Nominal Group (functional Grammar)
In systemic functional grammar (SFG), a nominal group is a group of words which expresses an entity, for example "The nice old English police inspector who was sitting at the table is Mr. Morse". Grammatically here, "The nice old English police inspector who was sitting at the table" functions as a nominal group and acts like the subject of the sentence. A "nominal group" is widely regarded as synonymous to noun phrase in other grammatical models, although Halliday and some of his followers draw a theoretical distinction between the terms group and phrase. He argues that 'A phrase is different from a group in that, whereas a group is an expansion of a word, a phrase is a contraction of a clause'. Halliday borrowed the term 'group' from the linguist/classicist Sydney Allen.
Read more about Nominal Group (functional Grammar): The Rank Scale in SFG, Three Metafunctions in The Nominal Group, Experiential Dimension, Logical Dimension, Rank-shifting, See Also
Famous quotes containing the words nominal and/or group:
“Discourage litigation. Persuade your neighbors to compromise whenever you can. Point out to them how the nominal winner is often a real loser—in fees, expenses, and waste of time. As a peacemaker the lawyer has a superior opportunity of being a good man. There will still be business enough.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“A little group of willful men, representing no opinion but their own, have rendered the great government of the United States helpless and contemptible.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)