ABSTRACT

This chapter shows how clauses are made up of groups, and groups are themselves made up of words. It reviews that there are different kinds of clauses, groups, and words and considers how one type of unit can function as a unit at a different level, in a process that is called rank shift. The predicator is encoded in language by a verbal group; a subject is the element that is primarily involved in the event or state described by the predicator, and can be probed by the question "who or what?" followed by the verb in question. French also has a number of cases where the verbal group is made up of a finite verb followed by an infinitive, but where it is the infinitive which indicates the process. The chapter deals with prepositional phrases which are made up of a preposition followed by a nominal group, which completes the prepositional phrase.