the simplest nonpredicative (as contrasted to the sentence) unit of speech. The word group is formed on a syntactic pattern and based on a subordinating grammatical relationship between two or more content words. This relationship may be one of agreement, government, or subordination. The grammatically predominant word is the main element of the word group, and the grammatically subordinated word the dependent element.
A word group denotes a fragment of extralinguistic reality. The word group combines formally syntactic and semantically syntactic features. Such features reveal the compatibility of grammatical and lexical meanings with the structure of the object-logical relations that these meanings reflect.
Word groups may be free or phraseological. Free word groups are formed in accordance with regular and productive combinative principles; their meanings may be deduced from those of the component words.