Noun phrases

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:

For example:

Premodifiers 1

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Premodifiers 2

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Premodifiers 3

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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

• –ing phrases :

the man standing over there
the boy talking to Angela

• relative clauses :

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.

• to infinitives :

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

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Premodifiers and postmodifiers

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