A noun phrase is either a single noun or pronoun or a group of words containing a noun or a pronoun that function together as a noun or pronoun, as the subject or object of a verb.
What
if a single noun isn't specific enough for our purposes?
How then do we modify a noun to
construct a more specific reference?
English
places modifiers before a noun.
Here
we indicate the noun that is at the center of a noun phrase by an asterisk
(*) and modifiers by arrows pointed toward the noun they modify.
white
house
*
large
man
*
Modification
is a somewhat technical term in linguistics. It does not mean to change
something, as when we "modify" a car or dress. To modify means to limit,
restrict, characterize, or otherwise focus meaning. We use this meaning
throughout the discussion here.
Modifiers
before
the noun are called pre-modifiers.
All of the pre-modifiers that are present and the noun together
form a
noun phrase
.
NOUN
PHRASE
pre-modifiers
noun
*
By
contrast, languages such as Spanish and French place modifiers after the noun
casa
blanca white house
* 
homme
grand big man
*
The
most common pre-modifiers are adjectives, such as
red
,
long
,
hot
. Other types of words often play
this same role.
Not only articles
the
water
*
but also verbs
running
water
*
and
possessive pronouns
her
thoughts
*
pre-modifiers
limit the reference in a wide variety of ways.
Order:
second,
last
Location:
kitchen,
westerly
Source or Origin:
Canadian
Color:
red,
dark
Smell:
acrid,
scented
Material:
metal,
oak
Size:
large,
5-inch
Weight:
heavy
Luster:
shiny,
dull
A number of pre-modifiers must appear first if they appear at all.
Specification:
a, the, every
Designation:
this, that, those, these
Ownership/Possessive:
my, your, its, their, Mary’s
Number:
one,
many
These
words typically signal the beginning of a noun phrase.
Some
noun phrases are short:
the
table
®
*
Some
are long:
the second shiny red Swedish touring
sedan
*
a large smelly red Irish
setter
*
my carved green Venetian glass salad
bowl
*
the three old Democratic
legislators
*
Notice that each construction would function as a single unit within a
sentence.
(We offer a test for this
below,)
The
noun phrase is the most common unit in English sentences.
That prevalence can be seen in the
following excerpt from an example from the section on the choice of language:
The stock market’s summer swoon turned into a dramatic rout
Monday as the Dow Jones industrial average plunged.
The stock market’s summer
swoon
turned into a dramatic
rout
*
*
Monday
as the Dow Jones industrial
average
plunged.
*
*
To
appreciate the rich possibilities of pre-modifiers, you have only to see how
much
you can expand a premodifier in a noun phrase:
the
book
the history
book
the American history
book
the illustrated American history
book
the recent illustrated American history
book
the recent controversial illustrated American history
book
the recent controversial illustrated leather bound American history
book
We
were all taught about
pre
-modifiers: adjectives appearing
before
a
noun in school.
Teachers rarely speak
as much about adding words
after
the
initial reference.
Just as we find
pre
-modifiers, we also find
post
-modifiers—modifiers coming
after a noun.
The
most common post-modifiers are prepositional phrases:
the book
on the table
civil conflict
in Africa
the Senate
of the United States
Post-modifiers
can be short
a dream deferred
or long, as in Martin Luther King Jr.’s reference to
a
dream
that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves
and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together
at a table of brotherhood.
What
does King have?
A dream?
No. He has a specific dream. Once we are
sensitive to the existence of noun phrases, we recognize a relatively simple
structure to the sentence.
Here we
recognize a noun phrase with a very long post-modifier—thirty-two words to be
exact.
We do not get lost in the
flow of words, but recognize structure. At the point that we recognize
structure within the sentence, we recognize meaning. (Notice also that
post-modifiers often
include clauses which themselves include complete sentences, as in the last
example above.)
Post-modifiers
commonly answer the traditional news reporting questions of
who
,
what
,
where
,
when
,
how
, or
why
.
Noun post-modifiers commonly take the following
forms:
prepositional
phrase
the dog
in the store
_ing
phrase
the girl running to the store
_ed
past tense
the man
wanted by the police
wh
- clauses
the house
where I was born
that/which
clauses
the thought
that I had yesterday
If you see a
preposition,
wh
- word (
which, who, when where
),
-ing
verb form, or
that
or
which
after a noun, you can
suspect a post-modifier and the completion of a noun phrase.
The noun together with all
pre- and post-modifiers constitutes a single unit, a noun phrase that
indicates the complete reference. Any agreement in terms of singular/plural
is with the noun at the center.
The
boys
on top of the house
are .............
Here the noun at the
center of the noun phrase is plural, so a plural form of the verb is called
for (not a singular form to agree with the singular
hous
