of a phrase is the phrase’s central element; any other words or phrases in the phrase orient to it, either by modifying it or complementing it” 2010, p. 275.
As it has been classified by some experts, there are five major types of phrase. Those are: noun phrase, verb phrase, adjective phrase, prepositional
phrase and adverbial phrase. As the head of the phrase determines the phrase’s category Delahunty Garvey, 2010, p. 275, it is clear that a phrase which head
is a noun is categorized as noun phrase Leech, 1994, p. 315 which is considered as the most frequently occurring phrase. A group of words which its head is
typically verb and it can consist of just the main verb is called verb phrase Leech, 1994, p. 396. Meanwhile, a group of words which head is adjective and it is used
to modify a noun or pronoun is called adjective phrase Mas’ud, 2005, p. 171. At last, it is obvious that adverbial phrase is a phrase which head is adverb and
prepositional phrase is a phrase which head is a preposition Delahunty Garvey, 2010, p. 275.
2.1.2 Theory of Syntax
Syntax is a study of the structure of sentences, “uncovering the underlying principles or rules, for constructing well-formed sentences if a particular language”
McManis, Stollenwerk and Zheng Seng, 1987, p. 153. As a subdivision of the study of grammar, not only concerning with the ways in which words can be
combined together to form and sentences, syntax is also concerned with the interpretation of phrases and sentences Radford, 1997, p. 1. There are two types
of rules in studying sentence structures, those are: 1 phrase structure rules or
constituent structure rules and 2 transformational rules. Those rules present the knowledge of how constituents of phrases or sentences are put together and
categorized in a language McManis, Stollenwerk and Zheng Seng, 1987, p. 171. However this study is not going to discuss further about this rules since it is not
the focus of this study. Leaving the rules above, words in all human language can be grouped into a
relatively small number of classes called syntactic categories, in which constituents belong to, reflecting a variety of factors including the type of
meaning the words express, the type of affixes that they take, and the type of sentence structures in which they can occur O’Grady, Dobrovolsky, Katamba,
1997, p. 182. The table 2.1 below will provides the example of how O’Grady, Dobrovolsky, and Katamba classify words in syntactic categories.
Table 2.1 Syntactic Categories
Lexical Categories Examples
Noun N Verb V
Adjective A Preposition P
Adverb Adv Harry, boy, wheat, policy, moisture, bravery
arrive, discuss, melt, hear, remain, dislike good, tall, old, intelligent, beautiful, fond
to, in, on, near, at, by silently, slowly, quietly, quickly, now
Non-lexical Categories Examples
Determiner Det Degree word Deg
Qualifier Qual Auxiliary Aux
Conjunction Con the, a, this, these
too, so, very, more, quite always, perhaps, often, never, almost
will, can, may, must, should, could and, or, but
However, the fact that some items can belong to more than one category may be a potential source of confusion in the word classification.
