A noun phrase includes a noun—a person, place,
or thing—and the modifiers which distinguish
it.
You can find the noun dog in a sentence,
for example, but you don't know which canine the writer means until you
consider the entire noun phrase: that dog,
Aunt Audrey's dog,
the dog on the sofa,
the neighbor's dog that chases our cat,
the dog digging in the new flower bed.
Modifiers can come before or after the noun. Ones that come before might
include articles, possessive nouns, possessive pronouns,
adjectives, and/or
participles.
Articles: a
dog, the
dog
Possessive nouns: Aunt
Audrey's dog, the
neighbor's
dog, the police officer's
dog
Possessive pronouns: Our
dog, her
dog, their
dog
Adjectives: That
dog, the big
dog, the spotted
dog
Participles: The
drooling dog,
the barking
dog, the well
trained dog
Modifiers that come after the noun might include
prepositional phrases,
adjective clauses,
participle phrases, and/or
infinitives.
Prepositional phrases:
A dog on the loose,
the dog in the front seat,
the dog behind the fence
Adjective clauses: The
dog that chases cats,
the dog that looks lost,
the dog that won the championship
Participle phrases: The
dog whining for a treat,
the dog clipped at the grooming salon,
the dog walked daily
Infinitives: The dog
to catch, the
dog to train,
the dog to adopt
Less frequently, a noun phrase will have a pronoun
as its base—a word like we,
everybody, etc.—and the modifiers which
distinguish it. Read these examples:
We who were green with envy
We = subject pronoun;
who were green with envy = modifier.
Someone intelligent
Someone = indefinite pronoun;
intelligent = modifier.
No one important
No one = indefinite pronoun;
important = modifier.
What is a phrase?
A phrase is a syntactic structure that consists of more than one word but lacks the subject-predicate organization of a clause.
What is a clause?
A clause is a grammatical unit that
* includes, at minimum, a predicate and an explicit or implied subject, and
* expresses a proposition.
* What is an adverbial clause?
* What is a coordinate clause?
* What is an equative clause?
* What is an existential clause?
* What is a final clause?
* What is a finite clause?
* What is a main clause?
* What is a marking clause?
* What is a medial clause?
* What is a nominal clause?
* What is a nonfinite clause?
* What is a reference clause?
* What is a relative clause?
* What is a subordinate clause?
