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For example the house at the end of the street (example 1) is a phrase. It acts like a noun. It contains the phrase at the end of the street (example 2), which acts like an adjective. Example 2 could be replaced by white, to make the phrase the white house. Examples 1 and 2 contain the phrase the end of the street (example 3) which acts like a noun. It could be replaced by the cross-roads to give the house at the cross-roads.

Each phrase has a word called its head which links it to the rest of the sentence. In English the head is often the first word of the phrase.

Phrases may be classified by the type of head they take

• Prepositional phrase with a preposition as head (e.g. in love, over the rainbow)
• Noun phrase with a noun as head (e.g. the black cat, a cat on the mat)
• Verb phrase with a verb as head (e.g. eat cheese, jump up and down)
• Adjectival phrase with an adjective as head (e.g. full of toys)
• Adverbial phrase with adverb as head (e.g. very carefully)

1 Formal definition

A phrase is a syntactic structure which has syntactic properties derived from its head.

For example the house at the end of the street is a noun phrase. Its head is house, and its syntactic properties come from that fact. It contains prepositional phrase at the end of the street, which acts as an adjunct. At the end of the street could be replaced by another adjunct, such as white, to make the phrase the white house. Of the street, another prepositional phrase, acts as a complement of end. Each phrase has a word called its head which gives it its syntactic properties.

2 Complexity

A complex phrase consists of several words, whereas a simple phrase consists of only one word. This terminology is especially often used with verb phrases:

• simple past and present are simple verb, which require just one verb
• complex verb have one or two aspects added, hence require additional two or three words

"Complex", which is phrase-level, is often confused with " compound", which is wordWord can mean one of several things: In a linguistic sense, a unit of speech or writing that symbolizes or communicates a meaning, consisting of one or more morphemes. Microsoft Word a word processor produced by Microsoft as part of its Office software su-level.

See phrase structure rulesPhrase-structure rules were used in early transformational grammar (TGG) to describe a given language's syntax. This was accomplished by attempting to break language down into its constituent parts (also known as syntactic categories) namely phrasal categ, syntax, grammarThis article is about grammar from a linguistic perspective. For English grammar rules see English writing style According to the structuralist point of view, grammar is the study of the rules governing the use of a language. That set of rules is also cal.

See also: ProverbA proverb (from the Latin proverbium is a pithy saying which had gained credence through widespread or frequent use. Most proverbs express some basic truth or practical precept. A proverb which describes a basic rule of conduct may also be known as a "max

As search item with regard to search features of search engines and other computer programs, a phrase is a sequence of words, as opposed to just a set of words.

In music see Phrase (music).