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
Famous quotes containing the words noun and/or phrase:
“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)
““Five o’clock tea” is a phrase our “rude forefathers,” even of the last generation, would scarcely have understood, so completely is it a thing of to-day; and yet, so rapid is the March of the Mind, it has already risen into a national institution, and rivals, in its universal application to all ranks and ages, and as a specific for “all the ills that flesh is heir to,” the glorious Magna Charta.”
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)