© 2019 Steve Campsall

There are several kinds of phrase, each being labelled according to the kind of grammatical head word it contains:

• A phrase is built around a word that provides its general meaning. This word is called the head word or simply head of the phrase. Other words withion the phrase act to modify this head word.

• A noun phrase contains a noun as its head word, e.g. The drunken young man

• A verb phrase or verb chain has as its head a main or lexical verb along with one or more auxiliary verbs, e.g. 'might go', 'will be banned'.

• A prepositional phrase has a preposition as its head word, e.g. 'on the table'. Prepositional phrases can function as adjectives and adverbs within their sentence, e.g. acting as an adjective, 'He is over there', and acting as an adverb, 'She is playing in a splendid manner.

Here are some noun phrases. Can you see how, in a sentence, they would each be able to fit into the grammatical (i.e. syntactical) position of a complement, a subject or an object of a finite verb?

Can you work out which are the head words in each noun phrase above?

Here are some verb chains:

Can you identify the head words of each verb chain?

• TIP: the head word is the main verb; all other verbs in the verb chain are 'auxiliary verbs'.

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