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Noun Phrases and its Respective Components
Choice of Language
A single concept is often signaled by a variety of words, each word possessing slightly different connotations.
angry , irate , incensed , perturbed , upset ,
furious , mad
The broader our vocabulary, the greater our options and the more precisely we can convey our meaning.
A single word, by itself, can appear somewhat vague, no matter how specific that word might seem.
Suppose you want to indicate a female
person across the room. If you don’t know her name, what do you say?
That girl.
If there were more than one, this alone
would be too general.The girl in the blue Hawaiian shirt…
The taller of the two students by the water cooler…
When a single term will not supply the reference we need, we add terms to
focus or limit a more general term. We can construct full and specific
references using noun phrases.
Nouns
Words that identify people, places or things, as well as feelings or ideas.
salesman, farm, balcony, bicycle, trust, happiness, intention
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?
To modify means to limit, restrict,
characterize, focus meaning.
Noun Phrase = Modifiers + Noun
Modifiers before the noun are called pre-modifiers.
The most common pre-modifiers are adjectives.
Big man White house
Other Pre-Modifiers
Articles The water Nouns The bathroom door Possessive adjectives 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, everyDesignation: this, that, these,
thoseOwnership/possessive: my, your,
its, Mary’sNumber: one, many
Short and Long Noun Phrases
The table *The second shiny Swedish touring
sedan *
The three old Democratic legislator *
The Most Common Unit in English Sentences
When Isabella Swan moves to the gloomy
town of Forkes and meets the mysterious,
alluring Edward Cullen, her life takes a
thrilling and terrifying turn.
Expanding a Pre-Modifier 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 bookthe recent controversial illustrated leather bound American
history book
Post- Modifiers
The book on the table *
Civil conflict in Africa * The senate of the United States *
How long can a post-modifier be?
a dream deferred *
a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves
*
and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together
at a table of brotherhood.
Post- Modifiers
Prepositional phrase the dog in the store Reduced clauses the girl running to the store the man wanted by the police Wh- clauses the house where I was born
That/ which clauses the thought that I had yesterdayTip:If you see a preposition, wh- word, -ingor –ed verb form, or that or which aftera noun, you can suspect a post-modifier
and the completion of a noun phrase.
Noun Phrase = Single Unit
The noun together with all pre- and post-modifiers constitute a single unit, a noun phrase that indicates the complete reference. Thus any agreement in terms of singular/plural is with the noun at the center.
The boys on top of the house are .......
*
The Pronoun Test Pronoun replacement offers a test of
a complete noun phrase. The boy ate the apple in the pie. What did he eat? The boy ate the apple in the
pie. The boy ate it.
Not all prepositional phrases after a noun are necessarily part of the noun phrase.
Compare:The boy ate the apple in the pie. The boy ate the apple in the summer.The boy ate the apple in a hurry.
The Pronoun Test
Boxes within Boxes: Testing for a Complete Noun Phrase
The book on the table * on the table * We can have prepositional phrase within prepositional phrase within prepositional
phrases.
Boxes within Boxes: Testing for a Complete Noun Phrase
The book on the table in the kitchen *
on the table in the kitchen * in the kitchen *
Bear in Mind
We don’t want to recognize every little noun phrase.
We want to recognize the larger ones that shape meaning.
The book is not “on the table”, the book
is “on the table in the kitchen”.
The Senate of the United States is composed of two legislator from each state.
Question: Who is the Senate? a) two legislators b) two legislators from each state? We read the sentence as: The Senate of the United States is composed
of two legislators from each state. *
If we read the sentence as:The Senate of the United States is composed of two
legislators from each state. We miss the meaning.
Post-Modifiers can be expanded to much greater lengths than Pre-
Modifiers
The following sentence indicates somethingwas lost. What was lost?
He lost his book by Mark Twain about theMississippi that he took out of the library onSunday before the game so that he could
study during half time when his brother wasgetting popcorn.
The answer is the complete phrase. The term book is modified as to
author (Mark Twain), topic (about the Mississippi), intention or purpose (that he took out of the library so that he could study during half time when his brother was getting popcorn)
What was lost?
Noun Phrase: The Dominant Construction
A month in, outrage over Gulf oil spill grows
GRAND ISLE, La. – Thick, sticky oil crept deeper into delicate marshes of the Mississippi Delta, an arrival dreaded for a month since the crude started spewing into the Gulf, as anger and frustration mounted over efforts to plug the gusher from a blown-out well and contain the spill.
Up to now, only tar balls and a sheen of oil had come ashore. But chocolate brown and vivid orange globs and sheets of foul-smelling oil the consistency of latex paint have begun coating the reeds and grasses of Louisiana's wetlands, home to rare birds, mammals and a rich variety of marine life.
By KEVIN McGILL and VICKI SMITH, Associated Press Writers
Retrieved from http://news.yahoo.com on May 21st, 2010
Implications For Reading and Writing
The goal of reading is not to recognizegrammatical features, but to find meaning.
The goal is not to break a sentence or partof a sentence into as small pieces as possible.
The goal is to break a sentence or part of itinto chunks in a such a way that it fosters the discovery of meaning.
Implications For Reading and Writing
We do not read texts word by word, but chunk by chunk. We must read each grammatical construction as a single unit.
Deciphering sentences involves isolating phrases within a sentence and recognizing where long phrases begin and end.
Implications For Reading and Writing
To write well is not string words together, but to string together larger phrases, to create full references that carefully distinguish one idea from another, going beyond talking in vague generalities.
We can increase the clarity and sophistication of our thought by using extended phrases instead of single words.
Implications For Reading and Writing
By drawing careful distinctions, writers are simply being precise.
Weak writers can achieve an immediate gain in the level of thought of their writing by taking advantages of the opportunities for adding pre- and post- modifiers. Having written a statement, you might go back in editing to see how you can further shape your thoughts by making using of these slots.
Ideas for encouraging students to think about and practice longer noun phrases
Noun Phrase Spotting Grow Your Own Pronoun Sepculation Noun Phrase Nests
References
http://www.criticalreading.com/noun_phrase.htm (Retrieved on 04/20/10)
http://news.yahoo.com (Retrieved on 05/21/10)
