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Verb phrase

A verb phrase (VP) is a fundamental syntactic unit in linguistics, consisting of a head verb along with its dependents, such as objects, complements, and modifiers, but excluding the subject of the clause.^[1] In English and many other languages, the VP functions as the predicate of a sentence, expressing the action, state, or occurrence attributed to the subject, and it is headed by the main verb which determines the phrase's core meaning and subcategorization requirements.^[2] Verb phrases can be simple, comprising just the head verb (e.g., "runs"), or complex, incorporating auxiliary verbs for tense, aspect, or mood (e.g., "has been running"), adverbial modifiers (e.g., "runs quickly"), prepositional phrases (e.g., "runs in the park"), or noun phrases as direct objects (e.g., "eats an apple").^[3] They are classified into finite forms, which inflect for tense and agree with the subject (e.g., "studies Vietnamese"), and non-finite forms, such as infinitives or participles, which lack such inflection and often serve in subordinate roles (e.g., "to study Vietnamese").^[1] In phrase structure grammars, the VP plays a central role in sentence construction, typically following the subject noun phrase under the sentence node, and its internal structure allows for recursion and embedding, enabling complex expressions of events and relations.^[4]

Definition and Scope

Core Definition

In linguistics, a verb phrase (VP) is defined as the syntactic category consisting of a head verb and its dependents, which may include complements and modifiers, and it functions as the predicate in a clause.^[5] This structure encapsulates the core action or state expressed by the verb, excluding the subject in standard analyses.^[6] The concept of the verb phrase traces its origins to traditional grammar, where it described sequences of verbs and related elements, but it was rigorously developed in structural linguistics during the early 20th century.^[7] Leonard Bloomfield played a pivotal role in formalizing the term in the 1930s, introducing phrases as distributional units in syntax through his influential work Language (1933), where he described a phrase as a free form composed of two or more lesser free forms, with the verb phrase specifically headed by a verb.^[8] This evolution marked a shift toward empirical, form-based analysis in American linguistics, emphasizing observable patterns over prescriptive rules.^[7] Within sentence structure, the VP serves as the minimal predicate unit, assigning thematic roles (also known as theta-roles) to its arguments, which specify semantic relationships such as agent, patient, or theme in the event denoted by the verb.^[9] These roles are inherent to the verb's lexical properties and ensure that arguments are linked appropriately to the predicate's meaning.^[9] A basic representation of a simple VP in phrase structure can be illustrated with the following tree diagram for the phrase "eat the apple":

    VP
   /  \
  V    NP
eat  / \
    Det N
    the apple
    VP
   /  \
  V    NP
eat  / \
    Det N
    the apple

^[10] This structure highlights the verb as the head projecting the phrase, with the noun phrase as a dependent complement. Like the noun phrase, the VP exemplifies a major syntactic category organized hierarchically around its lexical head.^[6]

Broad and Narrow Conceptions

In linguistic theory, the term "verb phrase" (VP) encompasses varying scopes depending on the framework, with broad and narrow conceptions reflecting debates over what constitutes the verbal core and its extensions. The head verb remains the central element, projecting the phrase's category and subcategorization requirements, but traditions differ on whether functional elements like auxiliaries integrate into this projection or stand apart. Broad conceptions treat the VP as including all verbal elements, such as the main verb, auxiliaries, modals, negation, and adverbials, forming a cohesive structure under the head verb's dominance. This approach is characteristic of Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG), where the VP is a head-driven constituent that licenses complements, specifiers, and adjuncts, including auxiliaries as raising verbs that inherit and propagate features from the main verb.^[11] For instance, in the sentence "She will have been eating apples," the broad VP spans "will have been eating apples," capturing the entire tense-aspect complex and object as a single phrasal unit.^[11] Narrow conceptions, by contrast, delimit the VP to the main verb and its direct complements or arguments, excluding auxiliaries, modals, and adverbials, which are analyzed in separate functional projections. This is typical in minimalist syntax, where the VP represents the lexical shell for theta-role assignment, while elements like tense and agreement occupy higher heads such as T or v. Under this view, the VP in "She eats apples" is simply "eats apples," isolating the core predicate from inflectional layers. These conceptions carry significant implications for computational linguistics, particularly in syntactic parsing, where broad VPs can expand constituent boundaries and heighten ambiguities in adverbial or negation attachment, requiring more robust resolution mechanisms to disambiguate structures like "not only eats apples but also oranges."^[12] Narrow definitions, meanwhile, facilitate modular parsing by confining VP to argument structure, easing integration with functional layers but potentially complicating holistic verbal complex analysis.

Theoretical Frameworks

Phrase Structure Grammars

In generative syntax, the verb phrase (VP) is treated as a phrasal projection headed by the verb, forming a constituent that combines with a noun phrase to generate a sentence, as outlined in early phrase structure rules such as S → NP VP and VP → V NP.^[13] This hierarchical organization posits the VP as an intermediate structure between the verb and the full clause, capturing the syntactic dependencies among verbal elements and their arguments.^[13] The X-bar schema refines this analysis by introducing a uniform templatic structure for all major phrasal categories, including VP, with the verb (V) as the head projecting to an intermediate bar level (V') and a maximal projection (VP).^[14] In this framework, V' accommodates complements to the right of the head (e.g., a direct object NP), while the specifier position in VP can host optional elements such as adjuncts, yielding structures like the VP in "the cat ate the mouse" as [VP [V' [V ate] [NP the mouse]]], where the subject "the cat" is outside the VP and combines with it under S. This schema ensures endocentricity, where phrases are projections of their lexical heads, and generalizes across categories to explain uniform phrase-building principles.^[14] VP expansion rules allow for recursion, particularly through adjuncts such as prepositional phrases (PP) or adverbial phrases (AdvP), which attach as sisters to V' or VP, enabling iterative modification without altering the core head-complement relation; for instance, a rule like V' → V' PP permits embedding modifiers like "in the garden" within the verbal projection. These rules support the generative capacity of the grammar, producing complex VPs through repeated application while maintaining hierarchical constituency. The historical development of phrase structure grammars for VP traces from the initial transformational models in the 1950s, which emphasized context-free rewrite rules, to the more constrained systems in the 1970s incorporating X-bar principles for cross-categorial uniformity.^[13] By the 1980s, this evolved into Government and Binding theory, where VP projections integrate with broader principles of government, binding, and theta-role assignment to regulate argument structure and movement, reducing reliance on language-specific rules in favor of universal parameters.

Dependency Grammars

In dependency grammars, the verb phrase is analyzed as a subtree rooted at the main verb, which serves as the structural center of the clause, with directed dependencies linking arguments and modifiers directly to the verb or through intermediate heads. This approach originates from Lucien Tesnière's foundational work, where the finite verb is positioned as the root, and all other words connect to it via asymmetric dependency relations that reflect valency and hierarchical order without relying on phrasal constituents.^[15] Key dependency relations within the verb phrase include the nominal subject (nsubj), which links the subject nominal to the verbal head as its core argument; the object (obj), connecting the direct object to the verb as the entity affected by the action; and adverbial modifier (advmod), attaching adverbs or adverbial phrases that modify the verb's manner, time, or place. These relations prioritize word-to-word links, emphasizing the verb's valency in governing its dependents.^[16]^[17]^[18] Dependency grammars offer advantages for analyzing non-configurational languages, which exhibit free word order and flat structures, as their word-based dependencies accommodate discontinuities and variable linear arrangements without enforcing rigid phrase boundaries. For instance, in the English sentence "She eats apples quickly," the dependency tree roots at "eats," with arcs to "She" (nsubj), "apples" (obj), and "quickly" (advmod), allowing flexible reordering in languages like Hungarian while preserving relational hierarchy.^[19] This framework has been integrated into modern parsers through the Universal Dependencies (UD) project, initiated in 2014, which standardizes cross-linguistic annotation of dependency relations, including those in verb phrases, to facilitate consistent parsing and analysis across over 100 languages. UD's verb-centered trees enable efficient computational processing and empirical syntactic studies, with the verb as the typical root of clausal subtrees.^[20]^[21]

Internal Structure

Main Verb and Auxiliaries

In the verb phrase, the main verb functions as the lexical head, occupying the core position that determines the phrase's subcategorization frame, which specifies the syntactic arguments required for the construction to be grammatical, such as whether the verb is intransitive (taking no object, as in sleep) or transitive (requiring a direct object, as in hit).^[22] This frame is inherently tied to the verb's lexical properties, influencing the overall syntactic behavior of the verb phrase without involving auxiliary elements.^[23] Auxiliary verbs support the main verb by encoding grammatical information such as tense, aspect, and modality, typically appearing to its left in English verb phrases.^[24] Tense and aspect auxiliaries, like have in have eaten (perfect aspect) or be in is eating (progressive aspect), mark temporal and viewpoint relations relative to the event denoted by the main verb.^[25] Modal auxiliaries, such as can in can eat, express notions of possibility, necessity, or permission, often preceding other auxiliaries in a fixed hierarchy.^[26] In English, these auxiliaries can stack in a specific order—modals outermost, followed by perfect have, progressive be, and then the main verb—reflecting their sequential introduction in the syntactic derivation.^[27] Structurally, auxiliaries occupy positions as functional heads in projections layered above the lexical VP in generative syntax frameworks.^[24] The main verb remains in the head of VP, while auxiliaries originate or move to dedicated functional phrases: modals in a modal projection (ModP), aspectual markers in AspP, and tense carriers in TP, creating a hierarchical shell around the core VP.^[25] This layering ensures that auxiliaries govern the main verb without altering its subcategorization, as seen in constructions where multiple auxiliaries embed the VP, such as will have been eating.^[24] Tense and agreement features are primarily projected through the auxiliaries, which bear inflectional morphology that percolates to the entire verb phrase, unifying its grammatical properties.^[24] In English, finite auxiliaries inflect for tense (e.g., has eaten vs. had eaten) and agree with the subject in person and number where applicable (e.g., is eating for third singular), transmitting these features downward to license the main verb's non-finite form.^[25] This feature projection maintains clause-level coherence, with the highest auxiliary (often the modal or tense marker) determining the phrase's overall finiteness.^[26]

Arguments and Modifiers

In verb phrases, arguments are the core syntactic dependents that a verb selects to fulfill its semantic requirements, as specified in its theta-grid, which outlines the thematic roles such as agent, patient, or theme that must be realized by complements like noun phrases (NPs) serving as direct objects or clausal phrases (CPs) as indirect complements.^[28] For instance, in the English verb phrase "devour the apple," the NP "the apple" functions as a patient argument obligatory for the transitive verb "devour," ensuring the predicate's argument structure is satisfied.^[29] These arguments are subcategorized by the head verb and integrate directly into the verb's projection, contributing essential participants to the event denoted by the verb phrase. In contrast, modifiers, or adjuncts, are optional elements that add circumstantial or descriptive information without being selected by the verb's theta-grid, including adverbs (e.g., "quickly"), prepositional phrases (e.g., "in the garden"), or relative clauses that elaborate on the event.^[30] Adjuncts attach at various levels within or around the verb phrase, allowing multiple instances for the same semantic category, such as "John ran quickly and silently," where both adverbs modify the manner without altering the core event.^[31] The distinction between arguments and adjuncts is empirically testable through syntactic diagnostics, such as obligatoriness, where omitting an argument changes the verb's meaning or grammaticality (e.g., "*John devoured" is infelicitous without an object, unlike "*John devoured quickly," which remains viable if context supplies the patient), and substitution tests like do-so replacement, which targets arguments but not adjuncts (e.g., "John devoured the apple and Mary did so too" succeeds, but "John devoured the apple quickly and Mary did so in the garden" fails).^[32] These tests highlight how arguments are structurally integrated closer to the verb, while adjuncts exhibit greater mobility and optionality.^[33] Within the verb phrase domain, arguments interact through case assignment, where the verb assigns structural accusative case to its direct object NP under government, ensuring the complement's morphological realization (e.g., in "She ate the cake," "the cake" receives accusative case from "ate").^[34] Additionally, the VP serves as a binding domain for anaphoric relations under binding theory, permitting an argument like a subject NP to bind an anaphor in the object position (e.g., "John_i praised himself_i"), provided c-command and locality conditions are met, thus constraining coreference within the phrase. The head verb's selectional properties, as outlined in its lexical entry, determine the compatibility of these arguments and their thematic assignments.^[29]

Examples and Applications

English Verb Phrases

In English, simple verb phrases (VPs) consist of a main verb that may or may not take a direct object, forming the core predicative unit of a clause. Intransitive VPs, such as "sleep" in the sentence "The cat sleeps," involve a verb that does not require an object to complete its meaning, relying solely on the subject for semantic completeness.^[35] Transitive VPs, by contrast, include a direct object, as in "read books" from "She reads books daily," where the object specifies what is affected by the verb's action.^[36] Complex VPs expand this structure by incorporating auxiliary verbs, which convey tense, aspect, mood, or voice, along with elements like negation. For instance, in "does not have to leave," the auxiliary "does" supports negation with "not," while "have to" functions as a modal-like auxiliary indicating obligation, all clustering around the main verb "leave."^[36] Auxiliaries precede the main verb in a fixed order—modals first, followed by perfective "have," progressive "be," and passive "be"—allowing constructions like "has been reading" to mark ongoing perfect aspect.^[37] Negation typically attaches to the first auxiliary or, in simple present/past tenses without auxiliaries, to "do," as in "does not sleep."^[38] Phrasal verbs in English form compound VPs where a main verb combines with a particle (an adverb or preposition) to create an idiomatic meaning distinct from the verb alone, often exhibiting particle movement in transitive cases. In "give up the habit," the particle "up" can shift after the object to "give the habit up," stranding the object and confirming the phrasal unit's cohesion, a process unavailable with prepositional verbs like "give to the charity."^[39] This movement highlights the particle's adverbial status within the VP, contributing to the phrase's semantic unity, such as idiomatic senses of completion or abandonment in "give up."^[40] Diagnostic tests like do-so substitution help identify VP boundaries by replacing the entire phrase with "do so" (adjusted for tense), preserving grammaticality only if the substituted string forms a constituent. For example, in "She wants to eat it and so does he," "do so" substitutes for "eat it," confirming it as a VP, whereas substituting just "eat" yields ungrammaticality like "*She wants to eat and so does it."^[41] This test, alongside others like coordination, underscores the VP's internal cohesion, including main verbs, auxiliaries, objects, and particles, as outlined in the phrase's component breakdown.^[42]

Cross-Linguistic Perspectives

Verb phrases exhibit significant variation in their internal ordering across languages, primarily along the dimension of head directionality, where the verb (the head) either precedes or follows its complements. In head-initial languages such as English, the verb precedes its object, resulting in a verb-object (VO) order within the VP, as in "eat the apple," where "eat" heads the phrase and the object follows it. Conversely, in head-final languages like Japanese, the object precedes the verb, yielding an object-verb (OV) order, as in "ringo o taberu" (apple eat), where the noun phrase "ringo o" (apple) appears before the verb "taberu" (eat). This parametric difference in head directionality influences not only VP structure but also correlates with broader syntactic patterns, such as the placement of auxiliaries and adverbs relative to the main verb.^[43] Serial verb constructions (SVCs) represent another cross-linguistic strategy for encoding complex events within a single VP, particularly prevalent in many African languages, where multiple verbs chain together without overt conjunctions or subordinators to express a unified predicate. In Akan, a Kwa language spoken in Ghana, SVCs allow two or more verbs to share arguments and tense-aspect marking, forming a monoclausal structure that conveys sequential or simultaneous actions, as in "Kofi de sika no ma-a papa no" (Kofi take-PST money give man), where "de" (take) and "ma" (give) combine to describe a transfer event without linking elements.^[44] These constructions treat the verb sequence as a single VP head, enabling efficient expression of multifaceted predicates while maintaining argument sharing across the chain. SVCs in Akan and similar languages like Ewe or Yoruba highlight how VPs can integrate multiple lexical verbs into a cohesive unit, differing from coordination in Indo-European languages by lacking independent tense or negation on secondary verbs.^[45] In polysynthetic languages, verb phrases often extend to incorporate nominal arguments directly into the verbal complex, a process known as noun incorporation, which fuses objects or subjects with the verb to form a single word-like unit. Mohawk, an Iroquoian language of northeastern North America, exemplifies this through noun incorporation, where a noun stem merges with the verb root to create a complex predicate, as in "wa'-ke-nákt-a-hnínu-'" (FACT-1SG-bed-BUY-PFV), incorporating "nákt" (bed) into the verb to mean "I bought a bed" without a separate noun phrase. This incorporation typically targets direct objects and reduces the valency of the VP, treating the incorporated noun as part of the verbal head rather than a modifier, which contrasts with analytic structures in languages like English.^[46] In polysynthetic contexts, such VPs can encompass entire propositions, incorporating multiple morphemes for subjects, objects, and adverbials, thereby minimizing the need for independent phrases. The Minimalist Program posits the universality of verb phrases as a core tenet of Universal Grammar, deriving VP structure from invariant operations like Merge and parametric variations in feature checking, ensuring that all languages project a VP to license thematic roles and argument structure. However, cross-linguistic phenomena such as head-final orders, serial verbs, and noun incorporation pose challenges to this universality, as they suggest that VP boundaries and projections may not be uniformly rigid across languages, potentially requiring adjustments to minimalist assumptions about hierarchical uniformity or phasehood. For instance, in languages with extensive incorporation like Mohawk, the fused verbal complex blurs traditional VP-internal distinctions between heads and complements, questioning whether a single VP-shell adequately captures such structures without language-specific stipulations.^[47] These variations underscore ongoing debates in generative syntax about reconciling empirical diversity with minimalist economy.^[48]

Theoretical Issues

VP-Shell Hypothesis

The VP-shell hypothesis posits that verb phrases are not monolithic but consist of layered "shells" to accommodate complex argument structures, particularly in double object constructions. Proposed by Richard K. Larson in his 1988 analysis, this framework introduces a functional projection headed by a light verb (often denoted as little v), which embeds the lexical VP and separates the external argument (typically the subject) from internal arguments. This structure, exemplified as [vP [NP<subject ] [v' v [VP V [NP<object ] ] ] ], allows the verb to project causatively or applicatively, treating the indirect object in ditransitives as the external argument of the embedded VP. For instance, in "John gave Mary a book," "Mary" originates as the subject of the inner VP "a book," with "gave" in the outer shell licensing the higher subject "John." This layering resolves asymmetries in double object constructions, such as those observed in binding and c-command relations, by positioning the indirect object in a domain that asymmetrically commands the direct object but not vice versa. Evidence supporting the hypothesis includes quantifier scope interactions, where an indirect object quantifier (e.g., "every farmer") can scope over a direct object quantifier in "every farmer gave every donkey a beating," but the reverse is restricted, aligning with the hierarchical separation enforced by the vP shell. Additionally, idiom chunking provides further support: in expressions like "send John a letter," the verb "send" and the direct object "a letter" form a separable unit across the vP boundary, while the indirect object intervenes without disrupting the idiomatic interpretation, indicating distinct projection levels. Extensions of the VP-shell model appear in Richard S. Kayne's 1994 antisymmetry theory, which leverages multiple shells to derive linear word order through successive cyclic movement to specifier positions, ensuring all languages share an underlying head-initial structure despite surface head-final appearances.^[49]

Verb Movement and Projection

In generative syntax, verb movement refers to the displacement of a verb from its base position within the verb phrase (VP) to higher functional heads, such as Tense (T), which alters the projection and surface structure of the clause. This process is particularly prominent in finite clauses, where the verb raises to T to check tense and agreement features, a phenomenon known as V-to-T movement. In English, this movement is restricted; finite verbs do not raise to T in declarative main clauses, leading to do-support in questions and negations, as in "Does she eat apples?" where the auxiliary "does" occupies T while the main verb "eat" remains in VP.^[24] In contrast, French exhibits robust V-to-T movement, allowing finite verbs to raise past adverbs and negation, as in "Jean mange souvent des pommes" (Jean eats often apples), where "mange" has adjoined to T.^[24] Head movement rules govern this raising, constraining verbs to adjoin to the nearest c-commanding head while preserving X-bar projection principles, ensuring that the moved head retains its category and projects upward without violating structure preservation. Travis (1984) formalized these constraints, proposing that head movement is successive-cyclic and bounded by barriers like the Head Movement Constraint, which prohibits crossing certain bounding nodes, thus maintaining the hierarchical projection of features from V to T.^[50] This preservation is crucial for the projection problem in cases involving remnant movement, where a VP undergoes phrasal movement after internal extraction, and the displaced verb must project its features to the remnant's landing site without losing categorial identity, as seen in German verb cluster structures where the finite verb raises out of a complex VP.^[50] Cross-linguistically, verb movement varies parametrically, correlating with properties like pro-drop. Languages like Chinese lack overt V-to-T movement, with verbs remaining in situ even in finite clauses, as evidenced by the inability of verbs to precede manner adverbs, such as in "Ta chi fan hen kuai" (He eats rice very quickly), where no raising occurs.^[51] This contrasts with pro-drop languages like Italian, where V-to-T movement is obligatory in finite contexts to license null subjects by identifying agreement features in T, as in "Mangia spesso" (Eats often) with a null subject. Such parametric differences highlight how verb movement influences VP projection and clause-level structure across languages.^[52]

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Oct 21, 2020 · In a serial verb construction (SVC), two or more verbs combine in a single clause without any morphosyntactic marking of linking or ...
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[PDF] Is Head Movement Still Needed for Noun Incorporation
Abstract: This paper compares Baker's head-movement analysis of noun incorporation to alternative nonlexicalist theories of noun incorporation, ...
[47]
The Strong Minimalist Thesis Is too Strong: Syntax Is More Than Just ...
This paper raises specific puzzles for the Strong Minimalist Thesis (SMT) based on certain crosslinguistic patterns. I do so by pointing out that the SMT ...
[48]
(PDF) The Minimalist Program and its New Insight to the Concept of ...
Aug 6, 2025 · This paper discusses some new ideas articulated recently by Chomsky such as changing the function of movement and the Extended Projection Principle (EPP) ...<|separator|>
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The Antisymmetry of Syntax - MIT Press
$$40.00The Antisymmetry of Syntax proposes a restrictive theory of word order and phrase structure that denies this assumption.
[50]
[PDF] Parameters and effects of word order variation
Jun 19, 1984 · The parameter of direction of predication accounts for the position of a subject in relation to its predicate. Word order typology is now more ...
[51]
[PDF] Logical relations in Chinese and the theory of grammar
Jul 9, 1982 · LOGICAL RELATIONS IN CHINESE AND THE THEORY OF GRAMMAR by. CHENG-TEH ... Cheng-Teh James Huang 1982. The author hereby grants to M.I.T. ...
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Lectures on Government and Binding: The Pisa Lectures
Chomsky has written many books on the links between language, human creativity, and intelligence, including Language and Mind (1967) and Knowledge of Language.