Coordination

Words of the same type can be coordinated, that is, joined by special words such as and and or. Phrases of the same type can be coordinated, and clauses of the same type. In this section, we focus on words and phrases. In the clause John and his energetic wife landscaped the garden twice last year, John is a phrase consisting of a single word and his energetic wife is a phrase consisting of three words. In spite of the disparity in length, the two phrases are coordinated – John and his energetic wife. In the noun phrase the bright and incredibly sharp air over Doubtful Sound, the one-word adjective phrase bright is coordinated with the two-word adjective phrase incredibly sharp. The fact of the coordination is one of the reasons for recognizing bright as a phrase.