What is a sense group?
[ sorted by RetSam 2009.10 Skype(retsamzhang) ]
The speaker will help the listener to share the message completely by giving him or her clues to brief units of meaning, each at a time, in order to reach the total meaning of the utterance without confusion.
Each brief unit, discretely spoken, is called a sense group and the clue to understand it is the silence (or pause) that occurs before and after it.
The meaning of an utterance will depend on how we identify sense groups with the pauses.
When we read a sentence, we often pause here and there.
And usually these pauses are made according to the grammatical structure of the sentence.
Grammatically, a sentence is made up of several parts and each has its own meaning.
These parts can be called sense groups.
A sense group can be a word, an expression, a phrase or a clause. We often use the sign "/" to mark off different sense groups in a sentence.
Basic rules for dividing a sentence into sense groups:
1.1 Noun Phrase
- Article + Noun —— a country
- Noun + Noun —— coumrade Li
- Demonstrative pronoun + Noun —— this book
- Adjective + Noun —— natural science
- Noun as Adjective + Noun —— New Year's Day
- Participle as Adjective + Noun —— the working class
- Numeral + Noun —— thirty two books
- Numeral + Numeral —— two hundred and twenty three
- Indefinite pronoun + Noun —— some ink
1.2 Pronoun Phrase —— that one
1.3 Prepositional Phrase —— by bus
1.4 Adjective Phrase —— very good
1.5 Adverb Phrase —— very quickly
1.6 Adverb + Prepositional Phrase —— early in the morning
1.7 Adverb + Verb or Verb + Adverb ——quite understand , study hard
1.8 Verb Phrase —— to take a rest , to have a meeting
1.9 Infinitive Phrase —— He likes / to read newspapers after lunch.
1.10 Gerund Phrase —— staying indoors all day / is unhealthy.
1.11 Participle Phrase —— I saw many people / walking along the lake.
1.12 Copula + Predicative —— be well
1.13 Subject + Predicate —— He stands up.
1.14 Subject + Predicate + Object —— I speak English.
1.15 Subject Clause —— That he will come here / is certain.
1.16 Predicative Clause —— This is / how he studies English.
1.17 Subordinate Clasue —— He told me / where I could find my book.
1.18 Attributive Clause —— This is a factory / that makes cloth.
1.19 Adverbial Clause —— I waited / till he come back.
