A noun phrase is a group of words that does the work of a noun.

A noun phrase is either a pronoun or any group of words that can be replaced by a pronoun. It is also a group of word in a sentence which together behave as a noun in a sentence, for example: the night train, the man in black. Noun phrase also consists of pronoun or noun with any associated modifiers, including adjectives, adjective phrases, adjective clauses and other nouns in the possessive case. Noun phrase can be like noun as subject, object of verb, subject or object complement, or object of preposition. For example: subject: Small boys often insist that they can do it by themselves. object of verb: To read quickly is Eugene's goal. subject complement: Frankenstein is a name of the scientist not the ghost. object complement: She considers panda is her favorite animal.

The simplest noun phrase consists of a single noun. The noun head can be accompanied by modifiers, determiners (such as the, a, her), and/or complements. A noun phrase (often abbreviated as NP) most commonly functions as a subject, object, or complement. Noun phrase can be analyzed into both functional constituents and formal constituents. From the functional point of view, the noun phrase has four components. 1. The determinative, that constituent which determines the reference of noun phrase in its situation context. 2. Pre-modification, which comprises all the modifying or describing constituents before the head. 3. The head, around which the other constituents cluster. 4. Post-modification, those which comprise all the modifying constituents placed after the head.

Noun phrase can make use of the apposition structure. It means that the elements in the noun phrase are not in head-modifier relationship but in a relation of equality. The head of noun phrase can be implied. The implied noun phrase is most commonly used as a generic plural referring to human being. (Arnold Zwicky: 2008) Noun phrase also can be headed by elements others than nouns, pronouns or determiners which has given rise to the postulation of a determiner phrase instead of a noun phrase. Some purposes, noun phrase can be treated as single grammatical units. It is most noticeable in syntax of English genitive case. Noun phrase are prototypically used for acts of reference. Not often, noun phrase is used for predication. And noun phrases are used for identifications. The possible for a noun phrase to play the role of subject and predicate lads to the constructions of syllogisms.

Structures of Noun phrases

Noun Premodifiers - Modifiers before the noun are called premodifiers. (modify means to limit, restrict, characterize, or otherwise focus meaning). All of the premodifiers that are present and the noun together form a noun phrase. Noun Post-Modifiers - Modifiers coming after a noun are called post-modifiers.

1). NOUN PHRASE: premodifiers + noun e.g. a). White house white is a premodifier and house is a noun. b). The three old Democratic legislators the three old Democratic is premodifier and legislators is a noun.

2). NOUN PHRASE -- noun + post-modifiers. (The most common post-modifier is prepositional phrases). e.g. a). The glass on the table on the table is the post-modifier b). The boy in the store in the store is the post-modifier.

3). NOUN PHRASE -- pre-modifier + noun + post-modifier. The noun together with all pre and post-modifiers constitutes a single unit, a noun phrase that indicates the complete reference. e.g. The boys on top of the house. The is the premodifier, boys is the noun, on top of the house is the post-modifier.

Identifying Noun Phrases

"Noun phrases can be replaced by pronouns.

E.g. My father gave this book to my mother. " (He gave it to her.)"1 "The principle of substitution is essential in grammatical analysis. We cannot possibly hope to characterize all of the possible noun phrases of English on the basis of form. Just thinking about the possible structures that can serve as subjects of sentences should convince you that an exhaustive catalog of noun phrases would be, if at all possible, incredibly long and complex. Consider, as a single example, the subject of the preceding sentence: Just thinking about the possible structures that can serve as subjects of sentences. In form, this string of words is nothing like the prototypical noun phrases described above, yet a pronoun can substitute for it, and it functions quite naturally in a noun phrase slot."2

Noun Phrases and Modifiers More than one determiner can introduce a noun phrase; for example, all and our.

"In the initial sorties all our aircraft have returned safely." A noun head may also have more than one postmodifier. Two postmodifiers are exhibited in the following example. E.g. I think it is a pity that ABC is the only major corporation I have worked for where this has been a problem. The noun head is corporation and the two postmodifiers are I have worked for and where this has been a problem. The second postmodifier modifies the whole of the preceding noun phrase, including the first postmodifier, since clearly the writer does not want to generalize by extending the reference to major corporations where he has not worked. On the other hand, the two postmodifiers in the next example modify the head separately: "We could not trace the invoice dated 22nd March 1990 for 43.13." We could reverse the order of the postmodifiers without changing the meaning.3

1 2

Geoffrey Leech, Benita Cruickshank, and Roz Ivanic, An A-Z of English Grammar & Usage, 2nd ed. Pearson, 2001. Thomas P. Klammer, Muriel R. Schulz, and Angela Della Volpe, Analyzing English Grammar, 4th ed. Longman, 2004. 3 Sidney Greenbaum, Oxford English Grammar. Oxford Univ. Press, 1996.

Simple and Complicated Noun Phrases A noun phrase . . . is a unit that can have very simple or very complicated internal structure: (a) Simple noun phrase: the dog (b) Complicated noun phrase: the big black dog that always barks at me as I try vainly to sneak past the junkyard on my way home from my piano lesson. The phrase in (b) has quite a bit of internal complexity, and therefore requires a lot of mental processing. However, once it is processed, it can enter into larger structures as easily (well, almost as easily) as simple structures such as (a). They are both just noun phrases as far as the structure of the larger clause is concerned."4 Noun-Noun Phrases "This kind of noun phrase can cause problems for EAL [English as an additional language] writers, in our experience. An example of a noun-noun phrase is 'resource availability.' This phrase means 'availability of resources.' To shorten phrases like this, it is very common in scientific English for the second part (of resources) to be moved in front of the headword (availability). When this happens, the part that moves is always written in its singular form (resource) and the preposition is omitted. (It is rare to find a possessive form with an apostrophe in such cases in science writing.)"5

Noun Phrases in Technical Writing and Global English "Most forms of controlled English suggest revising noun phrases that are more than three words long. However, even a two- or three-word noun phrase can be unclear or ambiguous. For example, in the following sentences, someone who is not familiar with the subject matter cannot fully understand the two-word noun phrases, because each individual word has multiple possible meanings: - If you haven't imported a filter, the default is a unity gain. - The tracking loop mitigates the effects of multi-path interference on code-phase errors. On the other hand, some longer noun phrases are easy to comprehend--especially if part of the noun phrase is a proper noun. As long as the reader understands the two-word noun phrase dialog box, the four-word noun phrase in the following sentence is comprehensible: In the Advanced Options dialog box, use the arrows to adjust the percentage. "Clearly it is important to keep noun phrases as short as possible in English. But even the short ones often need to be explained or defined in order for translators to be sure about their meanings."6
4

Thomas E. Payne, Understanding English Grammar: A Linguistic Introduction , Cambridge University Press, 2011. 5 Margaret Cargill and Patrick O'Connor, Writing Scientific Research Articles: Strategy and Steps, Wiley Blackwell, 2009. 6 John R. Kohl, The Global English Style Guide: Writing Clear, Translatable Documentation for a Global Market . SAS, 2008.

Constructing a noun phrase As already shown, using one noun is not always sufficient to convey a full message. Quite often nouns needs to be modified (have information added to them) in order to communicate the full message. Such information can be added before, or after the main noun.

Imagine you were standing in a bicycle shop, trying to buy a bike which was not out on display, but which was in a catalogue (which you had left at home). You would need to give a considerable amount of information to the sales assistant, so that when s/he went into the stock room to get the bike for you, they would know exactly which bike you were referring to. If they did not have all of the necessary information, they would have to keep coming back to the shopfloor to ask you questions about the bike. I want to buy the bike. I want to buy the mountain bike. I want to buy the red, mountain bike. I want to buy the red, Marin, mountain bike. I want to buy the red, Marin, women's, mountain bike. I want to buy the red, 17" frame, Marin, women's, mountain bike. I want to buy the lightweight, red, 17" frame, Marin, women's, mountain bike. I want to buy the expensive, lightweight, red, 17" frame, Marin, women's, mountain bike. I want to buy the expensive, lightweight, red, 17" frame, Marin, women's, mountain bike [with the shimano gears]. I want to buy the expensive, lightweight, red, 17" frame, Marin, women's, mountain bike [with the shimano gears and disk brakes]. I want to buy the expensive, lightweight, red, 17" frame, Marin, women's, mountain bike [with the shimano gears, disk brakes and front suspension]. I want to buy the expensive, lightweight, red, 17" frame, Marin, women's, mountain bike [with the shimano gears, disk brakes, front suspension and alloy pedals]. I want to buy the expensive, lightweight, red, 17" frame, Marin, women's, mountain bike [with the shimano gears, disk brakes, front suspension, alloy pedals and Bontranger tyres]. All of the information which has been added between the word 'buy' and the word 'with', is the noun phrase. Any information after the word 'with' is part of a prepositional phrase. Linguistically speaking, this prepositional phrase is a separate entity. However, for the purposes of 'chunking' ideas and conveying a complete message you should think of it as being part of the noun phrase, as it gives information about the main noun 'the bike'.

As we've seen, a noun phrase has a noun as its Head. Determiners and adjective phrases usually constitute the pre-Head string:

[NP the children] [NP happy children] [NP the happy children] In theory at least, the post-Head string in an NP can be indefinitely long: [NP the dog that chased the cat that killed the mouse that ate the cheese that was made from the milk that came from the cow that...] Fortunately, they are rarely as long as this in real use. The Head of an NP does not have to be a common or a proper noun. Recall that pronouns are a subclass of nouns. This means that pronouns, too, can function as the Head of an NP: [NP I] like coffee The waitress gave [NP me] the wrong dessert [NP This] is my car If the Head is a pronoun, the NP will generally consist of the Head only. This is because pronouns do not take determiners or adjectives, so there will be no pre-Head string. However, with some pronouns, there may be a post-Head string: [NP Those who arrive late] cannot be admitted until the interval. Similarly, numerals, as a subclass of nouns, can be the Head of an NP: [NP Two of my guests] have arrived. [NP The first to arrive] was John . Because NPs can be quite complex, it is sometimes difficult to identify the NP head and choose the correct verb inflection to mark subject-verb agreement. Some examples are given below: The wearing of jeans and shorts is/are not permitted in this restaurant. The problem here is that there are three nouns; wearing, jeans and shorts. Plural shorts is closest to the verb, but the head of this NP [The wearing of jeans and shorts] is the noun wearing, which is singular. We can test that this is the subject NP by substituting the NP with pronoun it. Since the head of the NP is singular, the correct verb form is is. However, many speakers of English are just as comfortable with the plural reflecting the number of shorts or jeans and shorts. Twenty dollars is/are a good price. Here the sum of money is seen as a single unit, so the verb is singular is. Likewise, the quantifier dozen in the sentence; A dozen rolls is enough. The board is/are deciding as we speak.

Nouns referring to a group of individuals are usually considered to be singular, but this can vary according to the context and the speaker's focus, for example, The team is here and The team are all prepared.