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Anoun phrase – orNP ornominal (phrase) – is aphrase that usually has anoun orpronoun as itshead, and has the samegrammatical functions as a noun.[1] Noun phrases are very commoncross-linguistically, and they may be the most frequently occurring phrase type.
Noun phrases often function as verbsubjects andobjects, aspredicative expressions, and as complements ofprepositions. One NP can be embedded inside another NP; for instance,some of his constituents has as a constituent the shorter NPhis constituents.[2]
In some theories of grammar, noun phrases withdeterminers are analyzed as having the determiner as the head of the phrase, see for instanceChomsky (1995) andHudson (1990).[citation needed]
Some examples of noun phrases are underlined in the sentences below. The head noun appears in bold.
Noun phrases can be identified by the possibility of pronoun substitution, as is illustrated in the examples below.
A string of words that can be replaced by a single pronoun without rendering the sentence grammatically unacceptable is a noun phrase. As to whether the string must contain at least two words, see the following section.
Traditionally, aphrase is understood to contain two or morewords. The traditional progression in the size of syntactic units isword < phrase <clause, and in this approach a single word (such as a noun or pronoun) would not be referred to as a phrase. However, many modern schools of syntax – especially those that have been influenced byX-bar theory – make no such restriction.[3] Here many single words are judged to be phrases based on a desire for theory-internal consistency. A phrase is deemed to be a word or a combination of words that appears in a set syntactic position, for instance in subject position or object position.
On this understanding of phrases, the nouns and pronouns in bold in the following sentences are noun phrases (as well as nouns or pronouns):
The words in bold are called phrases since they appear in the syntactic positions where multiple-word phrases (i.e. traditional phrases) can appear. This practice takes the constellation to be primitive rather than the words themselves. The wordhe, for instance, functions as a pronoun, but within the sentence it also functions as a noun phrase. Thephrase structure grammars of the Chomskyan tradition (government and binding theory and theminimalist program) are primary examples of theories that apply this understanding of phrases. Other grammars such asdependency grammars are likely to reject this approach to phrases, since they take the words themselves to be primitive. For them, phrases must contain two or more words.
A typical noun phrase consists of a noun (thehead of the phrase) together with zero or more dependents of various types. (These dependents, since they modify a noun, are calledadnominal.) The chief types of these dependents are:
The allowability, form and position of these elements depend on the syntax of the language in question. In English, determiners, adjectives (and some adjective phrases) and noun modifiers precede the head noun, whereas the heavier units – phrases and clauses – generally follow it. This is part of a strong tendency in English to place heavier constituents to the right, making English more of ahead-initial language. Head-final languages (e.g.Japanese andTurkish) are more likely to place all modifiers before the head noun. Other languages, such asFrench, often place even single-word adjectives after the noun.
Noun phrases can take different forms than that described above, for example when the head is a pronoun rather than a noun, or when elements are linked with acoordinating conjunction such asand,or,but. For more information about the structure of noun phrases in English, seeEnglish grammar § Phrases.
Noun phrases typically bearargument functions.[4] That is, thesyntactic functions that they fulfill are those of the arguments of the main clausepredicate, particularly those ofsubject,object andpredicative expression. They also function as arguments in such constructs asparticipial phrases andprepositional phrases. For example:
Sometimes a noun phrase can also function as anadjunct of the main clause predicate, thus taking on anadverbial function, e.g.
In some languages, including English, noun phrases are required to be "completed" with adeterminer in many contexts, and thus a distinction is made in syntactic analysis between phrases that have received their required determiner (such asthe big house), and those in which the determiner is lacking (such asbig house).
The situation is complicated by the fact that in some contexts a noun phrase may nonetheless be used without a determiner (as inI like big houses); in this case the phrase may be described as having a "null determiner". (Situations in which this is possible depend on the rules of the language in question; for English, seeEnglish articles.)
In the originalX-bar theory, the two respective types of entity are called noun phrase (NP) and N-bar (N, N′). Thus in the sentenceHere is the big house, bothhouse andbig house are N-bars, whilethe big house is a noun phrase. In the sentenceI like big houses, bothhouses andbig houses are N-bars, butbig houses also functions as a noun phrase (in this case without an explicit determiner).
In some modern theories of syntax, however, what are called "noun phrases" above are no longer considered to be headed by a noun, but by the determiner (which may be null), and they are thus calleddeterminer phrases (DP) instead of noun phrases. (In some accounts that take this approach, the constituent lacking the determiner – that called N-bar above – may be referred to as a noun phrase.)
This analysis of noun phrases is widely referred to as theDP hypothesis. It has been the preferred analysis of noun phrases in theminimalist program from its start (since the early 1990s), though the arguments in its favor tend to be theory-internal. By taking the determiner, a function word, to be head over the noun, a structure is established that is analogous to the structure of thefinite clause, with acomplementizer. Apart from the minimalist program, however, the DP hypothesis is rejected by most other modern theories of syntax and grammar, in part because these theories lack the relevant functional categories.[5] Dependency grammars, for instance, almost all assume the traditional NP analysis of noun phrases.
For illustrations of different analyses of noun phrases depending on whether the DP hypothesis is rejected or accepted, see the next section.
The representation of noun phrases usingparse trees depends on the basic approach to syntactic structure adopted. The layered trees of manyphrase structure grammars grant noun phrases an intricate structure that acknowledges a hierarchy of functional projections.Dependency grammars, in contrast, since the basic architecture of dependency places a major limitation on the amount of structure that the theory can assume, produce simple, relatively flat structures for noun phrases.
The representation also depends on whether the noun or the determiner is taken to be the head of the phrase (see the discussion of the DP hypothesis in the previous section).
Below are some possible trees for the two noun phrasesthe big house andbig houses (as in the sentencesHere is the big house andI like big houses).
1.Phrase-structure trees, first using the original X-bar theory, then using the current DP approach:
NP NP | DP DP / \ | | / \ |det N' N' | det NP NP | / \ / \ | | / \ / \the adj N' adj N' | the adj NP adj NP | | | | | | | | | big N big N | big N big N | | | | | house houses | house houses
2.Dependency trees, first using the traditional NP approach, then using the DP approach:
house houses | the (null) / / / | \ \ / / big | house houses the big | / / | big big
The following trees represent a more complex phrase. For simplicity, only dependency-based trees are given.[6]
The first tree is based on the traditional assumption that nouns, rather than determiners, are the heads of phrases.
The head nounpicture has the four dependentsthe,old,of Fred, andthat I found in the drawer. The tree shows how the lighter dependents appear as pre-dependents (preceding their head) and the heavier ones as post-dependents (following their head).
The second tree assumes the DP hypothesis, namely that determiners serve as phrase heads, rather than nouns.
The determinerthe is now depicted as the head of the entire phrase, thus making the phrase a determiner phrase. There is still a noun phrase present (old picture of Fred that I found in the drawer) but this phrase is below the determiner.
An early conception of the noun phrase can be found inFirst work in English byAlexander Murison.[7] In this conception a noun phrase is "the infinitive of the verb" (p. 146), which may appear "in any position in the sentence where a noun may appear". For example,to be just is more important thanto be generous has two underlined infinitives which may be replaced by nouns, as injustice is more important than generosity. This same conception can be found in subsequent grammars, such as 1878'sA Tamil Grammar[8] or 1882'sMurby's English grammar and analysis, where the conception of an X phrase is a phrase that can stand in for X.[9] By 1912, the concept of a noun phrase as being based around a noun can be found, for example, "an adverbial noun phrases is a group of words of which the noun is the base word, that tells the time or place of an action, or how long, how far, or how much".[10] By 1924, the idea of a noun phrase being a noun plus dependents seems to be established. For example, "Note order of words in noun-phrase--noun + adj. + genitive" suggests[11] a more modern conception of noun phrases.
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