Inflectional phrase

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In X-bar theory and other grammatical theories that incorporate it, an inflectional phrase (IP or INFLP) or agreement phrase (AGRP) is a functional phrase which has inflection properties (such as tense and agreement). An Inflectional phrase is essentially the same as a sentence, but reflects an analysis whereby a sentence can be treated as having a head, complement and specifier, like other kinds of phrase.

Definition

An inflectional phrase is a phrase which contains as its head an abstract category called Infl (short for 'inflection'). the Infl head bears inflectional properties such as tense and person, and may or may not be realised as separate words in the surface representation of the phrase. The other usual components of the IP are a Verb phrase (VP) which is the complement of the phrase, and a Noun phrase (NP) which is structurally the specifier of the phrase, and structurally the subject of the phrase. [1] In this analysis, every simple sentence (i.e. one which is not coordinated) is an IP.

References

  1. ↑ O'Grady, William; Dobrovolsky, Michael; Katamba, Francis (1996 id=ISBN 0 582 24691 1 page=191). Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction (third ed.). Longman. 

See also


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