complete Reference: The Noun Phrase

Full References
The discussion of the choice of language noted that a single concept is often signaled by a variety of words, each
word possessing slightly different connotations. We can indicate that people are less than content by saying they
are angry, irate  , incensed , perturbed  , upset  , furious , or mad.  The broader our vocabulary, the greater our options
and the more precisely we can convey our meaning.

And yet no matter how wide our vocabulary may be, a single word is often insufficient. A single word, by itself, can
appear somewhat vague, no matter how specific that word might seem. The term “dog” may be specific compared to
“mammal,” but it is general compared to “collie.” And “collie” is general compared to “Lassie.” Then again, many
different dogs played Lassie!

Suppose you want to indicate a female person across the room. If you don’t know her name, what do you
say?   

That girl.

If there were more than one, this alone would be too general. It lacks specificity.

                                   The girl in the blue Hawaiian shirt…

                                The taller of the two cheerleaders by the water cooler…

When a single term will not supply the reference we need, we add terms to focus or limit a more general
term. Instead of referring to drugs in a discussion, we might refer to hallucinogenic drugs. We might
distinguish between hard drugsand prescription drugs . In so doing we modify the notion of a drug to
describe the specific one, or ones, we have in mind. (Then again, at times we are forced to use many words
when we cannot recall the one that will really do, as when we refer to that funny device doctors pump up on
your arm to measure blood pressure instead of asphygmomanometer ).

This section examines how we construct full and specific references using noun phrases. An ability to recognize
complete noun phrases is essential to reading ideas rather than words. A knowledge of the various possibilities for
constructing extended noun pharses is essential for crafting precise and specific references.

Nouns

To begin our discussion, we must first establish the notion of a noun.   

English teachers commonly identify nouns by their content.    They describe nouns as words that "identify
people, places, or things," as well as feelings or ideas—words like salesman , farm , balcony , bicycle ,
and trust.    If you can usually put the word a or the before a word, it’s a noun. If you can make the word
plural or singular, it's a noun. But don't worry...all that is needed at the moment is a sense of what a noun
might be.   

Noun Pre-Modifiers

What if a single noun isn't specific enough for our purposes?      How then do we modify a noun to construct
a more specific reference?    

English places modifiers before a noun.    Here we indicate the noun that is at the center of a noun phrase by
an asterisk (*) and modifiers by arrows pointed toward the noun they modify.

white   house
        *

large     man

        *

Modification  is a somewhat technical term in linguistics. It does not mean to change something, as when we
"modify" a car or dress. To modify means to limit, restrict, characterize, or otherwise focus meaning. We
use this meaning throughout the discussion here.

Modifiers before  the noun are called pre-modifiers.    All of the pre-modifiers that are present and the noun together
form a noun phrase .

NOUN      PHRASE

pre-modifiers noun

      *

By contrast, languages such as Spanish and French place modifiers after the noun

casa blanca         white house 

*    

homme grand         big man 

*       

The most common pre-modifiers are adjectives, such as red , long , hot . Other types of words often play
this same role.    Not only articles

the        water

         *

but also verbs

running       water

        *

and possessive pronouns

her       thoughts

            *

Premodifiers limit the reference in a wide variety of ways.   

                          Order:                            second, last

                          Location:                        kitchen, westerly

                          Source or Origin:            Canadian
                          Color:                            red, dark

                          Smell:                             acrid, scented

                          Material:                         metal, oak

                          Size:                               large, 5-inch

                          Weight:                          heavy

                          Luster:                            shiny, dull

A number of pre-modifiers must appear first if they appear at all.

                          Specification:                              a, the, every

                          Designation:                                this, that, those, these

                          Ownership/Possessive:               my, your, its, their, Mary’s

              Number:                                     one, many

These words typically signal the beginning of a noun phrase.   

Some noun phrases are short:

                                      the table

                                            *            

Some are long:

the second shiny red Swedish touring sedan

      *

a large smelly red Irish setter

      *

my carved green Venetian glass salad bowl

      *

the three old Democratic legislators

         *

Notice that each construction would function as a single unit within a sentence.    (We offer a test for this
below,)

The noun phrase is the most common unit in English sentences.    That prevalence can be seen in the
following excerpt from an example from the section on the choice of language:
The stock market’s summer swoon turned into a dramatic rout 
Monday as the Dow Jones industrial average plunged.

The stock market’s summer swoon turned into   a dramatic rout   

  *                                  *

Monday as the Dow Jones industrial average plunged. 

     *                      *

To appreciate the rich possibilities of pre-modifiers, you have only to see how much you can expand a
premodifier in a noun phrase:

the book 
the history book 
the American history book 
the illustrated American history book 
the recent illustrated American history book 
the recent controversial illustrated American history book 
the recent controversial illustrated leather bound American history book

Noun Post-Modifiers

We were all taught about pre -modifiers: adjectives appearing before a noun in school.    Teachers rarely

speak as much about adding words after the initial reference.    Just as we find pre -modifiers, we also
find     post -modifiers—modifiers coming after a noun.

The most common post-modifier is prepositional phrases:

the book on the table

    *       

civil conflict in Africa

        *      

the Senate of the United States

       *        

Post-modifiers can be short

a dream deferred

      * 

or long, as in Martin Luther King Jr.’s reference to

a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves

     *     

and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together

at a table of brotherhood.
What does King have?    A dream?    No. He has a specific dream. Once we are sensitive to the existence of
noun phrases, we recognize a relatively simple structure to the sentence.   Here we recognize a noun phrase
with a very long post-modifier—thirty-two words to be exact.

We do not get lost in the flow of words, but recognize structure. At the point that we recognize structure within the
sentence, we recognize meaning. (Notice also that post-modifiers often include clauses which themselves include
complete sentences, as in the last example above.)

Post-modifiers commonly answer the traditional news reporting questions

of who , what , where , when , how , orwhy .    Noun post-modifiers commonly take the following forms:

prepositional phrase                the dog  in the store

               *    

_ing  phrase                                    the girl running to the store

               *    

_ed past tense                          the man wanted by the police

               *    

wh - clauses                              the house where I was born

                 *       

that/which clauses                  the thought that I had yesterday

                *        

If you see a preposition, wh - word ( which, who, when where  ), -ing verb form, or that  or which  after a noun, you can
suspect a post-modifier and the completion of a noun phrase.  

The noun together with all pre- and post-modifiers constitutes a single unit, a noun phrase that indicates the
complete reference. Any agreement in terms of singular/plural is with the noun at the center.

The boys on top of the house     are .............

      *    

Here the noun at the center of the noun phrase is plural, so a plural form of the verb is called for (not a
singular form to agree with the singular house) .

The Pronoun Test

In school, we were taught that pronouns replaced nouns .    Not so.    Pronouns replace complete noun

phrases .   Pronoun replacement thus offers a test of a complete noun phrase. Consider:

The boy ate the apple in the pie.

What did he eat?   

                                   The boy ate                  the apple in the pie.
                *       

Want proof? Introduce the pronoun “it” into the sentence.    If a pronoun truly replaces a noun, we’d
get                                 

*The boy ate                  the it in the pie.

No native speaker would say that!    They’d say

                   The boy ate                  it.

The pronoun replaces the complete noun phrase, the apple in the pie .

This pronoun substitution test can be particualrly useful. Not all prepositional phrases after a noun are necessarily part
of the noun phrase – they could be later predicate or sentence modifiers. In other words, we must not only identify
noun phrases, we must parse out other material, and in that act recognize broader aspects of sentence structure.

The web page on distinguishing sentence and predicate modifiers

(www.criticalreading.com/sentence_predicate_modifiers.htm) discusses the three sentences:

1. 1. The boy ate the apple in the pie.

2. 2. The boy ate the apple in the summer.
3. 3. The boy ate the apple in a hurry.

Only the first includes a noun phrase longer than two words: the apple in the pie.

Boxes Within Boxes: Testing for a Complete Noun Phrase

The goal of reading, we noted above, is not to recognize grammatical features, but to find meaning.    The
goal is not to break a sentence or part of a sentence into as small pieces as possible, but to break it into
chunks in such a way that fosters the discovery of meaning.   

Consider one of the examples above of a prepositional phrase as a post-modifier:

                                   the book on the table

Book is a noun at the center of the noun phrase.    But table is also a noun.    If we analyze the noun phrase
completely, on all levels, we find:

                                   the book on the table

              *     

on the table

            *

We can have prepositional phrase within prepositional phrase within prepositional phrases:

                                   …the book on the table in the kitchen…

               *      

                                                       on the  table in the kitchen…

              *    

                                                                                 in the kitchen …

                         *

We don't want to recognize every little noun phrase.   We want to recognize the larger ones that shape the
meaning.    The book is not "on the table."    The book is "on the table in the kitchen."

The Senate of the United States is composed of two legislators from each State.

Question: Who is in the Senate?   

          a) two legislators

           b) two legislators from each State?

The answer is b). The full Senate consists of two from each state (100 people), not simply two! We read the
sentence as

The Senate of the United States          is composed of          

two legislators from each State.

     *          

If we read the sentence as

The Senate of the United States          

is composed of two legislators              

from each State.

we miss the meaning.

Earlier we noted that pre -modifiers in noun phrase can be expanded to significant length. For the most part,
we increased the length of the pre-modifier by adding additional adjectives, a word or two at a time.    Noun
phrase post -modifiers can be expanded to much greater lengths.    We can add long phrases which
themselves contain complete sentences.

              the park where I hit a home run when I was in the ninth grade .     

      *    

The sentence within the post-modifier is printed in boldface.

The following sentence indicates something was lost.    What was lost?

He lost the book by Mark Twain about the Mississippi that he took out of the library on Sunday
before the game so that he could study during half time when his brother was getting popcorn.

The answer is the complete phrase

……… the book by Mark Twain about the Mississippi that he took out of the library on Sunday
before the game so that he could study during half time when his brother was getting popcorn.
The base term book is modified as to author (Mark Twain), topic (about the Mississippi), as well as intent or
purpose (that he took out of the library on Sunday before the game so that he could study during half time
when his brother was getting popcorn.)    We assume that he has another book by Twain about the
Mississippi that he did not lose.    Want proof?    What would be replaced by “it”?   

The full reference of a noun phrase is often “conveniently” ignored in movie advertisements. Janet Maslin,
movie critic for The New York Times , complained when an advertisement for the video tape of John
Grisham’s "The Rainmaker" quoted her as describing the movie as director Francis Ford Coppola’s “best
and sharpest film,” when, in fact, her review stated:

John Grisham’s "The Rainmaker" is Mr. Coppola’s best and sharpest film in years. (1)

The original quotation does not refer to the “best and sharpest film” of Coppola’s career, but to his “best and sharpest
film in years.”

Noun Phrases: The Dominant Construction

Finally, the degree to which noun phrases are the dominant construction within texts can be seen in the opening
paragraph of the Text for Discussion: Annotation - Needle Exchange Programs and the Law - Time for a Change. The
complete noun phrases appear within square brackets and appear in red.

(1) In [ his social history of venereal disease ], [ No Magic Bullet ], [ Allan M.   Brandt ]describes[ the controversy
in the US military about preventing venereal disease among soldiers during World War I ].   Should there be [ a
disease prevention effort that recognized that many young American men would succumb to the charms of French
]
prostitutes  , or should there be [ a more punitive approach to discourage sexual contact ]?    Unlike[ the New
Zealand Expeditionary forces ], which gave[ condoms ]to[ their soldiers ],[ the United States ]decided to

give [American soldiers ][after-the-fact, and largely ineffective, chemical prophylaxis ].  [ American soldiers ]also

were subject to [ court martial ] if they contracted[ a venereal disease ].  [ These measures ] failed.   [ More than

383,000 soldiers ]were diagnosed with[ venereal diseases ]between April 1917 and December 1919 and

lost [ seven million days of active duty ].  [ Only influenza ], which struck in [ an epidemic ], was [ a more common

illness among servicemen ].  

Implications For Reading and Writing

The above discussion introduces a number of concepts crucial to effective reading and writing.   

 We do not read texts word by word, but chunk by chunk.    We must read each grammatical construction as a
single unit. Deciphering sentences involves isolating phrases within a sentence and recognizing where long
phrases begin and end.
 To write well is not to string words together, but to string together larger phrases, to create full references that
carefully distinguish one idea from another, going beyond talking in vague generalities.    We can increase the
clarity and sophistication of our thought by using extended phrases instead of single words.

Sophisticated thought is qualified thought. Intelligent discussion goes beyond either/or or black-or-white
views of the world to recognize nuances and distinctions.

Remarks can be

 extended (made broader or more general) ,

 qualified (restricted in some way), or
 limited (made more specific or less encompassing).

We don’t really make sentences longer by adding at the end so much as expanding each chunk
Good writers carefully distinguish between all, most, many , some, few, and one. They specify the specific time,
condition, or circumstances an assertion is true. Some claims are made for certain, some "in all probability" or "within
a specific margin of error," some for given conditions.

Good writers carefully distinguish between all, most, many, some, few, and one. They specify the specific time,
condition, or circumstances an assertion is true. Some claims are made for certain, some "in all probability" or "within
a specific margin of error," some for given conditions.

When drawing careful distinctions, authors are not being wishy-washy or nit picking. They are simply being precise.
They are saying exactly what they want to say or feel secure in saying based on the available evidence. Weak writers
can achieve an immediate gain in the level of thought of their writing by taking advantages of the opportunities for
adding pre- and post-modifiers.

For writers, this model is a reminder of the opportunity to extend, limit, or otherwise shape a specific idea. You can
greatly increase the sophistication and depth of thought of your work by taking advantage of these pre- and post-
modifier "slots". Having written a statement, you might go back in editing to see how you can further shape your
thoughts by making use of these slots.

The Constitution is the nation’s charter, and lawmakers should resist the temptation to push for
amendments every time an election year rolls around.

Notice how much richer the next sentence is (additional modifiers in bold face) .

The Constitution of the United States is the nation’s bedrock charter,

and devoted lawmakers sworn to uphold it should resist the dangerous temptation to push
for pandering amendments every time an election year rolls around.

(1) Janet Maslin, “When Phrases That Flatter Are Misused,” The New YorkTimes , Arts & Leisure section, August 23, 1998, p. 9.