A phrase is a word or a set of words that are organized and articulated from a nucleus. Said nucleus has a certain syntactic function within a sentence. It must be borne in mind that in every sentence the words have specific functions and those words that perform the same task become phrases.
Phrase types
The set of words make up different grammatical categories. There are eight types of words: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, determiners, and pronouns.
Of these grammatical categories, some of them can form a nucleus, that is, the totally essential part of every phrase (the conjunction and the determiner are the categories that do not allow to form a nucleus).
- The noun phrase can be one word or a combination of several. In any case, its kernel is always a noun. Thus, in the sentence "strawberry is a very tasty fruit" the word strawberry is the nucleus of the noun phrase. A pronoun or a substantive adjective can also act as the nucleus of a noun.
- The verbal is formed from a verb form that acts as the nucleus of a predicate in a sentence. Thus, the word "rains" in a sentence constitutes a verb phrase. Obviously, the verb phrase can be accompanied by a noun phrase or other phrases.
- The adjectival has an adjective as its nucleus. In this way, the word "soft" in a sentence would form an adjectival phrase.
- The adverb is formed by an adverb that acts as a nucleus in a sentence. The word "near" is part of the grammatical category of adverbs and within a sentence it becomes the nucleus of an adverbial phrase.
Each phrase has some kind of syntactic function within a sentence
Normally every sentence is made up of a subject and a predicate. The subject is usually a noun phrase formed by a noun or a pronoun and its function consists of starring in a certain action (in the sentence "Juan buys shoes" Juan is the person who carries out the action of buying).
In the predicate the most important part is the verb form, which constitutes the nucleus of the verb phrase and this has the function of expressing something about the subject (in the sentence "I like Anita a lot" the nucleus of the verb phrase refers to Anita , the core of the subject).
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