Back Nominalphrase ALS Rannfrazenn anv Breton Sintagma nominal Catalan Nominalphrase German Noma vortgrupo Esperanto Sintagma nominal Spanish Nimisõnafraas Estonian Izen-sintagma Basque گروه اسمی Persian Sintagma nominal Galician
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A noun phrase – or NP or nominal (phrase) – is a phrase that usually has a noun or pronoun as its head, and has the same grammatical functions as a noun.[1] 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 complements of prepositions. One NP can be embedded inside another NP; for instance, some of his constituents has as a constituent the shorter NP his constituents.[2]
In some theories of grammar, noun phrases with determiners are analyzed as having the determiner as the head of the phrase, see for instance Chomsky (1995) and Hudson (1990) [citation needed].
- ^ For definitions and discussions of the noun (nominal) phrase that point to the presence of a head noun, see for instance Crystal (1997:264), Lockwood (2002:3), and Radford (2004: 14, 348).
- ^ A noun phrase can even serve as the head of another noun phrase; see Huddleston and Pullum (2002:331) for examples, including the NP those copies as head of the NP both those copies.