What is a verb phrase?

Definition
	Here are two senses for verb phrase:
	In traditional terminology, a verb phrase is a phrase that has the syntactic role of a simple verb, and is composed of a main verb and auxiliary verbs or verbal particles related syntactically to the verb. In generative grammar, a verb phrase is a syntactic unit that corresponds to the predicate. In addition to the verb, this includes auxiliaries, objects, object complements, and other constituents apart from the subject.

Generic
	A verb phrase is a kind of
	What is a phrase?

Sources
	Crystal 1980 374
	Hartmann and Stork 1972 248–249
	Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, and Svartvik 1985 61

Context for this page:

Concept module: verb phrase
In overview module: Glossary (Linguistics): V
In modular book: Glossary of linguistic terms, by Eugene E. Loos (general editor), Susan Anderson (editor), Dwight H., Day, Jr. (editor), Paul C. Jordan (editor), and J. Douglas Wingate (editor)
In bookshelf: Linguistics

This page is an extract from the LinguaLinks Library, Version 5.0 published on CD-ROM by SIL International, 2003. [Ordering information.]

Page content last modified: 5 January 2004

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