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Brigitta J.E. Syntax Final Examination. A1+. 2020

This document is a student's final exam on syntax that discusses the constituents of noun phrases. It explains that a noun phrase consists of a head noun along with any determiners, premodifiers like adjectives, and postmodifiers like prepositional phrases or relative clauses. It provides examples of different noun phrases and classifications of nouns. The document also discusses the types of premodifiers and postmodifiers in more detail, considering whether adjectives can function as postmodifiers and whether prepositional phrases can serve as premodifiers.

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Brigitta Juniet
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48 views

Brigitta J.E. Syntax Final Examination. A1+. 2020

This document is a student's final exam on syntax that discusses the constituents of noun phrases. It explains that a noun phrase consists of a head noun along with any determiners, premodifiers like adjectives, and postmodifiers like prepositional phrases or relative clauses. It provides examples of different noun phrases and classifications of nouns. The document also discusses the types of premodifiers and postmodifiers in more detail, considering whether adjectives can function as postmodifiers and whether prepositional phrases can serve as premodifiers.

Uploaded by

Brigitta Juniet
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Name : Brigitta Juniet Eucarist

NIM : F1021171078
Class : A1+
Syntax Final Examination

The Constituents of Noun Phrases

The noun phrase is made up of a noun and its modifiers. The noun phrase relates to
words that make the same way as the noun. The noun phrase features are the noun,
pronoun, and different modifiers. In the case, the pronoun is used in place of a noun, and it
would either be an undefined pronoun or the dependent pronoun.
Noun phrases consist of four types of elements: determinants, headers, premodifiers,
and postmodifiers. In the following sections, there are nouns that can act as noun phrase
heads, and on determinants. Modifiers are dealt with in the Adjective Phrases and
Prepositional Phrases sections, since these two are the most common renditions of the
Modifier function. The head of a noun phrase is either a noun or a pronoun. The head
describes the features of the noun phrase as number (singular or plural) and gender
(masculine, feminine or neuter). In terms of meaning, the head determines the type or type
of entity to which the whole noun phrase refers. Thus, the following noun phrases have the
same noun, car, as head and therefore refer to the same kind of entity, namely some kind of
car. The exact reference of the full noun phrases differ because of the different determiners
and modifiers that accompany the head.

(1) the pink car that Zara bought

(2) the blue car that is parked outside my office

(3) a French car with four-wheel steering

Nouns can be grouped into different classes based on their grammatical properties.

A premodifier is a modifier that precedes the header of a phrase or word that defines
the context of a phrase. The most frequently used premodifiers are adjectives, participles
and nouns. When used as an adjective to describe a person or object, that part of the speech
is often referred to as an epithet. Biber categorized premodifiers into four types. "There are
four major structural types of premodification in English:

 adjective: big pillow, new pants, official negotiations, political isolation
 -ed participial: restricted area, improved growth, fixed volume, established tradition
 -ing participial: flashing lights, a growing problem, an exhausting task
 noun: staff room, pencil case, market forces, maturation period

A post-modifier is a modification that follows a term or phrase that it restricts or


specifies. Post-modifier alteration is called post-modification. As discussed below, there
are several different types of post-modifiers, but the most common are pre-position
phrases and relative clauses. a preposition with a further nominal group (a prepositional
phrase): the boy in the garden...;

 a non-finite clause: the boy walking down the road...;


 a dependent clause which may be introduced by a relative pronoun or simply
attached directly to the nominal it modifies: the who was walking...;
 occasionally, an adjective:...and other things interesting."

In this case, can adjectives function as postmodifiers? It seems that an adjective


uses something other than an adverbial as a modifier. Although, for example "working"
and "teaching" could be explained as participatory adjectives to modify subjects, this
does not really seem to be in keeping with the meaning of the sentences. Similarly,
"working" and "teaching" can not be explained as predicate nouns with adjective
modifiers, for obvious reasons. So, adjectives can be postmodified by a prepositional
phrase, a finite clause, or an infinitive clause. How about prepositional phrases function
as premodifiers? A preposition is a word that expresses a relationship between a noun
or a pronoun and another word in the sentence. The noun or pronoun is called
the object of the preposition, and it can be related to another noun or pronoun in the
sentence, or to a verb. The preposition, its object, and any modifiers make up
the prepositional phrase. Prepositional phrases most often function
as adjectives or adverbs. And adjectives is one types of premodifiers, so prepositional
phrases can function as premodifiers.  

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