Everything about Noun Phrase totally explained
In
grammatical theory, a
noun phrase (abbreviated
NP) is a
phrase whose
head is a
noun or a
pronoun, optionally accompanied by a set of modifiers.
Form
Noun phrases normally consist of a head noun, which is optionally modified ("premodified" If the modifier is placed before the noun; "postmodified" if the modifier is placed after the noun). Possible modifiers include:
- determiners: articles (the, a), demonstratives (this, that), numerals (two, five, etc.), possessives (my, their, etc.), and quantifiers (some, many, etc.). In English, determiners are usually placed before the noun;
- adjectives (the red ball); or
- complements, in the form of a prepositional phrase (such as: the student of physics), or a That-clause (the claim that the earth is round);
- modifiers; premodifiers if placed before the noun and usually either as nouns (the university student) or adjectives (the beautiful lady), or postmodifiers if placed after the noun. A postmodifier may be either a prepositional phrase (the man with long hair) or a relative clause (the house where I live). The difference between modifiers and complements is that complements complete the meaning of the noun; complements are necessary, whereas modifiers are optional because they just give additional information about the noun.
That noun phrases can be headed by elements other than nouns — for instance, pronouns (
They came) or determiners ((
I'll take these)) — has given rise to the postulation of
a Determiner phrase instead of a noun phrase. The English language isn't as permissive as some other languages, with regard to possible heads of noun phrases. German, for instance, allows adjectives as heads of noun phrases, as in
Gib mir die alten: Give me the olds (= old ones).
Noun phrases can make use of an
apposition structure. This means that the elements in the noun phrase are not in a head-modifier relationship, but in a relation of equality. An example of this is
I, Caesar, declare ..., where "Caesar" and "I" don't modify each other.
The noun phrase as a grammatical unit
In
English, for some purposes, noun phrases can be treated as single grammatical units. This is most noticeable in the
syntax of the English
genitive case. In a phrase such as
The king of Sparta's wife, the possessive
clitic "
-'s" isn't added to the
king who actually has the wife, but instead to
Sparta, as the end of the whole phrase. The clitic modifies the entire phrase
the king of Sparta.
Grammatical function
Noun phrases are prototypically used for acts of
reference as in "
The blonde girl shouts" or "
She kissed
the man". Also possible, but found less often, is the use of noun phrases for predication, as in "Suzy is
a blonde girl". Note that in English the use of the
copula is indicates the use of a noun phrase as predicate, but other languages may not require the use of the copula. Finally, noun phrases are used for identifications like "
The murderer was
the butler", where no
ascription is talking place. The possibility for a noun phrase to play the role of
subject and predicate leads to the constructions of
syllogisms.
Cross-linguistic observations
Noun phrases are very common
cross-linguistically, but some languages like
Tuscarora and
Cayuga have been argued to lack this category.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Noun Phrase'.
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