| Natural languages allow normal human beings to express many of their very complex ideas as single words. Most of the time, however, the language seems to require more than one word to express an idea. Words go together patterns to express concepts and combinations of concepts often taking the form of phrases and sometimes clauses. Sometimes it can be difficult to determine the difference between clauses and phrases. This particular difficulty is the origin of the term complex-compound. One reason is that the grammatical functions of these structures are often identical. Generally the clause differs from any synonymous single word version or any such phrase version by having its own subject and predicate fully expressed. A clause is very nearly a sentence by itself. This is the reason we began our discussion of paraphrase with hypotactic clauses; the clause is by far the easiest to reformulate as an independent sentence. The clause shares the syntactic structure of a full sentence. We have seen that both logically and syntactically the clause may be contained in the structure of a sentence; the clause is only a part of the sentence. Above the realm of morphology and below the realm of discourse analysis there is a hierarchy of syntactic complexity comprising the units of: sentence — clause — phrase — word. |
Degeneration.The analysis of clauses involves taking account of three clues. The analyst classifies the clause by looking at 1) the connectives that dependent clauses characteristically make use of, 2) the syntactic constructions that the clause may manifest, and 3) the characteristic degenerate forms that the dependent clause may alternate with, i.e., phrase equivalents. The term “degenerate” may mislead. This situation is not necessarily a process. What I mean by degeneration is that some forms of expression are mostly equivalent logically, but simpler syntactically. They manifest fewer primitive elements — fewer words. Going from the paraphrase (1P) in ¶4-3-6 as a series of sentences to the single sentence in (1) results in loss of syntactic structure. It is only from the analyst’s point of view that the comparison occurs as if it were a process in time. For the language user the conflation of what was nine full sentences into one incomplete independent clause and seven dependent clauses (one of them compound) is a choice of alternate semantically equivalent expressions. Ideally the sentences share their content (phrastic) with their clausal equivalents. |
Continued analysis.The analyst may choose to continue with the analysis. There are several sentence expansions that normally utilize phrases that one may further analyze as simpler forms of full clauses. Sometimes there are single lexical items, e.g., tonight = on this night, beside = by the side of, alone = all one, that, when not too frozen, one might be tempted to designate as holophrastic and analyze as degenerate phrases. Each level of analysis, clause — phrase — word, has its characteristic features. The clause is composed of 1) a connective, which may or may not share in being a part of the superordinate sentence, and 2) subordinate sentence parts, which may include the connective. The phrase is composed of 1) a grammatical connective, which relates the phrase to the sentence, and 2) other dependent words or phrases. The word is a lexical item. Sometimes a certain syntactic element is manifested as part of a word. Words or syntactically important parts of words are the terminal constituents of the phrase structure rules. |
The infinitive phrase.Perhaps the structure most easily seen to be a degenerate clause is that of an infinitive phrase. In the clause version, an auxiliary introduces a predicate. With an infinitive, it is the preposition (or infinitive marker) to that takes over this function. |
| (1D) | I know him to be rich. | [infinitive phrase] |
| This sentence corresponds in meaning to (1), which contains a dependent noun clause. |
| (1) | I know that he is rich. | [declarative noun clause] |
| The analyst may paraphrase either sentence paratactically as the independent sentences of (1P). In this example the pronoun this functions anaphorically. |
| (1P) | a. | He is rich. | [declarative sentence] | |
| b. | I know this. | [demonstrative as direct object] |
The participial phrase.The infinitive phrase is just one such degenerate clause type. As an additional example consider the participial phrase. There are sentences that the analyst may paraphrase by giving the verb of the dependent clause the form of the active participle, i.e., the –ing form. Paraphrasing the sentence in ¶4-3-5 one may get (1D). |
| (1D) | The man honoring others is most honored. | [participle as noun modifier] | ||
| (1DP) | a. | A man may honor others. | [declarative sentence] | |
| b. | A man in this state is most honored. | [modifier with demonstrative] |
| In (1D) the particple form serves to mark the phrase as adjectival. The verb honor appears in two forms: the active participle, honoring and as a gradable adjective honored derived from the passive participle. The former form is often called a present participle and the latter a past participle, though tense is not involved. The formation of some aspects involves a participle that with intransitive verbs cannot be properly referred to as passive. Hence, there is good justification for calling this particular non-adjectival form the “past participle.” |
| Another sentence involving the same participles, but arranged differently has a distinct meaning: The most honored man honors others. |
The gerund phrase.There is also an –ing form that is nounal. This is the gerund phrase. With the gerund in –ing the paraphrase requires a preposition as a connective. Here is a version of a sentence in §4-3-4: |
| (1D') | No one can come in without paying first. | [gerund as sentence modifier] | ||
| (1D'P) | a. | Someone may have not paid first. (have not = without) | [declarative sentence] | |
| b. | No one can come in in this state. | [modifier with demonstrative] |
| We saw in a previous section how the full clause of which this phrase is degenerate has an adverbial function. |
Other noun formatives.Looking at nouns standing in the predicates the analyst notices other forms besides –ing available. Different formatives may be customary depending on the verb from which the action nominal derives. By restoring the verb in a clause the analyst may see the phrase as a degenerate form. Compare (1D') with the first sentence in ¶4-3-1, which is its dependent clause correlate, and (1P) in the same paragraph, which is its full sentence paraphrase. |
| (1D') | The performer hardly sees the crowd during the performance. | [sentence modifier] |
The phrase structure rule [P1] describes a sentence minimally as an independent clause  .
The linguist in constructing [P1] was motivated by a desire to express the observation that the structure of a clause is largely parallel to that of a sentence.
The analyst justifies this decision; it seems natural to consider a dependent clause as a degenerate sentence. |
Adverbs as propositions.To carry this principle into the analysis of substructures, note that the structure of the clause and that of the phrase are also somewhat parallel. Both structures make use of a connective. |
| (1) | John cycles as an expert would cycle. | [manner clause] | ||
| (1P) | a. | An expert cycles in some way. | ||
| b. | John cycles in that way. | |||
| (1D) | John cycles with expertise. | [adverb phrase] | ||
| (1D') | John cycles expertly. | [adverb of manner] |
| A study of the linguistic history of English will yield numerous examples of words that are phrases etymologically. These words were phrases at the time they first acquired their modern meaning. On the whole, however, most words and parts of words have lost any obviously explicit (living) relationship to phrases or clauses or sentences. Nevertheless, a grammatical description that takes account of this hierarchy of syntactic structures where it exists may often illuminate the analysis of the semantic or logical structure. |
