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.
Words nearby phrase-structure rule
phrase book,
phrase marker,
phrase structure,
phrase structure tree,
phrase-structure grammar,
phrase-structure rule,
phrasemaker,
phrasemonger,
phraseogram,
phraseograph,
phraseologist
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