Look up noun phrase in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

In grammatical theory, a noun phrase (abbreviated NP) is a phrase whose head is a noun or a pronoun, optionally accompanied by a set of modifiers.^[1] The modifiers may be: Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Wiktionary (a portmanteau of wiki and dictionary) is a multilingual, Web-based project to create a free content dictionary, available in over 150 languages. ... For the rules of English grammar, see English grammar and Disputes in English grammar. ... Look up phrase in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... In linguistics, the head is the morpheme that determines the category of a compound or the word that determines the syntactic type of the phrase of which it is a member. ... In linguistics, a noun or noun substantive is a lexical category which is defined in terms of how its members combine with other grammatical kinds of expressions. ... In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a pro-form that substitutes for a noun or noun phrase with or without a determiner, such as you and they in English. ...

• determiners: articles (the, a), demonstratives (this, that), numerals (two, five, etc.), possessives (my, their, etc.), and quantifiers (some, many, etc.); in English, determiners are usually placed before the noun;
• adjectives (the red ball); or
• complements, in the form of a prepositional phrase (such as: the student of physics ), or a relative clause (the claim that the earth is round );
• modifiers premodifiers if placed before the noun and usually either as nouns (the university student )or adjectives (the beautiful lady )and postmodifiers if placed after the noun; postmodifiers may be either prepositional phrase (such as:the manwith long hair)or relative clause (the house where i live )

NB:the difference between modifiers and comlements is that complements complete the meaning of the noun.That is,they are necessary,whereas modifiers are optional because they just give additionnal information about the noun. Determiners are words which quantify or identify nouns. ... An article is a word that combines with a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun. ... Demonstratives are words that indicate which objects a sentence is referring to. ... A numeral is a symbol or group of symbols that represents a number. ... Headline text hjvhwhatsgm,Possessive adjectives modify nouns. ... In language and logic, quantification is a construct that specifies the extent of validity of a predicate, that is the extent to which a predicate holds over a range of things. ... In grammar, an adjective is a word whose main syntactic role is to modify a noun or pronoun (called the adjectives subject), giving more information about what the noun or pronoun refers to. ... A complement is a phrase that fits a particular slot in the syntax requirements of a parent phrase. ... A prepositional phrase (PP) is a linguistic term for a phrase whose head is a preposition. ... A relative clause is a subordinate clause that modifies a noun. ... The word modifier applies to either the adjective or the adverb in a sentence. ... A prepositional phrase (PP) is a linguistic term for a phrase whose head is a preposition. ... A relative clause is a subordinate clause that modifies a noun. ...

In English, for some purposes, noun phrases can be treated as single grammatical units. This is most noticeable in the syntax of the English genitive case. In a phrase such as The king of Sparta's wife, the possessive clitic "-'s" is not added to the king who actually has the wife, but instead to Sparta, as the end of the whole phrase. The clitic modifies the entire phrase the king of Sparta. The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... For other uses, see Syntax (disambiguation). ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... In linguistics, a clitic is an element that has some of the properties of an independent word and some more typical of a bound morpheme. ...

Grammatical function

A noun phrase can play the role of a verb argument (such as the subject, the object) or the role of the predicate. A prototypical case is the case when the noun phrase cooccurs with the copula and another noun phrase. The possibility for a noun phrase to play the role of subject and predicate leads to the constructions of syllogisms. A syntactic verb argument, in linguistics, is a phrase that appears in a relationship with the verb in a proposition. ... According to a tradition that can be tracked back to Aristotle, every sentence can be divided in two main constituents, one being the subject of the sentence and the other being its predicate. ... An object in grammar is a sentence element and part of the sentence predicate. ... In traditional grammar, a predicate is one of the two main parts of a sentence (the other being the subject, which the predicate modifies). ... For other uses, see Copula (disambiguation). ... According to a tradition that can be tracked back to Aristotle, every sentence can be divided in two main constituents, one being the subject of the sentence and the other being its predicate. ... A syllogism (Greek: — conclusion, inference), usually the categorical syllogism, is a kind of logical argument in which one proposition (the conclusion) is inferred from two others (the premises) of a certain form. ...

References

• Giorgi, A. - Longobardi, G. (1991) The syntax of noun phrases, Cambridge University Press, England.
• Moro, A. (1997) The raising of predicates. Predicative noun phrases and the theory of clause structure, Cambridge University Press, England.

Notes

1. ^ "Noun Phrases - Glossary Definition - UsingEnglish.com" (with examples), UsingEnglish.com, 21 August 2006, UsingEnglish.com/glossary webpage: UEng-noun-phrase.