Level: intermediate
Often a noun phrase is just a noun or a pronoun:
People like to have money.
I am tired.
Premodifiers
But noun phrases can also include:
- determiners: Those houses are very expensive.
- quantifiers: I've lived in a lot of houses.
- numbers: My brother owns two houses.
- adjectives: I love old houses.
These parts of the noun phrase are called premodifiers because they go before the noun.
We use premodifiers in this order:
| determiners and quantifiers | > | numbers | > | adjectives + NOUNS |
For example:
| Determiners and quantifiers | Numbers | Adjectives | NOUNS |
| The | six | children | |
| Our | young | children | |
| Six | young | children | |
| These | six | young | children |
| Some | young | children | |
| All those | six | young | children |
| Their many | young | children |
- Premodifiers 1
- Premodifiers 2
- Premodifiers 3
Postmodifiers
Other parts of a noun phrase go after the noun. These are called postmodifiers.
Postmodifiers can be:
- prepositional phrases:
a man with a gun
the boy in the blue shirt
the house on the corner
the man standing over there
the boy talking to Angela
the man we met yesterday
the house that Jack built
the woman who discovered radium
an eight-year-old boy who attempted to rob a sweet shop
- that clauses. These are very common after nouns like idea, fact, belief, suggestion:
He's still very fit, in spite of the fact that he's over eighty.
She got the idea that people didn't like her.
There was a suggestion that the children should be sent home.
I've got no decent shoes to wear.
These are very common after indefinite pronouns and adverbs:
You should take something to read.
I need somewhere to sleep.
There may be more than one postmodifier:
an eight-year old boy with a gun who tried to rob a sweet shop
that girl over there in a green dress drinking a Coke
- Postmodifiers
- Premodifiers and postmodifiers
Good afternooon, can I ask a question:
I've read that noun clauses always take a singular verb is that true? For example:
The thing that annoys me is her attitude = What annoys me is her attitude
but if the sentence is:
The things that annoy me are her attitude and manners .... is that:
1) What annoy me are her attitude and manners
2) What annoys me are her attitude and manners
or
3) What annoys me is her attitude and manners
?
Hope you can help!
Thank you
Hello Urizen99,
You could probably hear people use any of these sentences. If I had to choose one of them for something I was writing, I'd use 2. The 'what' seems singular to me, even if it actually refers to several things, which is why I'd use the singular verb 'annoys'. 'attitude and manners' is clearly plural, and so 'are' seems best, though people often use a singular verb here, especially in informal speaking.
The strangest option is 1 because of what I said earlier about 'what' feeling singular. I'm not sure I'd go so far as to call it incorrect, but I would avoid that usage.
Hope this helps.
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
How about if i say "government to investigate power outage during snowstorm".
"Government to investigate " is it noun phrase? And what does it mean here especially that it came in the beginning of the sentence?
Hello Bashbosh,
This looks like a news headline or title of a news article. It's very common to omit words from headlines and titles. The full form would be something like 'The government is going to investigate the power outage that occurred during the snowstorm'.
If this comes from some other context, then please let us know more about it and we can try to help you make sense of it.
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello haovivu128,
Those sentences are all grammatically correct. Well done!
I think we'd probably say 'sad fact' or 'unfortunate fact' rather than 'bad fact', and I'm not sure 'sold out' is the correct choice of verb, but this does not affect the grammar.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hi Md.Habibullah,
1. It's a to-infinitive verb phrase, including an object (a public execution).
2. No, I don't think this is a complex sentence, although it looks a bit like one. A complex sentence has one independent clause, but Samuel thought isn't a independent clause, since thought is used here transitively, and isn't complete without an object. So, I think it's actually a simple sentence, with a subject-verb-object structure. The subject is Samuel, the verb is thought, and the object is (that) this was a great improvement ('that' is optionally omitted in your original sentence).
3. Yes, the last sentence is mostly correct - but it needs to have a comma after improvement.
I hope that helps :)
Jonathan
The LearnEnglish Team
Hi Md.Habibullah,
Actually, after and following are prepositions in these sentences, because they introduce a phrase without a verb (the death of the king in 1910). As there's no verb, this is a prepositional phrase, not a clause. That's why these are simple sentences.
After (but not following) can be a conjunction too. In this case, it needs to introduce a clause, not just a phrase, e.g.:
The underlined part is a clause because it contains a subject and verb (the king died), and this is a complex sentence.
I hope that helps.
Jonathan
The LearnEnglish Team
Hi haovivu128,
Sentences 1, 5 and 7 are correct :)
In sentence 2, the noun phrase is correctly formed, but it's a bit unclear whether you mean those sneakers (i.e., one pair), or those two pairs of sneakers.
In sentence 3, just say novels. 'Novel' is a noun which already includes the meaning of 'book'.
Sentence 4 is correct. But it’s more common to say the last three tickets. According to the Cambridge Dictionary, last usually appears before the number (the same is true for first and next).
In sentence 6, it should be absent from school. Apart from that, it's correct :)
In sentence 8, the word news should be uncountable (even though it looks like a plural countable noun), so if you want to use few, we need to say pieces of news to make it countable. Apart from that, there are a couple of ways to make this sentence, with slightly different meanings.
Premodification is quite a complex area of grammar. The information on this page above is general introduction. For more explanation, you might like to have a look at these pages on determiners and premodifers from the Cambridge Dictionary. I hope they help!
Jonathan
The LearnEnglish Team
Hi Nevı,
It's a good question! Apart from a few rules (e.g. partitive phrases such as a piece of paper and a bottle of water use 'of'), mostly it's a question of which forms are established and commonly used.
Sometimes, both forms are possible but their meanings differ. For example, a bottle of water refers to a bottle with water in it, or that quantity of water, while a water bottle refers to a bottle which is used for holding water (it may or may not have water in it at the moment). But, other forms have no difference in meaning (e.g. a government website = a website of the government).
In your example, noise collocates with certain other nouns, e.g. background noise, engine noise, aircraft noise, wind noise, so traffic noise is fine. But, I also think the noise of (the) traffic is fine as an answer.
If you use the 'of' phrase, note that you may need to add an article before the second noun, e.g. the garden of the hotel.
I hope that helps.
Jonathan
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Mussorie,
1. In this sentence for is not a preposition but a conjunction with a similar meaning to because or as.
2. Yes. No matter introduces a subordinate clause headed by a question word - in this case, 'how'.
3. 'Pushing' here forms a participle clause with the meaning something...which is pushing right back.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello again Mussorie,
These are questions about linguistic analysis, terminology and sentence parsing, which are aspects of linguistics rather than language learning. Our site is not a linguistics site, and so these questions fall outside of our focus.
For answers to questions of this type you might try the English Language and Usage section of StackExchange. The community there is helpful:
https://english.stackexchange.com/
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Mussorie,
I'm afraid that sentence is not correct. Maybe 'He must contemplate his abilities, which are why he failed the test'?
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Test
Hello Mussorie,
That's a relative clause referring to 'abilities'.
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Mussorie,
First of all, my apologies for not understanding that you were asking for a reply. Punctuation is important for communicating meaning, perhaps especially when speaking with teachers!
Yes, you could call that an adjective clause.
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hi Akram Goenka,
Adverbial phrases are only considered part of the noun phrase when they modify it in some way. In your example, 'last week' modifies the verb, not the noun, and so is not part of the noun phrase.
This is a question which deals with the subject of linguistics rather than langauge learning, and so is outside of our focus on this site. I think you'll find other sites better for this kind of analysis. For example, Stack Exchange has a good linguistics section:
https://english.stackexchange.com/
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Mussorie,
Both sentences are grammatical. In the first sentence confused appears to be an adjective, though it could be part of a passive construction; it's not possible to tell without knowing the context.
In the second sentence confusing also appears to be an adjective, though it could be part of a present perfect continuous verb phrase. Again, without knowing the context we can't be sure.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Mussorie,
In sentence 1, the tests were given. You do not know how.
In sentence 2, it is not clear if the tests were actually given. The speaker is talking about a hypothetical situation; they do not know if the tests were given.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Mussorie,
I'm afraid that neither of those sentences is grammatically correct. In general, we don't use the present simple ('is') or the present perfect ('has been') with a time expression such as 'last year', which refers to a time period that has no connection with the present.
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Mussorie,
You can read about the difference between the present simple and the present perfect on our Present simple and Present perfect pages. If you have any further questions about this, please ask us on one of those pages.
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Risa warysha,
The plural form is an error, as you say. The correct form would be 'a two-week long voyage'.
I don't know the source of the sentence, but it may be simply a typo, or it may be an error caused by inaccurate language.
Peter
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Misbahuddinktk,
I'm afraid we can't explain why grammar books say what they do, and in any case it's not clear to me what words the book identified as an adjective phrase and what words it identified as a noun phrase.
We're happy to try to help you understand the grammar here, but we need to understand what precisely the question is.
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello abalHasan,
The first phrase is a subject of a passive verb and the second one is the subject complement of the link verb 'look'.
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello Yigido,
I'd need to see the full context to be sure, but it sounds as if someone is saying you can do that, but it's not a good idea because it's dangerous. Here, the word 'walk' seems to be an imperative verb.
The imperative is the form used to give commands or make requests and is sometimes used on signs to warn people (as appears to be the case here).
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team
Hello knownman,
It depends on what you mean. In this case, 'her' probably refers to the subject 'she', but it could refer to some other woman or girl. But you could use 'it' to refer to some object or behaviour, or 'them' to refer to another group of people or objects.
The postmodifier phrase beginning with 'that' doesn't have to refer back to the subject -- it can refer to anything or anyone.
All the best,
Kirk
The LearnEnglish Team