The scientific theory of phrase appeared abroad much later than in our country and was formulated in the 30-s of the XX –th century. It is known mainly from the works of the American linguist L. Bloomfield.
Bloomfield understands the Phrase in the most broad sense. He thinks any syntactically organized group considered from the point of view of its linear structure a phrase.
According to his theory all word combinations of any language may be divided into a) endocentric and b) exocentric.
Endocentric — all phrases where one or any of constituent elements can function in a larger structure like the whole group - 'Poor John ran away'. ' John ran away'.
Exocentric are the phrases where none of the constituent elements can substitute the whole group in a larger structure 'John ran'.
This division of phrases doesn't take into consideration the inner structure of Phrase.Further division offered by Bloomfield:
Endocentric Exocentric
| subordinative coordinative |
predicative prepositional
'John ran away' 'beside John'
Thereis no universally accepted term for the given phenomena. In America they use the term "phrase". In England they use "word cluster" or "word group". Bloomfield introduced for endocentric phrases a term for a word capable to substitute for the whole phrase in larger structures "head" or "centre". For coordinated group only "centre is used".
"All heads are centres, but not all centres are heads" — was a popular linguistic joke.
Khokbet offered subcategorisation of endocentric phrases (it is based on a structural principle of the position of the head).
1 type —. the head in post position: "new books";
2 type — the head in preposition: "experiment important";
3 type — the head in the centre of a structure: "as good as that";
4 type — the head frames the structure: "did he go".
We shall study Phrase coming from the assumption that Phrase is syntactically organized group of words of any morphological composition based on any of existing types of syntactic links.
Relations of phrase meaning and the meaning of its constituents. Phrase meaning is not a pure sum of meanings of its constituents but is complicated interrelation of lexical meanings of its constituents (King Arthur and his Round Table).
But more spread are phrases where the main meaning of its constituents is preserved but nevertheless the total meaning of phrases bears something new in comparison with every constituent element and is not a pure sum of meanings of its forming elements. For a example in attributive groups formed by two nouns the formed meaning depends not only on semantic contents of grouping elements but also on their relative position. Compare: "a dog house", "a house dog":
a) A house in which a dog lives;
b) A dog that guides the house.
There exist various relations between an attribute and the word denoted in substantive groups. Compare: fruit salad — a fruit knife.
There are also different semantic relations in groups consisting of adjective + noun, where the meaning of an adjective depends on the noun it combines with, compare: white hair — a white lie — white meat.
Things look the same in verb groups: to run fast, to run a business, to run a car, to run for parliament.
Besides different semantic modifications constituents of a phrase gain additional characteristics as units participating in syntactic structures and possessing certain types of syntactic relations connecting them with the rest of the phrase:
a fruit knife — attributive connection,
to run a car — objective connection,
to run fast — adverbial connection.
So, we may say that participation in a syntactic structure changes the qualities of combining elements and adds them characteristics they do not possess as isolated units — that is the statute of a certain member of a phrase.
The structural completion of a phrase. The structural completion of linear language construction is provided by procedures of two types: substitution and representation.
Substitution is based on introduction in the text of a unit substituting the one, mentioned ealier to evoid repetition and for the sake of economy of text space.
The substituting element must be much shorter than substituted one.
Substitution is based on anaphora as it is corresponded with an element mentioned earlier. There is a set of language units capable to function as substitutors and every morphological class has its own substitutors. Thus for substitution of substantive class it is most typical to use "one": 'a black dog and two white ones'.
The most of linguists consider personal pronouns of the 3-d person singular and plural as substitutors. Functioning of them in a text is also based on anaphora but in difference with 'one' personal pronouns substitute not the noun itself but the group as a whole.
The substitutor 'one' and substituted noun have different referent correlation but personal pronouns have the same referent correlation with antecedent (антецедент).
Demonstrative pronouns also can perform as substitutor. "The best coal is that from Newcastle".
For notional verb "do" can perform as a substitutor.
Representation differs from substitution by that no new element is introduced in thestructure and for representation of the whole group only its part is used. — 'I could not help them though I tried to'. The particle 'to' acts as representator of the whole group.
The group with representator is not able to exist independently without correlation with the structure it represents.