UC 00902:

MEANING
IN COMMUNICATION
CONTEXT

LESSON 5:
Meaning and Syntax I
(Phrase,Clause, Sentence)
STAGES OF MEANINGFUL UNITS
SMALLEST TO BIGGEST UNIT

MORPHEME

LEXIM

PHRASE

CLAUSE SYNTAX

SENTENCE
WHAT IS SENTENCE?
Sentences are made of two parts: the
subject and the predicate.
The subject is the person or thing
that acts or is described in the
sentence. The predicate, on the other
hand, is that action or description.
Complete sentences need both the
subject and the predicate.
WHAT IS CLAUSE?

Sentences can be broken down into

clauses. For example:
The boy is going to the school, and he
is going to eat there.
This is a complete sentence
composed of two clauses. There are
mainly two types of clauses:
independent clauses and subordinate
clauses.
WHAT IS CLAUSE?

Independent clauses act as complete

sentences, while subordinate clauses
cannot stand alone and need another
clause to complete their meaning. For
example:
Independent clause: The boy went to
the school
Subordinate clause: he ate there
WHAT IS PHRASE?

A group of two or more grammatically

linked words that do not have subject and
predicate is a phrase. For example:
The girl is at home, and tomorrow she is
going to the amusement park.
You can see that the amusement park is
a phrase located in the second clause of the
complete sentence above.
Phrases act like parts of speech inside
clauses. That is, they can act as nouns,
adjectives, adverbs and so on.
WHAT IS PHRASE?
A phrase is a collection of words that may have nouns
or verbals, but it does not have a subject doing a verb.
The following are examples of phrases:
leaving behind the dog
smashing into a fence
before the first test
after the devastation
between ignorance and intelligence
broken into thousands of pieces
because of her glittering smile
In these examples above, you will find nouns (dog,
fence, test, devastation, ignorance, intelligence,
thousands, pieces). You also have some verbals
(leaving, smashing), but in no case is the noun
functioning as a subject doing a predicate verb. They
are all phrases.
WHAT IS CLAUSE
A clause is a collection of words that has a
subject that is actively doing a verb.
In the examples above, we find either a
noun or a pronoun that is a subject (bold-
print and red) attached to a predicate verb
(underlined and purple) in each case:
since she laughs at diffident men
I despise individuals of low character
when the saints go marching in
Obediah Simpson is uglier than a rabid racoon
because she smiled at him
 Phrases vs Clauses

Clauses Phrases
.
1. Clauses are group of words 1. Phrases are a group of words

2. Clauses have both a subject and a 2. Phrases do not have a subject

predicate. or predicate.
3 Clauses can be independent.
Independent clauses are full
sentences.
4. Clauses can be dependent . Examples:
Dependant Clauses are not full Excellent idea
sentences. Great job
Examples: Wonderful idea
The girl is nice
She went very fast
We wash the car.
WHAT IS AN IDIOM?

Idioms are words, phrases, or expressions that

cannot be taken literally. In other words, when
used in everyday language, they have a meaning
other than the basic one you would find in the
dictionary. Every language has its own idioms.
For example, break a leg is a common idiom.
Literal meaning: I command you to break a bone in
your leg and you should probably go to the doctor
afterwards to get it fixed.
Idiomatic meaning: Do your best and do well.

Often, actors tell each other to break a leg before

they go out on stage to perform.

 An idiom is a multiword construction that
is a semantic unit whose meaning cannot be
deduced from the meanings of its constituents, and
has a non-productive syntactic structure.
An idiom is a multiword expression. Individual
components of an idiom can often be inflected in the
same way individual words in a phrase can be
inflected. This inflection usually follows the same
pattern of inflection as the idiom's literal
counterpart.
Example: have a bee in one's bonnet
He has bees in his bonnet
 An idiom behaves as a single semantic unit.
It tends to have some measure of internal cohesion such that
it can often be replaced by a literal counterpart that is made
up of a single word.
Example: kick the bucket (die)
It resists interruption by other words whether they
are semantically compatible or not.
Example: pull one's leg
*pull hard on one's leg
*pull on one's left leg
It resists reordering of its component parts.
Example: let the cat out of the bag
*the cat got left out of the bag
 An idiom has a non-productive syntactic
structure. Only single particular lexemes can
collocate in an idiomatic construction.
Substituting other words from the same generic
lexical relation set will destroy the idiomatic
meaning of the expression.
Example: eat one's words
*eat one's sentences
?swallow one's words
JOURNAL 5
2 examples of phrase in Malay and English
2 examples of clause in Malay and English

2 examples of sentence in Malay and English

5 examples of idioms in Malay and their literal and

idiomatic meanings
5 example of idioms in English and literal and idiomatic
meanings