Major components of the noun-head phrase 1 page

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 693.

A noun phrase in the strict sense consists of a noun as head, either alone or accompanied by determiners (which specify the reference of the noun) and modifiers(which describe or classify the entity denoted by the head noun). The head is in bold in the following examples: a house, the house, many houses, his bristly short hair, her below-the-knee skirt,her goldwatch,the then president, the journey back, the little girlnext door, heavy rain driven by gales etc. The head noun can also be followed by complements, which complete the meaning of the noun and typically take the form of that-clauses or infinitive clauses:

1. The popular assumption that language simply serves to communicate “thoughts” or “ideas” is too simplistic. (acad)

2. He feels awkward about her refusalto show any sign of emotion. (news)

Head nouns followed by complements are typical abstract nouns derived from verbs or adjectives: it is assumed that, she refuses to.

Besides common nouns, noun phrases may be headed by proper nouns 3, pronouns 4-8, and nominalized adjectives 9,10:

3. Dad lives in London. (fict)

4. They said they'd got it. (conv)

5. Anybody can see that. (fict)

6. There is [nothing special] about us. (fict)

7. Do you want [anything else]? (conv)

8. Have you got everything you need]? (fict)

9. Of course he was rich, but[ the rich] were usually mean. (fict)

10. Show me how [ the impossible] can be possible! (fict)

Noun phrases with proper nouns are like noun phrases with common noun heads both with respect to their syntactic roles and as regards some aspects of structure. For instance, The use of determiners with nominalized adjectives and postmodifiers with some pronouns. It should be noted, in passing, that the term “noun phrase” or “NP” is frequently used more widely for any unit which appears in the positions characteristic of noun-headed structures (including clauses). In this broad sense noun phrases may be singled out as nominals. Noun phrases can be very complex, and frequently we find several layers of embedding. In terms of position of the attributive adjunct, noun-phrases may beclassified into: (1) phrases with premodification; and (2) phrases with postmodification. There are four major structural types of premodification in Modern English: general adjective: big pillow, new trousers, officialnegotiations, politicalisolation; ed-participial modifier: restricted area, improvedgrowth, fixedvolume, establishedtradition; ing-participial modifier: flashing lights, growing problem, exhaustingtask; noun: staff room, pencilcase, marketforces, maturationperiod.

In addition, determiners, genitives (or possessive nouns), and numerals serve to specify the reference of noun phrases. A premodifier can usually be re-phrased as a postmodifier. For most adjectival and participial forms, this re-phrasing is straightforward, involving the use of a copular relative clause with a predicative adjective or a related verb phrase: big pillow - a pillow which is big; restricted area- an area which is restricted; established tradition - a tradition which has been established; flashing lights - lights which are flashing. However, the re-phrasing of noun premodifiers is not at all straightforward, because noun + noun sequences can represent many different meaning relations, with no overt indication of which meaning is intended in any given case: plastic trays- trays made from plastic; washing basins - basins used for washing; law report - report about the law; company management - the management of a company sources in the commission an elephant boy - boy who resembles an elephant.

In fact such structures often represent more than one possible meaning relation. For example, elephant boy could also refer to a 'boy who rides on an elephant' or a 'boy who takes care of elephants'. Let's examine these and other meaning relations, having first discussed the dividing line between noun + noun sequences and noun compounds.

It is arguable that certain noun+noun sequences (e.g. law report) are more appropriately treated as noun compounds. However, the division between a noun compound and a sequence of noun modifier+noun head is in actuality a cline.

Stress placement is one criterion for separation: initial stress, as in heart attack (with the major stress on heart) is a characteristic of noun compounds. Stress on the second element, as in glass bottle (with the major stress on bottle), occurs with noun + noun sequences. Orthography is also a strong indicator: at one extreme are compounds written as a single word, such as seaweed and waterbed, while hyphenated words such as milk-yield and steam-hammer have intermediate status. Hyphenated nouns also commonly serve as a premodifier of some other noun: plum-pudding model; annual soil-assessment competition.

At the other extreme are noun + noun sequences written as two words, such as asphalt rooftop and silk necktie, where the first noun functions as a modifier semantically, indicating in this case the substance from which something is made (cf. wooden door where an adjective performs this function). We have adopted the criterion of orthographic separation in identifying noun + noun sequences in this chapter.

Noun + noun sequences contain only content words, with no function words to show the logical relations between the two parts. As a result, noun + noun sequences represent two opposite extremes of communicative priorities. On the one hand, they bring about an extremely dense packaging of referential information; on the other hand, they result in an extreme reliance on implicit meaning, requiring addressees to infer the intended logical relationship between the modifying noun and head noun. In fact, noun + noun sequences are used to express a bewildering array of logical relations, including the following:

• Composition: glass windows - windows made from glass: word classes, protein granules, fact sheets, egg masses, metal seat, plastic beaker, zinc supplement, tomato sauce, satin dress, water supplies;

• Purpose: pencil case - case used for pencils: safety device, search procedure, reference values, worship services, war fund, nursery program, extortion plan, chess board, radio station, brandy bottle, patrol car, Easter eggs, picnic ham, leg room;

• Identity: women doctors - doctors who are women: conventionalist judge, men workers, consultant cardiologist, member country, exam papers, compression process, grant aid;

• Content: algebra text - a text about algebra; probability profile profile showing probability; currency crisis - crisis relating to currency: sex magazines, market report, set theory, sports diary, prescription chart, success rates, credit agreement, intelligence bureau, explosives charges, interest group, speech impediment, color adjectives

• Source: irrigation water - water that comes from irrigation: crop yield, farmyard manure, plant residues, fault blocks, computer printout, Pentagon proposals, whale meat, press release, court messengers;

• Objective Type:discharge water - water that has been discharged: waste disposal, paddy cultivation, root development, case study, water loss, taxi driver, child cruelty, curio sellers, corn farmer, computer users; substitute forms, pilot projects;

• Subjective:child development, eye movement, management buy-out, labor force;

• Time: summer conditions, Sunday school, Christmas raffle;

• Location:corner cupboard, roof slates, Paris conference, home areas, world literature, church square, surface traction, tunnel trains,heart attack, industry sources, administration officials, notice board, job centre, sushi bar, staff room, theme park;

• Institution:insurance companies, ski club, egg industry;

• Partitive:cat legs, rifle butt, family member;

• Specialization: finance director - director who specializes in finance: Education Secretary, gossip columnists, football fans, estate agent, management consultant.

Some sequences can be analyzed as belonging to more than one category. For example, heart attack and thigh injury could be considered as Objective Type 1, in addition to Location Type 1. In addition, there are numerous noun + noun sequences that do not fit neatly into any of the above categories. For example, the expression riot police might be understood as expressing a 'purpose' relationship, but there is an additional component of meaning: these are police used to control riots, not simply police for (creating) riots. Other noun + noun sequences express a range of meaning relations in addition to the above major categories:

In summary, premodifiersdiffer from postmodifiers in two major ways: first, premodifiers are consistently more condensed than postmodifiers, using many fewer words (often a single word) to convey similar information; but second, premodifiers are much less explicit in identifying the meaning relationship that exists between the modifier and head noun. This reliance on implicit meaning relationships is most evident in the case of noun + noun sequences. Nouns are particularly productive as nominal premodifiers. A few premodifying nouns are extremely productive in their ability to combine with multiple head nouns. For example, the noun family as a premodifier is used with a wide range of head nouns representing many different kinds of semantic relations, including: family affair, family argument, family background, family barbecue, family car, family company, family doctor, family entertainment, family friend. Several relate to major institutions, especially government, business, and the media, which are central concerns of news. For example: government + action, agencies, approval, bonds, control, decision; business + administration, cards, dealings, empire, ideas; TV + ads, appearance, cameras, channel, crew, documentary, licence. Plural nouns can also occur as premodifiers, such as carpets retailer, citiescorrespondent, drugsbusiness, tradesunion, residents association. Plural premodifying nouns are more productive in BrE than AmE. This difference is most evident in news. Many of the most productive plural nouns are common in both BrE and AmE: appeals, arms, arts, cattle, communications, customs, personnel, police, sales, savings, securities, sports, rights, systems, women: arms +race, scandal, supplier, treaty; arts +center, editor, festival, society; sales +force, gain, increases, tax; savings +account, banks, deposits, institutions; women +candidates, drivers, ministers, voters.Four other plural nouns are notably productive in BrE but rarely occur in AmE news. For example: drugs +administration, ban, business, problem, trade; games +room, show; jobs +crisis,losses, market; schools +athletics, football, programmes.

Numerous other premodifying plural nouns are moderately productive in BrE news. Some of these are also moderately productive in AmE news: antiques, awards, chemicals, drinks, girls, boys, kids, ladies, points, singles, stores. For example: antiques dealer, chemicals division, drinks menu, points scheme, singles title. However, many of these moderately productive premodifying nouns are rarely, if ever, used in AmE: animals, borders, careers, clothes, complaints, courts, highways, parents, profits, roads, students, talks, wages. For example: animals shelter, borders police, students president, talks proposal, wages council.

There are certain head nouns that commonly occur with plural premodifying nouns. Most often these head nouns denote a person's job or occupation, or a unit or organization connected with a particular type of activity. Head nouns that commonly take a plural pre-modifying noun, referring to a person's job or occupation: adviser, agent, analyst, assistant, clerk, director, engineer, manager, officer. For example: corporate affairs director, operation director, public relations director, technical service director. Head nouns that commonly take a plural premodifying noun, referring to a unit or organization: court, tribunal; board, commission, committee, panel; business, market; department, division, group, section, sector; company, firm, giant. For example: inns and taverns division, building properties division.

Noun phrases are suited to the main purpose of news reportage: to convey a maximum of information as concisely as possible. The high frequency of plural first-elements in noun + noun constructions fits into this general pattern. Complex premodification can accommodate a great deal of information, but with the risk that the compression might create problems of interpretation. The plural ending can serve as a signal to guide the reader in unraveling the structure of a complex noun phrase. It is no coincidence that these structures are especially associated with complex first-elements. Apart from this general consideration, there are five specific factors which seem to influence the retention of the plural form of premodifying nouns. (1)The noun modifier only has a plural form or has a distinctive meaning associated with its plural: arms accord, arts administrator, customs officer, explosives factory. However, some nouns which ordinarily have only a plural form do sometimes lose the plural ending in noun + noun constructions: billiard ball, scissor kick, trouser leg. (2) The noun modifier is itself complex. Where there is a complex first element as noun pre-modifier (rather than a simple first noun), the tendency towards keeping the plural ending increases: At Tesco's you've got fifty feet of baked beansshelves. (conv) Growth-hungry pubs and hotelsgroup Greenalls has wrestled a tiny profits improvement out of a difficult year. (news) Airline boss Richard Branson is on the verge of victory after claiming a "dirty tricks"campaign had been waged against Virgin Atlantic. (news) A bit more will be said of particular features of the metalinguistic and possible-worldsproposals. (acad) The motivation for the use of the plural form in these sequences is that it provides a clear signal of the structure of a complex noun phrase. In addition, some plural nouns, such as affairs, relations, resources, rights, services, skills, standards, and systems, are almost always premodified themselves, and thus they retain the plural form when used in pre-modification: the State Department's consular affairsbureau (news) Labour's chief foreign affairsspokesman (news) the customer relationsdepartment (conv) the Senate Foreign RelationsCommittee (news) (3) The noun modifier or the whole noun phrase is a proper name. Constructions with plural first-elements frequently appear in names: He had his house painted by the FBI ExhibitsSection. (news) Post Office chief executive Bill Cockburn said 15,000 jobs will be lost in the Royal Mail and another 1,200 from its Countersdivision. (news) In some cases, it is not clear whether the second-noun is part of the name or not; thus note that division is not capitalized in the second example. If the name is limited to the first-element and does not include the second-noun, we naturally expect a plural form, as names do not generally change with syntactic context. (4)The noun modifier is quoted speech. A plural first-element can be used as a quotation which is not to be changed. Sometimes we find quotation marks explicitly inserted in the text: Toyota's "terms"scheme sums up what the manufacturers say they are offering. (news) The "input" group would probably come from the junior staff working on existing clerical procedures, the "operations" group would comprise the present machine operators. (acad) In other cases, quotation is indicated by an initial capital; the reference in the following example is to a section headed 'Remarks' in a book on biology: O. bacata is distinguished from O. pachaphylax under the Remarkssection of that species. (acad) (5) The noun phrase is part of a news headline.Plural first-elements are common in newspaper headlines: Armagh car-parts theft <discussing a robbery of car parts> Homes plan <discussing a plan to build houses> Shares probe <discussing a rise in the price of stockmarket shares> Rules change on pets likely <discussing a change in rules>. The use of plural first-elements clearly has to do with the main purpose of headlines: to compress information as succinctly as possible. Headlines are concise, context-bound expressions, whose exact interpretation is dependent upon the following text. They go further than other types of texts in allowing plural first-elements. Thus many noun + noun constructions with plural first-elements are recorded only in headlines.

Noun phrases with multiple premodifiers. Many noun phrases have two-word premodification, and noun phrases with longer sequences of premodifiers also occur: two-word premodification: funny whistling noises quite paleskin settled legalpractice the two mutually perpendiculardirections; three-word premodification: genuine, nonstrategic legal rights; the greatest British theoretical physicist; high sulphur soil areas; four-word premodification: very finely grained alluvial material,

the formerly self-sufficient rural feudal economy naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation a totally covered, uninsulated pig house an unusually thick naturally-coloredcardigan.

The use of multiple premodifiers is certainly very efficient, packing dense informational content into as few words as possible (when compared with the use of postmodifiers or separate clauses). However, the use of multiple premodifiers places a heavy burden on readers and listeners, since the logical relations among constituents must be inferred. In fact, it is rare for all the multiple words in a premodification sequence to modify the head noun directly; rather, premodifier sequences usually have embedded relations, with some words modifying other premodifiers instead of the head noun. In a few cases, the meaning relations among constituents are truly ambiguous. For example, out of context, the noun phrase two more practical principles has two distinct interpretations: [two more] [practical] principles 'two additional principles that are practical'; two [[more] practical] principles 'two principles that are more practical'. Most noun phrases are not ambiguous. However, many different structural/logical relations are possible, and in each case the reader must infer the intended meaning. For example, consider the contrasting relations among constituents in the following noun phrases with three-word premodification: the [[one-time prosperous] [[market] town]] the [[controversial] [offshore investment] portfolios] The number of possible logical relationships increases dramatically with each additional premodifier. Thus, noun phrases with four-word premodification can manifest any of a large number of logical relations among constitutents. Each of the five noun phrases with four-word premodification given below represents a different set of logical relations: naked shameless direct brutal exploitation; very finely grained alluvial material; the formerly self-sufficient rural feudal economy; a totally covered uninsulated pig house; an unusually thick naturally-colored cardigan.

In the first of these examples, all four words in the premodification directly modify the head noun. This type of structuring is very rare, however. As the remaining four examples illustrate, multiple words in the premodification more commonly have complex logical/structural relations among themselves. The order of forms in the premodification is dictated in the first place by the intended meaning. However, the order is also strongly influenced by the structural type of the premodifiers. In general, the following order of premodifiers is preferred: adverb + adjective + color adjective + participle + noun + head noun.

The percentage of occurrences for pairs of premodifiers in the predicted order may be different. For example, when a noun phrase has both an adverb and an adjective, the order adverb + adjective + head noun occurs in over 95% of all instances, while the order adjective + adverb + head noun occurs less than 5% of the time. The pair-wise ordering tendencies are not equally strong. The pattern is most closely followed by adverbs. The pattern is least consistently adhered to by participles in sequence with adjectives or noun premodifiers [LGSWE, 789].

Although there are no absolute rules governing the order of premodifiers, there are many strong tendencies. First, there is an overall tendency for the most noun-like modifiers to occur closest to the head noun. Thus, nouns tend to occur closer to the head than participial modifiers or adjectives. This structural tendency has a semantic correlate: positions closest to the head noun will be filled by modifiers describing attributes that are more integral to the identification, classification, or description of the head noun referent. The following noun phrases illustrate both of these tendencies: adjective + noun + head: mature rice grain, spontaneous mutation rate, thick winter overcoat, true life stories bright canvas bags; color adjective + noun + head: black plastic sheet, black leather jacket, red address book; participial modifier + noun + head: increased disease incidence, an experienced woman; worker, broken bicycle wheels, a limiting diffusion factor, an increasing mortgage burden. In general, participial modifiers tend to occur closer to the head noun than adjectives: adjective + participial modifier + head: considerable fertilizing value, traditional feeding programs, rare shopping trips, ancient stuffed armchair. However, the order participial modifier + adjective + head noun is also relatively common: increased nutritional support, the estimated average magnitude, concerned local authorities, breathtaking natural beauty.

In part this variation is due to the fact that ing-participles can range from being more adjective-like to more noun-like, both in meaning and grammatical characteristics.

The latter will be more prone to occur nearer the head, in the same way as ordinary premodifying nouns (see shopping and feeding in the examples above). In other cases, the observed ordering preferences reflect embedded modification, with forms modifying other premodifiers rather than directly modifying the head noun. For example, adverbs regularly modify a following adjective or participial modifier, resulting in their strong ordering preference: adverb + adjective + head noun: a really hot day, a quite big man, a rather blunt penknife, a thoroughly satisfactory reply; adverb + participial modifier + head noun:these fully grown men, generally accepted principles, an extremely varied and immensely pleasing exhibition.

Some sequences like these, especially adverb + participle, are hyphenated and so qualify as compound adjectives. The order noun + participial modifier + head noun is a special case of embedded modification. As shown above, premodifying nouns generally have a stronger structural and semantic association with the head noun than participial modifiers, and thus they tend to occur closest to the head. However, when a premodifying noun modifies a participial modifier (rather than the head noun), it tends to precede that participial modifier, which then occurs closest to the head noun. In the first two examples below, the noun + participle combination expresses a semantic object + verb relation. Noun + participial modifier + head noun: information processing activities, hypothesis testing process, barrier bred animals. In most cases, this kind of sequence of premodifiers is hyphenated, reflecting the separate constituency of the noun + participle combination, which as a whole premodifies the head noun. In fact, such sequences can be considered as adjectival compounds: English-speaking world, stomach-turning trepidation, self-fulfilling prophecy, class-based categorizations, tree-lined avenues, egg-shaped ball.

Finally, the ordering of color adjectives following other adjectives deserves special mention. Although this ordering does not follow from any of the above general factors, it does represent a strong ordering tendency (occurring over 85 percent of the time): Adjective + color adjective + head noun: dry white grass, clear blue eyes, shabby black clothes. Sequences of words in the premodification can represent a large number of different structural/logical relations, with forms often modifying other premodifiers instead of the head noun. As a result, there is much structural indeterminacy, leading to the possibility of incorrect interpretations. One way to reduce this indeterminacy, while retaining the dense packaging of information found with premodifiers, is to use coordinated premodifiers. This construction makes the logical relations among premodifiers explicit, with each one directly modifying the head noun: black and white cat, wise and attractive man etc.

The syntactic roles of noun phrases. Noun phrases may have a wide range of syntactic roles. The most typical nominal roles are: Subject: Two women had come in and she asked them to wait, giving them magazines to look at. ( FICT) Direct object:The pilot saw a fieldahead, (FICT) Indirect object:At primary school he had been allowed to make her a birthday card. (FICT)