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Some examples of noun phrases are underlined in the sentences below. The head noun appears in
bold.
"Those five beautiful shiny Arkansas Black apples sitting on the chair" is a noun phrase of
which apples is the head. To test, a single pronoun can replace the whole noun phrase, as in
"They are delicious".
Current economic weakness may be a result of high energy prices.
Noun phrases can be identified by the possibility of pronoun substitution, as is illustrated in the
examples below.
A string of words that can be replaced by a single pronoun without rendering the sentence
grammatically unacceptable is a noun phrase. As to whether the string must contain at least two
words, see the following section.
Traditionally, a phrase is understood to contain two or more words. The traditional progression in
the size of syntactic units is word < phrase < clause, and in this approach a single word (such as a
noun or pronoun) would not be referred to as a phrase. However, many modern schools of syntax
especially those that have been influenced by X-bar theory make no such restriction.[2] Here many
single words are judged to be phrases based on a desire for theory-internal consistency. A phrase is
deemed to be a word or a combination of words that appears in a set syntactic position, for instance
in subject position or object position.
On this understanding of phrases, the nouns and pronouns in bold in the following sentences are
noun phrases (rather than just nouns and pronouns):
He saw someone.
Milk is good.
They spoke about corruption.
The words in bold are called phrases since they appear in the syntactic positions where multiple-
word phrases (i.e. traditional phrases) can appear. This practice takes the constellation to be
primitive rather than the words themselves. The word he, for instance, functions as a pronoun, but
within the sentence it also functions as a noun phrase. The phrase structure grammars of the
Chomskyan tradition (government and binding theory and the minimalist program) are primary
examples of theories that apply this understanding of phrases. Other grammars, for instance
dependency grammars, are likely to reject this approach to phrases, since they take the words
themselves to be primitive. For them, phrases must contain two or more words.
A typical noun phrase consists of a noun (the head of the phrase) together with zero or more
dependents of various types. (These dependents, since they modify a noun, are called adnominal.)
The chief types of these dependents are:
The allowability, form and position of these elements depend on the syntax of the language in
question. In English, determiners, adjectives (and some adjective phrases) and noun modifiers
precede the head noun, whereas the heavier units phrases and clauses generally follow it. This is
part of a strong tendency in English to place heavier constituents to the right, making English more
of a head-initial language. Head-final languages (e.g. Japanese and Turkish) are more likely to place
all modifiers before the head noun. Other languages, such as French, often place even single-word
adjectives after the noun.
Noun phrases can take different forms than that described above, for example when the head is a
pronoun rather than a noun, or when elements are linked with a coordinating conjunction such as
and, or, but. For more information about the structure of noun phrases in English, see English
grammar Noun phrases.
Syntactic function
Noun phrases typically bear argument functions.[3] That is, the syntactic functions that they fulfill are
those of the arguments of the main clause predicate, particularly those of subject, object and
predicative expression. They also function as arguments in such constructs as participial phrases and
prepositional phrases. For example:
For us the news is a concern. - the news is the subject argument
Have you heard the news? - the news is the object argument
That is the news. - the news is the predicative expression following the copula is
They are talking about the news. - the news is the argument in the prepositional phrase
about the news
The man reading the news is very tall. - the news is the object argument in the participial
phrase reading the news
Sometimes a noun phrase can also function as an adjunct of the main clause predicate, thus taking
on an adverbial function, e.g.
In some languages, including English, noun phrases are required to be "completed" with a
determiner in many contexts, and thus a distinction is made in syntactic analysis between phrases
that have received their required determiner (such as the big house), and those in which the
determiner is lacking (such as big house).
The situation is complicated by the fact that in some contexts a noun phrase may nonetheless be
used without a determiner (as in I like big houses); in this case the phrase may be described as
having a "null determiner". (Situations in which this is possible depend on the rules of the language
in question; for English, see English articles.)
In the original X-bar theory, the two respective types of entity are called noun phrase (NP) and N-bar
(N, N). Thus in the sentence Here is the big house, both house and big house are N-bars, while the
big house is a noun phrase. In the sentence I like big houses, both houses and big houses are N-bars,
but big houses also functions as a noun phrase (in this case without an explicit determiner).
In some modern theories of syntax, however, what are called "noun phrases" above are no longer
considered to be headed by a noun, but by the determiner (which may be null), and they are thus
called determiner phrases (DP) instead of noun phrases. (In some accounts that take this approach,
the constituent lacking the determiner that called N-bar above may be referred to as a noun
phrase.)
This analysis of noun phrases is widely referred to as the DP hypothesis. It has been the preferred
analysis of noun phrases in the minimalist program from its start (since the early 1990s), though the
arguments in its favor tend to be theory-internal. By taking the determiner, a function word, to be
head over the noun, a structure is established that is analogous to the structure of the finite clause,
with a complementizer. Apart from the minimalist program, however, the DP hypothesis is rejected
by most other modern theories of syntax and grammar, in part because these theories lack the
relevant functional categories.[4] Dependency grammars, for instance, almost all assume the
traditional NP analysis of noun phrases.
For illustrations of different analyses of noun phrases depending on whether the DP hypothesis is
rejected or accepted, see the next section.
The representation also depends on whether the noun or the determiner is taken to be the head of
the phrase (see the discussion of the DP hypothesis in the previous section).
Below are some possible trees for the two noun phrases the big house and big houses (as in the
sentences Here is the big house and I like big houses).
1. Phrase-structure trees, first using the original X-bar theory, then using the modern DP approach:
NP NP | DP DP
/ \ | | / \ |
det N' N' | det NP NP
| / \ / \ | | / \ / \
the adj N' adj N' | the adj NP adj NP
| | | | | | | | |
big N big N | big N big N
| | | | |
house houses | house houses
2. Dependency trees, first using the traditional NP approach, then using the DP approach:
The following trees represent a more complex phrase. For simplicity, only dependency-based trees
are given.[5]
The first tree is based on the traditional assumption that nouns, rather than determiners, are the
heads of phrases.
The head noun picture has the four dependents the, old, of Fred, and that I found in the drawer. The
tree shows how the lighter dependents appear as pre-dependents (preceding their head) and the
heavier ones as post-dependents (following their head).
The second tree assumes the DP hypothesis, namely that determiners rather than nouns serve as
phrase heads.
The determiner the is now depicted as the head of the entire phrase, thus making the phrase a
determiner phrase. Note that there is still a noun phrase present (old picture of Fred that I found in
the drawer) but this phrase is below the determiner.
Noun Phrases
Our closest friends have just bought a new house in the village.
Numbers:
Some words and phrases come after the noun. These are called postmodifiers. A noun phrase can
be postmodified in several ways. Here are some examples:
Hes still very fit, in spite of the fact that hes over eighty.
She got the idea that people didnt like her.
There was a suggestion that the children should be sent home.
with a to-infinitive.
This is very common after indefinite pronouns and adverbs:
an eight-year old boy with a gun who tried to rob a sweet shop
that girl over there in a green dress drinking a coke
The rescue is the latest in a series of incidents on High Peak. In January last year two men walking on
the peak were killed in a fall when high winds blew them off the mountain.