The Structure of Noun Phrases
Univerzitet Novi Pazar Odeljenje: Beograd Fakultet humanističkih nauka Odsek: filološki Smer: Engleski jezik i književnost
Predmet: Sintaksa Engleskog jezika
Student: Nikola Vukasović
Beograd, 01.06.2011
1. Introduction
Among the five different types of phrases in English namely noun phrases, verb phrases, adjective phrases, adverb phrases and prepositional phrases, noun phrases are the most common playing various syntactic functions in the sentence and clause structure: subject, object and complement (of various kinds), apposition and attribute. They are used to refer to things that people want to talk about: people, objects, concepts, processes and all kind of entities.
2. Basic Noun Phrases
Structurally speaking, in the first place, basic noun phrases consist of pronouns, numerals or nouns with articles (indefinite, definite or zero) or nouns with other closed-system items that occur before the noun head including pre-determiners (pre-det), determiners (det.) and post-determiners (post-det.). The underlined parts of the following sentences are good examples of basic noun phrases:
| |I |stayed at |home |during |all |the |last few |days | |
| |pronoun | |zero article + noun| |pre-de |+ det |+ post-det |+ noun | |
| |Some people |dislike |‘13’ | | | | | | |
| |det. + noun | |numeral | | | | | | |
2.1 Pronouns and Numerals
Actually, pronouns are a special class of noun. As their names imply, they ‘replace’ nouns or rather whole noun phrases, since they cannot generally occur with determiners. For example, personal pronouns have two sets of case forms: subjective and objective: ‘I’/ ‘me’, ‘we’/ ‘us’, ‘he’/ ‘him’, ‘she’/ ‘her’,
Predmet: Sintaksa Engleskog jezika
Student: Nikola Vukasović
Beograd, 01.06.2011
1. Introduction
Among the five different types of phrases in English namely noun phrases, verb phrases, adjective phrases, adverb phrases and prepositional phrases, noun phrases are the most common playing various syntactic functions in the sentence and clause structure: subject, object and complement (of various kinds), apposition and attribute. They are used to refer to things that people want to talk about: people, objects, concepts, processes and all kind of entities.
2. Basic Noun Phrases
Structurally speaking, in the first place, basic noun phrases consist of pronouns, numerals or nouns with articles (indefinite, definite or zero) or nouns with other closed-system items that occur before the noun head including pre-determiners (pre-det), determiners (det.) and post-determiners (post-det.). The underlined parts of the following sentences are good examples of basic noun phrases:
| |I |stayed at |home |during |all |the |last few |days | |
| |pronoun | |zero article + noun| |pre-de |+ det |+ post-det |+ noun | |
| |Some people |dislike |‘13’ | | | | | | |
| |det. + noun | |numeral | | | | | | |
2.1 Pronouns and Numerals
Actually, pronouns are a special class of noun. As their names imply, they ‘replace’ nouns or rather whole noun phrases, since they cannot generally occur with determiners. For example, personal pronouns have two sets of case forms: subjective and objective: ‘I’/ ‘me’, ‘we’/ ‘us’, ‘he’/ ‘him’, ‘she’/ ‘her’,