Chapter 33
Introduction to phrases & clauses
Using these slides
• These slides are planned to help you
be a more effective reader of the
Longman Student Grammar.
• Please have the book in hand as we go
through Chapter 3.
Getting an overview of the
chapter
• This chapter is quite small compared to others in
the book. How long is it?
• What 2 sections do they promise on page 37?
• Flip through. Get a sense of the sections.
• Also look to see what kinds of “visible” data they
present.
• Find the reviews that come at the end of section
major chunk. You might try reading those first to
see what the authors consider the most important
information in each section.
Organization in grammar
reference books
• Notice that grammar reference
books generally
– Start with the most general and common
elements
– End up with interesting but infrequent
aspects of the grammar of the chapter
– What does that organization suggest
for a reader?!!
What you need to be
sure to understand
• By the end of our study of this chapter,
you need to be sure that you
– Know the difference between phrases &
clauses
– Know the most common types of phrases
– Know the most common types of clauses
– Begin to know about the uses of types of
phrases and clauses in different registers
Register information in
Chapter 3?
• In my initial look through the chapter, I didn’t see
any of the “visible frequency” figures they gave
before.
• But the review on page 46 mentions register
differences in use of longer and more complex
phrases….so it’s there somewhere.
• As you read, mark the places where they mention
register differences and their corpus data.
Words, phrases, clauses
• The purposes for this chapter: “to see how
words pattern together to form phrases”
and “to see how phrases pattern together
to form clauses.” (p. 38)
• Patterns & Grammarians: Grammarians are
always looking for patterns…not
singularities but patterns.
– Combinations that get repeated.
– Systematic choices among words that are part
of sub-groups.
How should we talk about
phrases?
• We need to learn to talk about phrases in
terms of
– Structure: the kinds of words that are put
together to make phrases and the ways those
words are ordered
– Syntactic roles: the ways that different kinds
of phrases are put together to make up clauses
– Communication uses: the ways that phrases are
used in different types of communication…
register differences
What are phrases like?