phrase-structure rule


noun Linguistics.

a rule that generates a sentence or other syntactic construction from words and phrases and identifies its constituent structure.
Compare rewrite rule.

British Dictionary definitions for phrase-structure rule

phrase-structure rule

noun

generative grammar a rule of the form A → X where A is a syntactic category label, such as noun phrase or sentence, and X is a sequence of such labels and/or morphemes, expressing the fact that A can be replaced by X in generating the constituent structure of a sentence Also called: rewrite rule Compare transformational rule