PHRASES

� Phrase classes reflect the four major lexical word classes:

noun phrases, verb phrases, adjective phrases and

adverb phrases;

� Each phrase is centred on a head word of the relevant

class and has certain potential additions to that head word

to make a longer phrase; to make a longer phrase;

� The only addition to this list is the prepositional phrase,

which is really just a noun phrase with a preposition added

at the beginning;

� Single words can form complete utterances: e.g. ‘Yes’ .

However, without the full clause structure an utterance

usually needs to include some information from the context

for us to understand the significance of the word or phrase

that is uttered; 1

PHRASES

� Phrases, like words, form part of larger structures and are

not usually complete in themselves, without either the rest

of the clause or some context that can fill in a clause-like

conceptual structure;

� Ex: 1.‘On my chest of drawers near the window’; 2.‘The

longest walk I ever did’; 3. ‘Absolutely brilliantly!’;longest walk I ever did’; 3. ‘Absolutely brilliantly!’;

� These are 1.a prepositional phrase, 2.noun phrase and

3. adverbial phrase respectively, and could occur as

utterances on their own;

� Yet, they are subject to some kind of contextual

interpretation, such as a preceding question: Ex. 1. ‘Where

are the spare car keys?’; 2.’What did you do on your

birthday?’; 3. ‘How did Jenny play?’

2

PHRASES

� But if they appear in context the meaning is

clearer:

� 1.‘The spare car keys are on my chest of drawers

near the window’; 2.’On my birthday he took me

on the longest walk I ever did.’; 3. ‘Jenny playedon the longest walk I ever did.’; 3. ‘Jenny played

absolutely brilliantly!’;

� These clauses are more interpretable than the

phrases in the first set of examples;

� Phrases then are, at least conceptually, part of a

larger structure, we shall now consider the

internal structure of the five phrase classes;3

NOUN PHRASES

� The noun phrase is based around a head noun, which is

the irreducible core of the phrase and the shortest possible

version of the noun phrase;

� Ex: ‘Power made him crazy.’; ‘Stephen found mould

behind the bath.’;

� The examples above are full clauses consisting of only a � The examples above are full clauses consisting of only a

single head noun;

� All phrases, then have what is called head or head word.

This is the word within the phrase that determines its

grammatical function (and which acts to provide its most

general meaning); other words within the phrase act in a

modifying capacity.

� For example, in the noun phrase 'the old-fashioned door',

the head word is the noun, door:. The remaining words

within the phrase act to modify this head word;

4

NOUN PHRASES

� Most noun phrases, however, have at least one

premodifier, usually a determiner: Ex: ‘His

power made him crazy.’; ‘Stephen found the

mould behind the bath.’;

� In English a noun phrase can have only one � In English a noun phrase can have only one

determiner (e.g. articles, demonstratives and

possessives) Some languages allow a

combination of articles and possessives, but this

is not permitted in English: Ex.; *The my carpet.

*A his father.’;

� When an asterisk is put before the phrase, it

means that it is not grammatical; 5

NOUN PHRASES

� In addition to the determiner, the

premodification of the head noun may include,

in the following order, a predeterminer

(determiner,) an enumerator, adjectives and a

noun;noun;

� There is a small number of predeterminers in

English, most of them concerned with

quantification;

� Predeterminers, as their name implies, tend to

occur before determiners, though very similar

quantifiers (usually without the particle ‘of’) can

occur without the intervening determiner; 6

NOUN PHRASES

� 1.Predeterminers in the noun phrase

� Predeterminer Determiner Head

� All (of) my sisters

� None of the answers

� Each of those books� Each of those books

� Most of our water

� 2.Quantifiers in the noun phrase

� Quantifiers Head

� All officers

� No answers

� Each book 7

NOUN PHRASES

� To which subclass quantifiers belong is open to

question. They seem to be like predeterminers

in meaning, but they could belong to the class

that is mostly dominated by numbers, that is, the

enumerators;enumerators;

� Enumerators Head

� Ten officers

� Twelve answers

� Five books

8

NOUN PHRASES

� Predeterminers and enumerators do not behave

consistently with regard to combining with determiners.

Some may occur with a determiner, others do not:

� Quantifier Determiner Head

� All the officers

*No the answers� *No the answers

� *Each the book

� The significant difference is that if a determiner occurs

with enumerators it precedes the numeral: Ex:

� Determiner Enumerator Head

� The ten officers

� Her twelve answers

� Those five books9

NOUN PHRASES

� The enumerator class comes between the determiner

and the adjective positions in the premodification of a

noun phrase.

� As well as the ordinal numbers (one, two, three and so

on), the cardinal numbers (first, second, third and so on)

are also part of this class;are also part of this class;

� Ordinal and cardinal enumerators in the noun phrase

� Determiner Enumerator Head

� Her three dogs

� Those eleven players

� My first cappuccino10

NOUN PHRASES

� After the enumerator class, the premodification

of a noun may include a number of adjectives;

� There is no theoretical restriction on the number

of adjectives allowed in an English noun phrase,

though more than three is unusual and a single though more than three is unusual and a single

adjective is most common, except in specific

contexts, such as the description of products in

catalogues;

� Ex.: ‘Medium roast ground coffee.’; ‘These

delicious shortbread Christmas tree shaped

biscuits.’; A deep, ribbed collar:11

NOUN PHRASES

� A few identifiable subclasses of adjectives appear to have

general restrictions on their co-occurrence as well as a

tendency to occur in a certain order;

� The classes denoting colour, origin and material tend to

occur after the subclass that might be labelled ‘general

adjectives’ which include size, shape and evaluation adjectives’ which include size, shape and evaluation

adjectives;

� They are a miscellaneous group of the most common

adjectives that do not fit into the other, more-specific

classes;

� Adjective premodifiers in the noun phrase

� Det. General Colour Origin Material Head

� Those gorgeous red Indian linen trousers

� Her long green Chinese silk skirt12

NOUN PHRASES

� The ordering of adjectives in noun phrases is not

a strict rule of the grammar since it is a semantic

restriction more than a syntactic one. In fact, it

is unlikely that we would want to describe the

noun head as being of two colours or from two noun head as being of two colours or from two

different places:

� Restrictions on adjective cooccurrence in the

noun phrase

� Det. General Colour Head

� *My gorgeous red blue trousers

� *Her long Indian Chinese skirt

13

NOUN PHRASES

� As well as not having more than one of each

adjectival subclass, changes in the order of these

adjectives can sound rather odd.

� This, in any case, does not mean that they are

ungrammatical. Consider:ungrammatical. Consider:

� ‘*the my house or *pink those rabbit’;

� ‘?Those red gorgeous linen Indian trousers’;

� ‘?Her Chinese long silk green skirt’;

� The asterisk ‘*’ marks ungrammatical sentences,

while the question mark ’?’ doubtful ones;

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NOUN PHRASES

� In addition to the subclasses in the previous slide, there is

the verbal adjective class, which is made up of adjectives

clearly derived from verbs, either using the ‘-ing’ or the ‘-en

form of the verb but behaving in all other respects like an

ordinary adjective:

� ‘The painted wooden boxes’;� ‘The painted wooden boxes’;

� ‘Those poor dancing bears’;

� It is less clear than with the earlier statement of ordering

where these ‘deverbal’ adjectives are likely to occur in the

premodification of the noun phrase.

� Some changes in emphasis can be achieved with different

orders. Consider:

� ‘The wooden painted boxes’15

NOUN PHRASES

� It is also unclear where an origin adjective would fit into

the sentences below:

� ‘Those poor Russian dancing bears’;

� ‘Those poor dancing Russian bears;

� The final part of the premodification of nouns in English

noun phrases is the noun premodifier. This is a noun that noun phrases is the noun premodifier. This is a noun that

can precede the head noun, but functions in the same way

as other premodifiers by limiting the possible range of

referents of the noun phrase as a whole. Thus the noun

phrase ‘a duck’ may cover any referent that can be labelled

‘duck’, but the following noun phrases, with noun

premodifiers, limit the possible referent to different

subclasses of duck:

� ‘The Bombay duck’; ‘My bath duck’; ‘Dawn’s garden

duck’;

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NOUN PHRASES

� There are two important types of postmodifiers for Noun

Phrases:

� 1.Prepositional phrases and 2.relative clauses.

� The prepositional phrase consists of a preposition and

a noun phrase. Consider the invented phrases below:

1.‘In the front cover’; 2.‘Up the road’; 3.‘For a few readers’;� 1.‘In the front cover’; 2.‘Up the road’; 3.‘For a few readers’;

� These prepositional phrases can in turn be added to the

end of other noun phrases to form the postmodification:

� 1.’The picture in the front cover’; 2.‘The building up the

road’; 3.‘A book for a few readers’;

17

NOUN PHRASES

� As regards the relative clause it has a

recognisable clause structure.

� Yet: whilst, in general, phonemes make up

morphemes, which make up words, which make

up phrases, which make up clauses, which make up phrases, which make up clauses, which make

up sentences, which make up texts, there are

some places in the structure where a ‘higher’ unit

is embedded in a ‘lower’ unit. The noun phrase is

one of these places;

� A noun phrase can include a prepositional phrase

that itself contains a noun phrase. We now find

that noun phrases can contain clauses, though

they are usually also contained within clauses.

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NOUN PHRASES

� Examples of relative clause postmodification:

� 1.’The trifle that Susan made for the party’;

� 2.’The thief who stole my car’;

� 3.’The ground where Australia lost the Ashes’;

� Unlike other subordinate clauses the relative clause is � Unlike other subordinate clauses the relative clause is

part of a phrase, not a clause element in its own right. It

immediately follows the head noun of a noun phrase and is

introduced by a relative pronoun (e.g. ‘who’, ‘which’, ‘that’).

� The structure of the clause will vary according to whether a

new subject is introduced (‘Susan’ in the first example and

‘Australia’ in the third example), and depending on what

kind of relationship there is between the head noun and its

role in the relative clause, since it may perform as subject,

object, complement or adverbial in the subordinate clause.19

NOUN PHRASES

� Consider how we can recognise the relative clause as part

of the noun phrase. If we put the whole of the noun phrase

(including pre- and postmodification) into a clause it will be

easier to recognise the relative clause as being

subordinate:

� ‘The trifle that Susan made for the party was delicious’;� ‘The trifle that Susan made for the party was delicious’;

� ‘The thief who stole my car has been caught by the police’;

� ‘The ground where Australia lost the Ashes will be

remembered:

� Substitution test: to identify whether a series of words is

indeed a single noun phrase try substituting the whole of it

for a pronoun to see whether this is possible:

� ‘It was delicious’; ‘He has been caught by police’; ‘It will be

remembered’;20

NOUN PHRASES

� On the contrary, you cannot substitute only part

of a noun phrase because it makes nonsense of

the rest of the clause:

� *’It that Susan made for the party was delicious’;

� *He who stole my car has been caught by police’;� *He who stole my car has been caught by police’;

� *It where Australia lost the Ashes will be

remembered’;

� To sum up: the noun phrase in English is made

up of three functional elements, of which only the

head is compulsory: premodification, head,

postmodification;21

NOUN PHRASES

� Recall that a noun phrase (but the same goes for VPs,

PPs, AdvPs, AdjPs) is a syntactic constituent that contains

a noun (but also a verb, a preposition, an adverb, an

adjective) which can be modified by other words;

� Hence the noun (or the verb, the adverb, the adjective, the

preposition) which constitutes the indispensable element preposition) which constitutes the indispensable element

determining the category of the whole constituent, is called

the head of the phrase;

� Consider: ‘My best friend lives at the sea’

� Can you substitute the phrase ‘at the sea’ for a noun like

‘Rome’?

� If ‘at the sea’ cannot be substituted for a noun, it is not a

noun phrase. What is it instead? What is its head?22

NOUN PHRASES

� Form-function relationships in the noun phrase:

� Premodification Head Postmodification

� Predeterminers Noun Prepositional phrase

� Determiners Relative clause

� Enumerators� Enumerators

� Adjectives

� Nouns

� The combinations of premodifiers are not restricted, except

by the norms of length and the difficulty of understanding

a very long noun phrase: Ex: 1All of my three tall purple

Chinese shining vases with gold leaf patterns . . .’;

23

NOUN PHRASES

� Recursion: Because the noun phrase can contain a

prepositional phrase that is mainly made up of a noun

phrase, there is the possibility, in theory at least, of infinite

repetition of this pattern. Consider: ‘. . . the pig in the sty

on his farm in Wiltshire . .’

� The first noun phrase consists of three levels:� The first noun phrase consists of three levels:

� 1.Pre-modification Head Postmodification

� The pig in the sty on his farm in …

� 2.Pre-modification Head Postmodification

� the sty on his farm in Wiltshire . . .

� 3. Pre-modification Head Postmodification

� his farm in Wiltshire . . .24

NOUN PHRASES

� It is also possible to use recursive structures with

relative clauses: ‘the cat that chased the rat that ate the

malt that lay in the house that Jack built’;

� 1.Pre-modification Head Postmodification

� the cat that chased …built

2.Pre-modification Head Postmodification� 2.Pre-modification Head Postmodification

� the rat that …. Built

� 3.Pre-modification Head Postmodification

� the malt that lay … built

� 4.Pre-modification Head Postmodification

� the house that Jack built

25

NOUN PHRASES

� Apposition: when there can be more than one noun

phrase in one of the normal clause functions (for example,

subject), and if these are the same.

� Consider:

� ‘Mr Clark, the Home Secretary, said . . .’

‘She saw Mr Bun, the Baker, going along the road’;� ‘She saw Mr Bun, the Baker, going along the road’;

� ‘My sister-in-law, Sandra, phoned me from Australia’;

� ‘Blonde mother of three, Samantha, . . .’;

� These examples give information on either the occupation,

the looks or the relationship with the speaker of the person

referred to.

� Apposition can also be used for inanimate objects: ‘The

Ford Fiesta, my new car, is a delight to drive’; 26