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Types of Phrases

Also, there are several types of phrases in English. Here are some:

A noun phrase (NP)
An adjective phrase
An adverb phrase
A prepositional phrase
A Verb phrase (VP)

boy is a noun the boy, the tall boy are treated as noun phrases, simply because the word boy is the head in all of these phrases. I want now to analyze these noun phrases in terms of the structure and the function of each element.

boy	The	1
noun	article	Structure:
head	determiner	Function:

boy	tall	The	2
noun	adjective	article	Structure:
head	pre-modifier	determiner	Function:

street	long	a	3
noun	adjective	article	Structure:
head	pre-modifier	determiner	Function:

Here, I have analyzed the elements of some noun phrases. As you can see, the words boy and street are very essential in these phrases. If we delete them, there will be no more NPs (noun phrases), but if we delete the words tall and long, the phrases will remain grammatical, so to speak.

The word rich is an adjective. This is its syntactic category. The rich is treated as an adjective phrase whose main element is rich. It is the head of the adjective phrase.

rich	The
adjective	article	Structure:
head	determiner	Function:

We can come to the conclusion that the head of a noun phrase is the noun and the head of an adjective phrase is the adjective. The same argument can be held true of other phrases. That is to say, the head of an adverb phrase is the adverb and the head of a prepositional phrase is the preposition.

recently	very
adverb	adverb	Structure:
head	pre-modifier	Function:

very is an adverb of degree; it is optional, but recently is the main element of this adverb phrase. That is why it cannot be eliminated. It is basic .It is called the head of the adverb phrase.

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