Part VIII: Word Groups and Phraseological Units

Words do not randomly build sentences. They are first grouped into word groups or phrases that function as a unit within the sentence. “A typical phrase can be broken down into three parts— a head, a specifier, and a complement” (O’Grady & Archibald, 2012, p.144), and a head, or a headword, is the nucleus around which a phrase is built (Ibid, p.144). According to the type of the head, the following phrases are identified: noun phrase (NP) (a picture of a city, the city, and Anna’s boyfriend ); verb phrase (VP) (believe anyone, laugh loudly, and occupy the building); prepositional phrase (PP) (of the cats, across the street, and on the table); adjective phrase (extremely happy), and adverb phrase (very quickly and rather quickly). Complement is “the element or elements for which a head is subcategorized and which provides information about entities and locations implied by the meaning of the head” (Ibid, p. 508); for example, in the PP in the house, the head is in, the specifier is determiner the, and the complement is the location implied by the meaning of the head.

Specifier the “helps to make more precise the meaning of the head of the phrase” (Ibid, p. 526).

8.1 Basic Features of Word-groups

Valency is a lexico-syntactic property which ‘‘involves the relationship between, on the one hand, the different subclasses of a word-class (such as a verb) and, on the other, the different structural environments required by the subclasses, these environments varying both in the number and in the type of elements” (Allerton, 2005, p. 4878). The term “valency” was borrowed from chemistry, and in linguistics, it means the ability of words to attach other words. Ginzburg et al. (1978) believes that in combining words, two main linguistic factors should be considered: the lexical and the grammatical valency (a.k.a ‘valence’) of words. “The aptness of a word to appear in various combinations is described as its lexical valency or collocability” (Ibid, p. 64). The collocability of words is restricted by internal structure of the words. Although synonyms are words with similar meanings, they do not collocate with the same words. The synonyms strong, hardy, powerful, and tough have similar meanings; however, they do not always collocate with the same words. We can have strong, powerful, and tough arguments; however, hardy does not collocate with arguments. We drink strong tea rather than powerful, hardy, or tough. We have a powerful or tough car rather than strong. There is a strong body, a strong government, a strong headwind, and strong colors. Powerful collocates with turbine, nuclear bomb, fighter, and army. Hardy empathizes the ability to withstand force and adversity: hardy plants, hardy cattle, and hardy outdoor furniture. We have a tough question or problem.

The grammatical valency is “the aptness of a word to appear in specific grammatical (or rather syntactic) structures” (Ibid, p.66). The grammatical valency of a lexeme is the set of operations that are required to form an appropriate word-group. For example, we take the verb see and create a word-group: see Ann, see someone, and see closely Pete. Each example shows that a word depends on the grammatical structure of the language. If we compare the valency of two words that belong to the same word class, we will find that they have different grammatical valency. Some examples are explain to somebody something and teach somebody something. Although explain and teach are verbs and they follow by indirect object, explain requires a preposition to before the indirect object. Another example shows that even synonymous verbs that coin V+N word-groups, they require different nouns, thus proving that they have different valency: propose/present a plan, solution, resolution; propose marriage; offer a help; present (one’s) apologies; offer (one’s) condolences; proffer (one’s) regrets; and tender (one’s) resignation.