Determiners, premodifiers, the head, postmodifiers. A noun phrase consists of a noun or pronoun, which is called the head, and any dependent words before or after the head. This focusses on complex noun phrases, but includes information about prepositional phrases as they often live in larger noun phrases. Chapter 6 phrases, clauses, and sentences chapter checkin recognizing phrases identifying independent and subordinate clauses understanding sentences clauses and phrases are the building blocks of sentences. That means it can be the subject or object of the verb. Effectively using complex noun phrases makes your writing more academic and precise. Pdf the complex noun phrase in advanced students writing. The wicked man loves getting poor people into trouble. Noun phrases allow writers to include a great deal of information without using too many words. A phrase is a group of words that act as a part of speech but cannot stand alone as. Articles written by native speakers generally contain a lot of complex noun phrases and so studying these phrases will help you with reading comprehension as well.
Notice that grammatically, we use a complex noun phrase like a single noun, so we could replace the whole complex noun phrase with it. In previous studies, i have argued that same performs the role of postdeterminer supplementing the identifiability of the noun phrase referent, which is expressed by the or the demonstrative, in. The group may have modifying words before the noun and modifying prepositional phrases or restrictive, defining relative. A noun phrase is a unified group of words that has a noun as a head word. Deconstructing the noun phrase into its functional components. Identify the noun phrases in the following sentences. Complex noun phrases are used by all good writers of english because of their efficiency in providing detail. Noun phrases english grammar today cambridge dictionary. Pdf generating complex noun phrases michael elhadad. Complex definition, composed of many interconnected parts. Chapter 3 noun phrases now that we have established something about the structure of verb phrases, lets move on to noun phrases nps. Dependent words give specific information about the head. The complex noun phrase is sales of cars or the number of cars sold by the company.