verb phrase
Noun
Meaning
(linguistics) A construction in a clause consisting of a verb and its internal complements, or modifiers.
(grammar) A phrase that functions syntactically as a verb, consisting of a main verb and any auxiliaries.
Source: en.wiktionary.orgSynonyms
Hypernyms
Examples
Here the verb phrase (understood from the context) is reduced to a single auxiliary or other "special" verb, negated if appropriate.
For example, rather than asserting that sentences are constructed by a rule that combines a noun phrase (NP) and a verb phrase (VP) (e.
However, it is also relevant to note that in a verb phrase like 'it is old', the noun thantha meaning 'old' does not require the copulative verbalizer, thantha-wa 'it is old'.
Telicity might be considered a kind of lexical aspect, except that it is typically not a property of a verb in isolation, but rather a property of an entire verb phrase.
The other factor in situation aspect is duration, which is also a property of a verb phrase.
The word and, for example, can be construed as a function that can apply to sentence meanings to create new sentences, and likewise for noun phrase meanings, verb phrase meanings, and others.