Group 6 : Galih Dwi S (1410231015)

: Lumatul Aisyiyah (1410231014)

NOUN PHRASES AND AGREEMENT

6.1 Classification of Nouns

Nouns not only represent entities like people, places, or things, but also denote
abstract and intangible concepts such as happiness, information, hope, and so forth. The
following chart shows the canonical classification of nouns taking into account semantic
differences, but also considering their formal and grammatical properties.
(1) Types of Nouns in English :
Common noun : countable, ex : desk, book, difficulty, remark, etc.

: uncountable, ex : butter, gold, music, furniture, laziness, etc.

Proper noun, ex : Seoul, Kyung Hee, Stanford, Palo Alto, January, etc.
Pronoun : personal, ex : he, himself, his, etc.
: relative, ex : that, which, what, who, whom, etc.
: interrogative, ex : who, where, how, why, when, etc.
: indefinite, ex : anybody, everybody, somebody, nobody, anywhere.

(2) Combination Possibilities with Determiners :

Common N
countable
uncountable
No Det
Einstein
*book
music
the + N
*the Einstein
the book
the music
a+N
a book
*a music
*an Einstein
some + N *some Einstein *some book some music
N+s
books
*musics
*Einsteins
Proper N

neutral
cake
the cake
a cake
some cake
cakes

6.2 Syntactic Structures

6.2.1 Projection of Countable Nouns
As noted before, common nouns can have a determiner as a specifier, unlike proper
and pro- nouns. In particular, count nouns cannot be used without a determiner when they
are singular:
(3) a. *Book is available in most countries.
b. *Student studies English for 4 hours a day.
(4) a. Rice is available in most countries.

b. Students study English for 4 hours a day.

(5) a.
b.
c.
d.

His friend learned dancing.

Johns friend learned dancing.
The presidents bodyguard learned surveillance.
The King of Rock and Rolls records led to dancing.

6.2.2 Projection of Pronouns

The core class of pronouns in English includes at least three main subgroups
a. Personal pronouns: I, you, he, she, it, they, we
b. Reflexive pronouns: myself, yourself, himself, herself, itself
c. Reciprocal pronoun: each other
Personal pronouns refer to specific persons or things and take different forms to
indicate person, number, gender, and case. They participate in agreement relations with their
antecedent, the phrase which they are understood to be referring to (indicated by the
underlined parts of the examples.
6.2.3 Projection of Proper Nouns
Since proper nouns usually refer to something or someone unique, they do not
normally take a plural form and cannot occur with a determiner :
a. John, Bill, Seoul, January, . . .
b. *a John, *a Bill, *a Seoul, *a January, . . .
However, proper nouns can be converted into countable nouns when they refer to a
particular individual or type of individual:
a. No John Smiths attended the meeting.
b. This John Smith lives in Seoul.
In such cases, proper nouns are converted into common nouns, may select a specifier,
and take other nominal modifiers.
6.3 Agreement Types and Morpho-syntactic Features
6.3.1 Noun-Determiner Agreement
Common nouns in English participate in three types of agreement. First, they are
involved in determiner-noun agreement. All countable nouns are used either as singular or
plural. When they combine with a determiner, there must be an agreement relationship
between the two : a. this book/that book
b. *this books/*that books/these books/those books

c. *few dog/few dogs

6.3.2 Pronoun-Antecedent Agreement
As noted earlier, a second type of agreement is pronoun-antecedent agreement, as
indicated in :
a. If John wants to succeed in corporate life, he/*she has to know the rules of the
game.
b. The critique of Platos Republic was written from a contemporary point of view.
It was an in-depth analysis of Platos opinions about possible governmental
forms.
6.3.3 Subject-Verb Agreement
The third type of agreement is subject-verb agreement, which is one of the most
important phenomena in English syntax. Let us look at some slightly complex examples :
a.

The characters in Shakespeares Twelfth Night *lives/live in a world that has

been turned upside-down.

b.

Students studying English read/*reads Conrads Heart of Darkness while

at university.

As we can see here, the subject and the verb need to have an identical number value;
and the person value is also involved in agreement relations, in particular when the subject
is a personal pronoun :
a. You are/*is the only person that I can rely on.
b. He is/*are the only person that I can rely on.
These facts show us that a verb lexically specifies the information about the number
as well as person values of the subject that it selects for.
To show how the agreement system works, we will use some simpler examples :
a. The boy swims/*swim.
b. The boys swim/*swims.
6.4 Semantic Agreement Features
6.4.1 Morpho-syntactic and Index Agreement
What we have seen so far is that the morphosyntactic AGR values of noun or verb can
be spec- ified, and may be inherited by phrases built out of them. However, consider now
the following examples :

a. [The hash browns at table nine] are/*is getting cold.

b.

[The hash browns at table nine] is/*are getting angry.

Here the verb form was is singular to agree with the dish being referred to, rather

than with a plurality of prawns. If we simply assume that the subject phrase inherits the
morphosyntactic agreement features of the head noun (hash) browns in (32b) and (King)
prawns in (33), and requires that these features match those of the verb, we would not
expect the singular verb form to be possible at all in these examples.
In the interpretation of a nominal expression, it must be anchored to an individual in
the situation described. We call this anchoring value the noun phrases index value. The
index of hash browns in (32a) must be anchored to the plural entities on the plate, whereas
that of hash browns in (32b) is anchored to a customer who ordered the food.
English agreement is not purely morpho-syntactic as described in the sections
above, but context-dependent in various ways, via the notion of index that we have just
introduced. Often what a given nominal refers to in the real world is important for
agreement index agreement. Index agreement involves sharing of referential indices,
closely related to the semantics of a nominal, and somewhat separate from the syntactic
agreement feature AGR. This then requires us to distinguish the morphological AGR value
and semantic (SEM(ANTIC)) IND(EX) value. So, in addition to the morphological AGR
value introduced above, each noun will also have a semantic IND value representing what
the noun refers to in the actual world.
6.4.2 More on Semantic Aspects of Agreement
Here we introduce one more complex aspect of English agreement patterns.
Consider the ex- amples in (38) :
a. [Five pounds] is/*are a lot of money.
b. [Two drops] deodorizes/*deodorize anything in your house.
c. [Fifteen dollars] in a week is/*are not much.
d. [Fifteen years] represents/*represent a long period of his life.
e. [Two miles] is/*are as far as they can walk.
The head noun has to be singular so that it can combine with a singular determiner.
But the conflicting fact is that the singular noun phrase can combine even with a plural
verb as well as a singular verb. Since the only possible number value of the determiner is
singular for the head noun, the head noun cannot be anchored to plural entities unless we
allow the mode of individuation to be changeable even within the same sentence domain.
What this indicates is that subject-verb agreement and noun-specifier agreement are

differ- ent. In fact, English determiner-noun agreement is only a reflection of morphosyntactic agree- ment features between determiner and noun, whereas both subject-verb
agreement and pronoun- antecedent agreement are index-based agreement. This is
represented in (41), and shown by the example in (42), where the underlined parts have
singular agreement with four pounds, which is internally plural.
(41) Morpho-syntactic agreement (AGR)
Det head-noun verb . . . Index
agreement (IND)
(42) [Four pounds] was quite a bit of money in 1950 and it was not easy to come by.
Given the separation of the morphological AGR value and the semantic IND value,
nothing blocks mismatches between the two (AGR and IND) as long as all the other
constraints are satisfied. Consider the example in (38). The nouns pounds and drops here
are morphologically plural and thus must select a plural determiner, as argued so far.
6.5 Partitive NPs and Agreement
6.5.1 Basic Properties
With regard to the NP-internal elements between which we may find instances of
agreement, there are two main types of NP in English: simple NPs and partitive NPs,
shown in (50) and (51) respectively.
(50) a. some objections
b. most students
c. all students
d. much worry
e. many students
f. neither cars
(51) a. some of the objections
b. most of the students
c. all of the students
d. much of her worry
e. many of the students
f. neither of the cars
As in (51), the partitive phrases have a quantifier followed by an of -phrase, designating a
set with respect to which certain individuals are quantified. In terms of semantics, these
partitive NPs are different from simple NPs in several respects.

6.5.2 Two Types of Partitive NPs

We classify partitive NPs into two types based on the agreement facts, and call them
Type I and Type II. In Type I, the number value of the partitive phrase is always singular :
Type I:
a. Each of the suggestions is acceptable.
b. Neither of the cars has air conditioning.
c.

None of these men wants to be president.

In Type II, the number value depends on the head noun inside the of -NP phrase.
Type II:
a. Most of the fruit is rotten.
b. Most of the children are here.
c. Some of the soup needs more salt.
d. Some of the diners need menus.
e. All of the land belongs to the government.
f. All of these cars belong to me.
6.5.3

Measure Noun Phrases

There are also so-called measure noun phrase constructions, which are similar to

partitive constructions. Consider the following contrast :

a. one pound of those beans
b. three feet of that wire
c. a quart of Bobs cider
a. one pound of beans
b. three feet of wire
c. a quart of cider
In addition, there are several more differences between partitive and measure noun
phrases. For example, measure nouns cannot occur in simple noun phrases. They
obligatorily require an of -NP phrase:
(82) a. *one pound beans vs. one pound of beans
b. *three feet wire vs. three feet of wire
c. *a quart cider vs. a quart of cider
Further, unlike partitive constructions, measure noun phrases require a numeral as

their spec- ifier:

(83) a. *one many of the books, *several much of the beer
b. one pound of beans, three feet of wire
6.6 Modifying an NP
6.6.1 Prenominal Modifiers
Adjectives are expressions commonly used to modify a noun. However, not all
adjectives can modify nouns. Even though most adjectives can be used either as in a
modifying (attributive) function or as a predicate (as in She is tall), certain adjectives are
restricted to their usages. Ad- jectives such alive, asleep, awake, afraid, ashamed, aware,
utter, can be used only predicatively, whereas others such as wooden, drunken, golden,
main, mere are only used attributively :
(90) a. He is alive.
b. He is afraid of foxes.
(91) a. It is a wooden desk.
b. It is a golden hair.
c. It is the main street.
(92) a. *It is an alive fish. (cf. living fish)
b. *They are afraid people. (cf. nervous people)
(93) a. *This objection is main. (cf. the main objection)
b. *This fact is key. (cf. a key fact)
6.6.2 Postnominal Modifiers
Postnominal modifiers are basically the same as prenominal modifiers with respect to
what they are modifying. The only difference is that they come after what they modify.
Various phrases can function as such postnominal modifiers:
(97) a. [The boy [in the doorway]] waved to his father.
b. [The man [eager to start the meeting]] is Johns sister.
c. [The man [holding the bottle]] disappeared.
d. [The papers [removed from the safe]] have not been found.
e. [The money [that you gave me]] disappeared last night.
These modifiers must modify either an N or N0 , but not a complete NP. This claim is
consistent with the examples above and with the (ungrammatical) examples in (99) :

(99) a. *John in the doorway waved to his father.

b. *He in the doorway waved to his father.

A proper noun or a pronoun projects directly to the NP, with no complement or
speficier. If it were the case that post-nominal PP could modify any NP, these examples
ought to be acceptable. We take up the further details of these modifying structures in
Chapter 11.