The Lack Of Distinction Between Phrase And Group In The Cardiff Grammar

Fawcett (2010: 203):

In the following four sub-sections I shall comment briefly on each of the four classes of group that are recognised in the Cardiff Grammar's description of English. No distinction is made here between a 'phrase' and a 'group', so that those who prefer the term "phrase" to "group" (e.g., Sinclair 1990) could rename them as classes of "phrase" without affecting the concept itself.

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To be clear, in SFL Theory, there is an important distinction between 'phrase' and 'group'. Halliday & Matthiessen (2014: 362-3):

A phrase is different from a group in that, whereas a group is an expansion of a word, a phrase is a contraction of a clause. Starting from opposite ends, the two achieve roughly the same status on the rank scale, as units that lie somewhere between the rank of a clause and that of a word.

A group, as an expansion of a word, has a logical structure, whereas a phrase, like a clause, does not. For example, compare the structures of the preposition group long before and the prepositional phrase long before the flood:

As can be seen, like a clause, the constituents of a phrase are groups (preposition and nominal).