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THE NOUN PHRASE (NP)

THE NOUN PHRASE (NP). PHRASES. Phrase is a word or a group of words Form (category) versus syntactic role (function) of phrases Example 1 (same category, different function): The garden looks wonderful. I watered the garden . Example 2 (same function, different categories):

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THE NOUN PHRASE (NP)

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  1. THE NOUN PHRASE (NP)

  2. PHRASES • Phrase is a word or a group of words • Form (category) versus syntactic role (function) of phrases Example 1 (same category, different function): The garden looks wonderful. I watered the garden. Example 2 (same function, different categories): That the garden was beautiful was clear. The beauty of the garden was clear.

  3. NP: MAIN FUNCTIONS • Noun phrase: a noun + zero or more dependents (Huddleson/Pullum p. 13) • Subject: e.g. The girl was standing in the street. • Object e.g. The girl put the bicycle on the ground. • Complement e.g. The girl is an athlete.

  4. NP: STRUCTURAL ELEMENTS • The head • Determiners • Premodifiers • Postmodifiers • Schematic representation of the NP structure: (determiners) (pre-modifiers) noun (post-modifiers) e.g. The two wild horses which were grazing on the front lawn were beautiful.

  5. THE HEAD • The head (cannot be left out): typically a noun or a pronoun e.g. Tom is a sailor. Anybody can see that.

  6. NOUNS • Definition: a grammatically distinct category of words which includes those denoting all kinds of physical objects, such as persons, animals and inanimate objects (Huddleston/Pullum p. 83) • Nouns inflect for number (singular or plural) and case (common/plain case and genitive case)

  7. TYPES OF NOUNS • Proper and common • Common nouns: count and non-count (mass) • Count and non-count nouns: concrete and abstract

  8. Structural types of NPs • Basic e.g. She is Mary Smith. The girl is Mary Smith. • Complex e.g. The pretty girl in the corner is Mary Smith.

  9. “BASIC” NP • “Basic” vs. “complex” NP Examples of basic NPs: Your son made a suggestion. Example of complex NP: They rejected the suggestion which your son made.

  10. PRONOUNS • N.B. Huddleston/Pullum treat pronouns as a subtype of noun (p. 84) • Pronouns cannot take determiners as dependents e.g. *A she was sitting at the table.

  11. PRONOUNS • Central: a) Personal: I, you, he, she, it, we, they (objective case included: e.g. me, him, her, etc) b) reflexive (myself, yourself, himself, herself, itself, ourselves, yourselves, themselves) c) possessive (mine, yours, hers, his, its, ours, theirs)

  12. PRONOUNS • Personal pronouns display person contrast, number contrast, in the 3rd person three-way gender contrast, in the 1st and 3rd person they display contrast in case (subjective, objective) • Reflexive pronouns are always coreferential with a noun or another pronoun (gender, number and person agreement) • Possessive determiners vs. pronouns

  13. PRONOUNS, types (cont) • Relative (do not display person contrast): • wh- items: who, whom, whose, which b) that and zero • Interrogative (do not display person contrast): who, whom, whose, which, what • Demonstrative (do not display person contrast): that/this; these/those • Indefinite (do not display person contrast): some/any/no/every + (thing, body, one); each; all/both; neither/either; none; some; any

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