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THE STRUCTURE OF NOUN PHRASES

Article
Quantifiers
Demonstrative Noun Prepositional phrase Prepositional phrase
All, both, half (seven, ninety, little, Adjective
Possessive Pronoun Clauses: Nonfinite Clauses: Nonfinite
(Quantifier-of) few, much, many,…) Noun
(Others) Adjective Finite Finite
Ordinals

PREDETERMINER DETERMINER POSTDETERMINER HEAD


PREMODIFIER COMPLEMENT POSTMODIFIER
DETERMINER COMBINATION

MORE SPECIFICALLY:
DEFINITE NOUN PHRASES
Definite article
(Quantifier-of) Possessive NP (Quantifier) NOUN
Demonstrative
DETERMINER COMBINATION

INDEFINITE NOUN PHRASES


(Quantifier)
Noun (of Possessive NP)
Indefinite article

MODIFIER: a word or group of words that gives additional information about another word. Modifiers can be adjectives (such as fierce in the fierce
dog), adverbs (such as loudly in The dog barked loudly), or phrases (such as with a short tail in the dog with a short tail).
Longman English Dictionary

A PREMODIFIER comes before the head word it modifies. A POSTMODIFIER follows it.

What´s the structure of a noun phrase? (def and indefinite)


What determiners do you know?
What about modifiers? What categories can function as postmodifiers?
What happens if you have both a complement and a modifier? Which comes first?

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