Editing Phrase (section)

==Heads and dependents==
In grammatical analysis, most phrases contain a [[head (linguistics)|head]], which identifies the type and linguistic features of the phrase. The [[syntactic category]] of the head is used to name the category of the phrase;<ref>Kroeger 2005:37</ref> for example, a phrase whose head is a [[noun]] is called a [[noun phrase]]. The remaining words in a phrase are called the dependents of the head.

In the following phrases the head-word, or head, is bolded:

::too '''slowly''' — <small>[[Adverb phrase]] (AdvP); the head is an adverb</small>
::very '''happy''' — <small>[[Adjective phrase]] (AP); the head is an adjective</small>
::the massive '''dinosaur''' — <small>[[Noun phrase]] (NP); the head is a noun (but see [[#Functional categories|below]] for the ''determiner phrase'' analysis)</small>
::'''at''' lunch — <small>[[Preposition phrase]] (PP); the head is a preposition</small>
::'''watch''' TV — <small>[[Verb phrase]] (VP); the head is a verb</small>

The above five examples are the most common of phrase types; but, by the logic of heads and dependents, others can be routinely produced. For instance, the [[Subordination (linguistics)|subordinator]] phrase:

::'''before''' that happened — <small>Subordinator phrase (SP); the head is a [[subordinating conjunction]]—it subordinates the independent clause</small>

By linguistic analysis this is a group of words that qualifies as a phrase, and the head-word gives its syntactic name, "subordinator", to the grammatical category of the entire phrase. But this phrase, "'''before''' that happened", is more commonly classified in other grammars, including traditional English grammars, as a [[subordinate clause]] (or [[dependent clause]]); and it is then labelled ''not'' as a phrase, but as a [[clause]].

Most theories of syntax view most phrases as having a head, but some non-headed phrases are acknowledged. A phrase lacking a head is known as [[exocentric]], and phrases with heads are [[endocentric]].

===Functional categories===
Some modern theories of syntax introduce [[functional category|functional categories]] in which the head of a phrase is a functional lexical item. Some functional heads in some languages are not pronounced, but are rather [[covert (linguistics)|covert]]. For example, in order to explain certain syntactic patterns which correlate with the [[speech act]] a sentence performs, some researchers have posited ''force phrases'' (ForceP), whose heads are not pronounced in many languages including English. Similarly, many frameworks assume that covert [[determiners]] are present in bare noun phrases such as [[proper name]]s.

Another type is the [[inflectional phrase]], where (for example) a [[finite verb]] phrase is taken to be the complement of a functional, possibly covert head (denoted INFL) which is supposed to encode the requirements for the verb to [[inflection|inflect]] – for [[agreement (grammar)|agreement]] with its subject (which is the [[Specifier (linguistics)|specifier]] of INFL), for [[grammatical tense|tense]] and [[grammatical aspect|aspect]], etc. If these factors are treated separately, then more specific categories may be considered: ''tense phrase'' (TP), where the verb phrase is the complement of an abstract "tense" element; ''aspect phrase''; ''agreement phrase'' and so on.

Further examples of such proposed categories include ''topic phrase'' and ''focus phrase'', which are argued to be headed by elements that encode the need for a constituent of the sentence to be marked as the [[topic (linguistics)|topic]] or [[focus (linguistics)|focus]].