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NOUNS
Properties of nouns
Number: Singular/ Plural Gender Case
Premodification in NP
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NP is an endocentric phrase with a noun as a headword. It can consist of: only headword, determiners and headword; determiners, premodifiers and headword; determiner, premodifier, headword and postmodifier
The Head has the most important semantic information in the phrase. phrase. The word class of the head determines the word class of the entire entire phrase. Heads are normally obligatory. The head has the same distribution as the entire phrase, head plus plus dependents.
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Heads select the dependent phrases of a particular word class; these these phrases are sometimes obligatory. Heads often require their dependents to agree with some or all of of the grammatical features of the head (agreement). Heads may require their dependent NPs to occur in particular grammatical grammatical case.
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Determiners are paired only with nouns and do not occur with other other word classes. They do not have the same distribution as adjectives; they always always occur at the beginning of a noun phrase in English. It is often argued in modern linguistics that the class of determiners determiners includes pronouns, e.g. we or she. Pronouns do not occur with determiners but can replace them, e.g. e.g.
We/us linguists aren arent stupid. (These linguists... The/a cannot occur alone, but some other determiners can, e.g.: These/those_________ are good. Ill give some________ to Lee. Ill give this/that __________ away.
Therefore, some linguists propose that noun phrases are in fact determiner phrases.
Some units can function as predeterminers, before articles and demonstratives, called quantifiers all, half and both. As such they do not occur with quantitative determiners like every, each, some, any, no. Second type of predeterminers includes: double, twice, three times etc., e.g. double their salaries; twice his strength, three times this amount etc.
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Some structures follow determiners but precede adjectives in the premodification structure. They include numerals and quantifiers and they are called postdeterminers, e.g. the two blue cars belong to me; the first three planes were American. Next, last, another, additional can also function as postdeterminers as they resemble the numerals numerals grammatically and semantically.
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Premodifiers:
Units which can function as premodifiers: Adjective (Phrase): I wrote a nice letter. Participles: His written resignation was on the table. 's genitive: I visited my mother's friend. Noun (Phrase): He completed his school tasks. Adverbs(Adverbials): He visited some farfar-away countries. Prepositional Phrase (in set expressions): upup-toto-thethe-minute report Infinitive clause: He is a wellwell-toto-do banker. Sentence: He asked I don't know how many people.
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Multiple premodification:
with single head: his brilliant book; his last book > his last brilliant book. with multiple head: the new tables and chairs with modified modifier: the small office furniture.
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Discontinuous modification
interruption of a noun phrase by other items of the clause structure structure discontinuous
modification
e.g. You'll meet a man tomorrow carrying a heavy parcel.
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subject is normally a noun phrase or a clause with nominal function; function; occurs before the verb phrase in declarative clauses and immediately immediately after the operator in questions; has a number and person concord, where applicable, with the verb phrase.
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e) locative; denoting place, e.g. The room is big. f) temporal; temporal; denoting time, e.g. The time is out. g) eventive; eventive; denoting arrangements or activities, usually in intensive complementation complementation with time adverbials, e.g. Her birthday party was great. h) emptyempty-it; it; a subject may lack semantic content and consist only of the meaningless meaningless word it, especially with climatic predications, e.g. It is important for her to come on time.
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Subjects are defined by their syntactic properties, not by their semantic roles.
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The second test for subjecthood in English involves casecase-marking. Pronouns have a special form in English which is restricted to the subject subject position. This test is appropriate for the subject of a verb (or auxiliary) that is finite, such as loves (present tense) or tasted (past tense), tense), e.g. She (not *her) loves apples.
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Case means that the form of a noun phrase or a pronoun changes according according to its grammatical relation. relation.
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The summer will be very hot this year. Yesterday Yesterdays news really upset me. The regeneration of runrun-down inner city area sometimes leads to a great demand for housing. Winter mornings often turn out to be fine and sunny.
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(g) his most recent, very provocative novel (h) your very much deserved success in your career (i) a very long and boring modern novel (j) the weather in Vancouver on any given day in winter (k) the high wooden fence around our yard (l) a serious conversation with Sharon about her problems
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(m) a loaf of nice fresh brown bread (n) the eighteight-yearyear-old boy who attempted to rob a sweet shop. shop. (o) that attractive young woman in the blue dress sitting over there in the corner