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What is this type of phrase called? What parts of speech does it employ?

Situation: your brother does something silly. You say to him: "You and your crazy antics..."

This was brought up cause I wanted to apply it to something besides "you", in this case, someone's company. I said "Oh, your company and its crazy exams..." That seems to work but is a bit stranger.

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  • Why is this an idiom?
    – Chris
    Commented Oct 22, 2010 at 22:54
  • what would you call it?
    – Claudiu
    Commented Oct 23, 2010 at 1:23
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    Probably a phrase structure. I'm curious too, if there is some sort of name for this. I think an idiom is a phrase that retains a meaning that is based of off a particular culture rather than the specific words used.... like "it's raining cats and dogs".
    – Chris
    Commented Oct 23, 2010 at 5:23
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    @Chris: ah yeah it's always a mess when it rains like that.. guts everywhere. luckily i haven't been in one
    – Claudiu
    Commented Oct 23, 2010 at 12:42
  • I don't think there's a name for this structure, but given that I have encountered it in a whole lot of Indo-European languages, I would opine that it's rather old. A few quick searches didn't return any clear examples in the Bible, but I wouldn't be surprised at all to find cites in the writings of, say, Cicero, Plato or Homer.
    – RegDwigнt
    Commented Oct 23, 2010 at 16:56

2 Answers 2

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This is the accusative of exclamation (google). Similar examples include "Good morning!" "Poor thing!" or "That man and his tricks!"

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It is a noun phrase: that's all.

In this context, it is serving as a complete utterance, as is quite common in ordinary speech. Whether you regard it as a "sentence" or not is a matter of definition.

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