David this year

Queensland judgment day

They water rat

What structure do noun phrases have in English? Based on the noun phrases listed above (there are more complicated ones), a noun phrase seems to consist of a determinative followed by a noun, or a determinative followed by an adjective followed by a noun, or just a noun, or an adjective followed by a noun.

We can represent these structures using what are called phrase structure rules, like:

NP → Detv N

This rule says that a noun phrase (NP) “goes to” (arrow) a determinative (Detv) followed by a noun (N). We could thus separately list the rules that we would need to cover all the structures:

NP → Detv N

NP → Detv Adj N

NP → N

NP → Adj N

In fact, there’s a simpler way to write all of these different forms with a single rule. There is a convention in writing phrase structure rules so that if something is in parentheses, it can either be there or not. So we could rewrite our rules just as:

NP → (Detv) (Adj) N

This rule says that a noun phrase consists of a noun, possibly preceded by a determinative.

The preposition by and the NP following it in the sentence also form a constituent in this sentence (by a passing cab); it is called a prepositional phrase [PP].

Some examples of the PP are:

to the shops in a weak

after the party next to the bus stop

into the large kitchen nearby

near those very large buildings under the tree

A preposition doesn’t have to be followed by anything, so we can have a preposition phrase that consists of just a preposition (John went outside ) . So a preposition phrase consists at least of a preposition, possibly with a noun phrase following it. We could write this as:

PP → P (NP)

The verb plus the NP following it form a unit as well, as shown by a sentence like A cab rolled out of blackness, and into blackness disappeared[59]. The constituent composed of a verb plus following NP is called a verb phrase [VP]. As with NPs, VPs can be quite complex. In our discourse, we have various different verb phrase structures, like the ones we can see in the following sentences.He stood quite still, listening with all his might. [59, p.34]He ran forward and back, felt his heart clutched by a sickening fear.[59, p.23]He had just put together a neat break of twenty-three,--failing at a 'Jenny.'[59, p.23]The murky blackness of the fog was but faintly broken by the lamps of the 'Red Pottle,' and no shape of mortal man or thing was in sight.[59, p.35]George turned on him, looking really formidable, with a sort of savage gloom on his big face.[59, p.65]Bumley Tomm was rather a poor thing, though he had been so successful.[59, p.53]The expression he had used was 'a free hand in the terms of this correspondence.'[59, p.55]

So our verb phrase can have just a verb, or a verb followed by a PP, or a verb followed by an NP, or a verb followed by an NP and a PP, or a verb followed by an NP and more than one PP, or a verb followed by two NPs or a verb followed by two NPs and a PP, or a verb followed by two NPs and more than one PP.

While these structures are more and more complex, we can actually write them very simply with a single phrase structure rule:

VP → V (NP) (NP) (PP)*

In this rule we have explicitly written two separate NPs, rather than (NP)*, because (in general) there is a maximum of two NPs in a VP, whereas it is possible to continue adding as many PPs as you like.

There are two more types of phrases, that also need to be paid attention to: adjective phrases and adverb phrases.

Adjective phrases. As well as noun phrases, there are also adjective phrases.

Why do we need them ? Well, consider the following sentences.

He was a very talented architect [59]

As an architect he was very talented

In these two sentences, the words very happy form a phrase. So we have an adjective phrase. Just as with nouns and noun phrases, we will say that whenever an adjective appears it is inside an adjective phrase, although it may be the only element in the adjective phrase. So we can write phrase structure rules showing the structure of simple adjective phrases:

AdjP → (Adv) Adj

Now that we’ve seen adjective phrases, we need to go back and modify our rule for noun phrases. We said that an NP → (Detv) (Adj) N, but there are several problems with that rule. Firstly, we’ve said wherever an adjective appears it’s inside an AdjP, so our rule should have an Adj P in it, not just an adjective. In fact, we need an AdjP because NPs can be more complicated than the ones we’ve seen so far. We can say things in English like: a very talented architect.

Here, clearly, we have an AdjP very talented inside the NP. But we also need to expand our NP rule further, because rather than just a single AdjP, an NP can contain several AdjPs: the rather famous very talented architect.So we must change our rule for an NP to:

NP → (Detv) (AdjP)* N

The asterisk is used to indicate that there can be more than one of a constituent.