An open sesame approach to English noun phrases: defining the NP (with an introduction to the special issue) phrasal constituents

s construed around the minimal category noun Rijkhoff (2002:8) points out that even if a language does employs noun It doesnt necessarily mean that the language in question has NPs. A more radical view against a dependency relation between nouns and noun phrases is that of Dryer all nouns are headless nouns being just one of the many types of words that occur in noun phrases Semantically, NPs are commonly defined as expressions of reference, that is, linguistic materializations of extralinguistic concepts. Biber et al. (1999:232) nouns are the main lexical means of referential specification and Payne and Huddleston (2002: 399) by using a noun on a given occasion a speaker tends to pick out some independently distinguishable entity or set of entities in the real world Esta ltima afirmacin sin embargo se puede asociar al uso de los determinants y sobre todo en la relacin entre hablante y oyente y el contenido de informacion que comparten o particularmente infieren. Rijkhoff (2002.27) noun phrases are referring expressions but entities they refer to are not entities in the external physical world but rather mental representations of entities Esta es la misma propuesta de Taylor en el anlisis cognitive de la frase nominal, lo que denominamos a travs de un frase nominal se representa en nuestra mente a travs de una referencia y el concepto externo padsa a ser el standard. He also claims that the noun phrase fulfils a doubl semantic function, it provides a physical description of an entity and on the other hand it is used for referring to entities in the world of discourse. Keizer (2008) concludes that at the representational level the variables, materialized by noun phrases should not be regarded as symbolizing the intended referent, but rather the mental extension set of an expression (211-12)Such a mental extension set, which is part of the long-term linguistic knowledge of the speaker, is wholly linguistic in nature and refers to the entire set of mental entities to which (in the view not the speaker) the property described by the lexemes used in an expression applies. Hengeveld (2008) the separation of the interpersonal, the representational and the morphosyntactic levels of analysis that we find in Functional Discourse Grammar allows for a more transparent and systematic treatment of noun phrases. In Cognitive Grammar (2004:77) where nouns are said to show significant parallels to the clause in their functional organization, nouns profile things and are characterised abstractly as products of conceptual grouping and reification. The NP profiles a grounded instance of a thing or process type. Consequently the defining features of the noun phrase are not to be found in its structural configuration but rather in the semantic functions of type specification, instantiation, and grounding By a NP the speaker is activating a referent in current discourse. 2. Headedness Van Lagendonck (1994) stresses the nominal status of the noun phrase, since it is the nooun that determines valency relations among arguments and adjuncts como un gozne semantic y sintctico que relaciona entre si las diferentes modificaciones que relacionan el concepto mental con el concepto extralingstico. Keizer (2007:9) considers the noun as the nuclear element and supports this view by citing features observable.

a. Obligatorieness b. Distributional equivalence of nouns and noun phrases c. Responsibility for subject-verb agreement when the subject is a noun phrase d. Carrier of inflection in the noun phrase e. Stress distribution f. Pronominalisation in the ensuing discourse It is in the generative grammar where the nucleus can be identified in constituents other than nouns. In the traditional theory of grammar the noun phrase was analysed as amaximal projection derived from a minimal noun category. In the NP projection, the Specifier was the locus of such categories as determiners and genitives. The determiner as the NP nucleus has been studied by Brame (1982) marking the shift from a noun-centric to a determiner-centric approach, it is in Abneys (1987) MIT dissertation that the proposal is studied in depth. The later hypothesizes that the determiner category is similar to inflectional and complementiser, ehere the NP forms a node that is complement to the determiner, the whole constituent becoming a DP. Alexiadou et al. (2007: 55-6) claim that the determiner is the bearer of referentiality in the noun phrase and plays a grammaticalising role as far as semantic-pragmatic definiteness is concerned syntactic category that is responsible for that part of the semantic interpretation of noun phrases also, the determiner is the element that assigns case to the complements which may occur in the NP and thus acts as a kind of subordinator between the nouns and their complements. Van Eynde (2006) recognize that the DP treatment has the advantage of providing a uniform account of all syntactic categories Hudson cites four facts that he claims show that determiners depend on nouns, and three facts showing the converse. His concluding claim is that either [the determiner or the noun] can be the head of the NP(2004: 39) since there exists mutual dependency between both categories in the noun phrase. The implicit assumption is that either (but not both) may be the head of the noun phrase, because the determiner is a kind of noun; more precisely, determiners are pronouns that take common nouns as their complement, and pronouns are a kind of noun (2004: 40)
3.1 Specifiers, complement and modifiers

External Constituents Internal

Postmodifiers and complements

Even in this house

Briefly, if a dependent is semantically selected or subcategorised by the head category, it will be classified as a complement; in Matthews (2007: 187) words, a complement is [a] unit in a construction either required or specifically taken by an individual member of a lexical category. By contrast, if the semantic connection between the dependent and the head is loose and, in consequence, the occurrence of the dependent in the phrase is not required by the referent of the head, the dependent will be regarded as a modifier. Functional Grammar, Rijkhoffs approach favours the grouping of the possible noun-phrase modifiers into three functional semantically driven classes: aspect (determiners), quality (adjectives) and quantification (number, cardinality) modifiers. It should be noted here [in relation to the restriction of complements appearing] that Keizer contends that nouns do not prototypically take complements since the majority of nouns are nonrelational, so the occurrence of complements in a noun phrase is statistically (and semantically) marked. In her words, most nouns denote an entity or set of entities without relating this entity (or set) to any other particular entity (or set of entities) (220).

3.2 Complexity and word order De Mnnink (2000) has the latter aim, and her analysis of the limits on linear mobility of noun-phrase constituents represents a traditional surface (unlayered) structural corpus-driven description of the word-order configurations of the noun phrase. Rijkhoff (1990) distinguishes three principles which determine the unmarked word order in noun phrases: (i) domain integrity, according to which constituents prefer to remain within their proper domain (9), that is, within the phrase; (ii) head proximity, which explains that [t]he head of a domain tends to be contiguous with the head of the superordinate domain (14) (iii) scope, according to which [a]n operator is expressed in the periphery of the layer it has in its scope 4. From Transactions onwards The determiner slot, and more specifically the cases of possessives, such and same/other, which are often called postdeterminers and illustrate the area where the category fuzzily borders on the adjective, is the object of Van de Veldes (2009) paper. Taking the diachrony ofNP syntax as a vantage point,Van deVelde maintains that there is no need to posit a separate postdeterminer slot (318) for what other scholars label postdeterminers (Sinclair et al. 1990) or precentral adjectives (Quirk et al. 1985), since such a position is an unnecessary complication of the NP structure. Possessives, such and same/other are in fact elements undergoing a diachronic transition from adjective slotfiller to determiner slotfiller (293), as may be seen in the fact that they all lose adjectival properties to gain determiner properties.