A noun phrase or nominal phrase (abbreviated NP) is a phrase which has a noun (or indefinite pronoun) as its head word, or which performs the same grammatical function as such a phrase. Noun phrases are very common cross-linguistically, and they may be the most frequently occurring phrase type.
Noun phrases often function as verb subjects and objects, as predicative expressions, and as the complements of prepositions or postpositions. Noun phrases can be embedded inside each other; for instance, the noun phrase some of his constituents contains the shorter noun phrase his constituents.
In some modern theories of grammar, noun phrases with determiners are analyzed as having the determiner rather than the noun as their head; they are then referred to as determiner phrases.
Read more about Noun Phrase: Identifying Noun Phrases, Status of Single Words As Phrases, Components of Noun Phrases, Syntactic Function, Noun Phrases With and Without Determiners, Tree Representations of Noun Phrases
Other articles related to "noun phrase, noun, noun phrases, phrase":
... affixes, the need for the presence of a core noun phrase in the same clause is negated ... makers are person markers and are found in the final position of the noun phrase they determine ... the verb ifrúr because it is the final verb in the noun phrase headed by for ...
... Articles definite article applied to specific and identified noun phrase, indefinite article applied to specific and newly-asserted noun phrase, and zero for nonspecific noun ...
... The representation of noun phrases using parse trees depends on the basic approach to syntactic structure adopted ... The layered trees of many phrase structure grammars grant noun phrases an intricate structure that acknowledges a hierarchy of functional projections ... simple, relatively flat structures for noun phrases ...
... are purely semantic descriptions of the way in which the entities described by the noun phrase are functioning with respect to the meaning of the action ... A noun may bear more than one thematic relation ... Almost every noun phrase bears at least one thematic relation (the exception are expletives) ...
... In this ongoing process, X presents a noun phrase to Y in order to establish what it is A is referring to ... To initiate the referential process, the speaker uses one of at least six types of noun phrases, including the elementary noun phrase, the episodic noun phrase, the installment noun phrase, the provisional ...
Famous quotes containing the words phrase and/or noun:
“As if the musicians did not so much play the little phrase as execute the rites required by it to appear, and they proceeded to the necessary incantations to obtain and prolong for a few instants the miracle of its evocation, Swann, who could no more see the phrase than if it belonged to an ultraviolet world ... Swann felt it as a presence, as a protective goddess and a confidante to his love, who to arrive to him ... had clothed the disguise of this sonorous appearance.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“It will be proved to thy face that thou hast men about thee that usually talk of a noun and a verb and such abominable words as no Christian ear can endure to hear.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)