Noun Phrase

What is a noun phrase?
Before we go any further, let's remind ourselves of what an noun phrase is. My definition is:

A noun phrase is either a pronoun or any group of words that can be replaced by a pronoun. For example, 'they', 'cars', and 'the cars' are noun phrases, but 'car' is just a noun, as you can see in these sentences (in which the noun phrases are all in bold)

Q: Do you like cars?
A: Yes, I like them.
Q: Do you like the cars over there?
A: Yes, they are nice.
Q: Do you like the car I bought last week?
A: Yes, I like it. (Note: 'It' refers to 'the car', not 'car')

If you are a little puzzled at this point, try and think of some further examples of noun phrases using the definition above, and compare your examples with simple nouns.

The structure of noun phrases
As I said, noun phrases can be infinite in length, but they would sound absurd if they got too long. So let's take the following noun phrase as our working model:

• "The very tall education consultant with the roving eye"
  
  The structure of this noun phrase contains three sections:

• Pre-modification
  • The =determiner
  • very =adverb (intensifying)
  • tall = adjective
  • education = pre-modifying noun

• Head noun
  • consultant

• Post-modification
  • with the roving eye = preposition phrase

Of course, each and every part of the noun phrase can be changed, but here is a summary of some fundamental changes in which it could changed:

• A relative clause could replace the preposition phrase. 'The man with the hat' becomes 'The man who is wearing the hat'.

• There could be a string of adjectives (and pre-modifying nouns) instead of just one. Both of these systems have their own structural rules. 'The big brown wooden box.' Or 'The world cup football competition.'

• A numeral or cardinal could be inserted after the determiner. 'Do you remember the time I bumped into you in the park?' can become 'Do you remember the first time I bumped into you in the park?'

• There can be 'embedding' (e.g. 'the roving eye' is also an noun phrase and can be made more complex in the same way as 'the…consultant'!) 'The roving eye which he had cultivated for so many years'.

• Any part of the noun phrase can simply be stripped away (apart from the word 'The' here, as 'consultant' is not an noun phrase in itself ) So 'The very tall education consultant with the roving eye' can become 'The tall education consultant with the roving eye' (here 'very' has been deleted).

To sum up, noun phrases are a very simple ideas in themselves, but they can be extremely complex in how they manifest themselves in actual language.