p.58] (active sentence)

The key was softly turned in the lock[59] (passive sentence)

Noting the nesting of constituents within constituents in this sentence, e.g. the NP the lock is a constituent of the PP in the lock which is a constituent of the VP turned in the lock. At the beginning of this section it was noted that the two aspects of syntactic structure, relational structure and constituent structure, are ‘distinct yet interrelated’, and it is possible now to see how this is the case. For example, a VP was described as being composed of a verb and the following NP, but it could alternatively be characterized as involving the verb and its direct object. Similarly, a PP is composed of a preposition and its object. NPs, on the other hand, involve modifiers, and accordingly the relation between the and lock could be described as one of modifier–modified.