Type of phrase

Question

the girl sitting next to you.crushing out the life with the gray weight of winter.What are these types of phrases?  Distinction.It was the girl sitting next to you.Is the girl the main subject or 'It'

Englishmaven · Accepted Answer

They are participial phrases modifying the nouns that precede them (come before them).

BillJ · Answer

[1] the girl sitting next to you

[2] It was the girl sitting next to you.

The underlined elements are not phrases but gerund-participial non-finite clauses modifying "girl".

Note that [1] is not a sentence but a noun phrase.

Since [1] is not a sentence, there is no subject. In [2] the subject is "it", which is anaphoric to some previously mentioned element.

Gerund-participials and past-participials as modifiers of nouns are semantically similar to relative clauses: compare the girl who is sitting next to you. But we don't analyse them as 'reduced' relative clauses because there is no possibility of them containing a relative phrase (cf. *the girl who sitting next to you). And in any case, why would one want to posit a deleted verb?

Type of phrase

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