Activity 8.3: The Structure of Noun Phrases

Exercise A: Subjects are one syntactic role that nouns can take. In order to see the structure of nouns, first draw a line to separate the subject from the predicate in each sentence. Then study each subject carefully to see what it includes. Finally, figure out what order the parts of the subject follow

Click between the subject and predicate to separate the Noun Phrase from the Verb Phrase. Click above each segment--word or phrase--in the NP and fill in appropriate label for each word in the phrase. Click on the Check button to see correct answers.

NP Question 2: 

What elements can a noun phrase include and what order are they in? Reflect on this, fill in the text box below with your answer, then click on the "Usual Answer" button.

 In sentences 5, 6, and 6 above, there are two nouns in the subject NP, which is the head noun and how do you know? Reflect on this, fill in the text box below with your answer, then click on the "Usual Answer" button.

Exercise B: Click to insert a line to separate the subject from the predicate in each sentence (incorrect line will be red, correct line will be blue) and study each subject carefully to see what it includes. How do these examples suggest we should revise the noun phrase structure rule that we just created?

Are fifty and beautiful both adjectives? Are three and blind both adjectives? Are ten and talkative both adjectives? Can they switch places?  Reflect on this, fill in the text box below with your answer, then click on the "Usual Answer" button.

Based on these examples, what is the revised rule for noun structure?

Noun Phrase Structure

The structure of a noun phrase is fairly important, and is really quite distinct and a set form, and as should be clear by now from the exercises above, nouns do very often join with other words to form a larger phrase that functions in the syntactic roles of subject, direct object, indirect object, and so on. Since nouns can play so many different roles in a sentence (seven), it becomes very important for understanding to know where one noun phrase stops and the next begins.

To review, a phrase is a group of words consisting of a head and its modifiers. A phrase is named after its head, so a noun phrase would have a noun as the head and all the other words in the phrase work to modify that noun in some way. As the examples above have shown, a head noun can be preceded by a determiner, a quantifier phrase, and an adjective phrase. A head noun can be followed by a prepositional phrase. This structure represents any noun phrase playing any syntactic role in any sentence.

Activity 8.4: Noun Phrases and Syntactic Roles

Using your knowledge about sentence structure and noun phrase structure, find the complete noun phrase that plays the particular syntactic role asked for in each of the following sentences.

Exercise 8.4: Click only on each word of the complete noun. Click on the "?" button to check your answer.

This exercise should make it clearer that noun phrases can be long, no matter which role they serve in a sentence. Their length can be an obstacle for non-native speakers and native speakers alike when presented with these kinds of sentences in reading. Comprehension questions may be used to learn if students are seeing the relationships between the position in the sentence and the syntactic and semantic roles they fulfill.

For students who have difficulty, focused exercises similar to the one above (but at the proper language proficiency level), may help them to see the beginnings and ends of noun phrases playing different roles in sentences.

Page 4