Phrases Analysis Using Tree Diagram

CHAPTER I

INTRUDUCTION

A phrase is a grammatical unit consisting of two or more words that does not exceed the function limit. Linguistic elements such as phonemes, morphemes, phrases, clauses or sentences are analyzed by each sub-field of analysis. Those language unit will be identified by function and meaning category. Therefore, it appears subfield of syntactic analysis. Syntax makes phrases, clauses, sentences, and discourses as an object of analysis. Syntax itself is the part of grammar that discusses the structure of phrases and sentences. Based on the above description and understanding, it can be concluded that the syntax is the branch of linguistics who study the grammatical structure of sentences, clauses, and phrases. Syntax investigates the relationships of all word groups or phrases in the syntactic unit. Syntax studies the grammatical relationship beyond words, but in units called sentences.

The issue of phrases being the center of attention for some linguists, which can be seen from the growing research that leads to research on phrase. More researches uploaded on internet talk about phrase issues such as the structure of phrases or how phrases are used; especially in English phrases.

Especially for English learners, knowledge about phrases is necessary to know. Phrase is a base for English learners to know English well besides word, clause, and sentence. For example, sentence in English consists of word, phrase, and clause that is as well as phrase that consists of words. Each of those deals with how it is constructed. It means that, an English learner cannot construct them well if he/she does not know the knowledge of word, phrase, clause, or sentence construction; especially in this paper is phrase construction.

From the issue above, the writer feels responsible to explain about phrase and how it is constructed by analyzing some types of phrases as the examples for English learners to learn more about phrase.

CHAPTER II

PHRASES ANALYSIS

2.1 Phrase

According to Jim Miller (2002: 1), a phrase is a group of interrelated words and that groupings typically bring together heads and their modifiers. It is a general property of phrases that every phrase has a head word which determines the nature of the overall phrase. For example, an expression such as students of linguistics is a plural noun phrase, because its head word is the plural noun students. The following expression of linguistics, which combines with the head noun students to expand it into the noun phrase students of linguistics is said to be the complement of the noun students.

According to Andrew Radford (1997: 61), a phrase is a merging (a technical term meaning ‘combining’) of two or more words together: for example, by merging the word help with the word you, we form the phrase help you. The resulting phrase help you seems to have verblike rather than nounlike property.

There are four types of phrase; they are noun phrase (NP), adjective phrase (AdjP), adverb phrase (AdvP), verb phrase (VP), and prepositional phrase (PP).

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