A Student's Introduction to English Grammar

(^96) Chapter 5 Nouns and noun phrases
� Determinatives, again alone or with dependents, are modifiers when they FOLLOW
a determiner rather than functioning as one themselves, as in [ii].
'l The modifiers in [iii] are nominals consisting of nouns, either alone or (as in the
second and third examples) with their own internal dependents. Note that a mod­
ifier cannot contain its own determiner: it is a nominal, not an NP. We cannot
have, for example, a the United States warship.
11' VP modifiers as in [iv] have either a gerund-participle or a past participle form of
the verb as head.
Dependents within a pre-head modifier almost always precede the head of that
modifier. To take the last phrase in [37iv] as an example, we can say Th is fo ssil was
discovered recently (where discovered recently is a complement of the verb be), but
we cannot refer to it with the phrase a discovered recentlyfossil. We have to place
the adverb dependent recently before the verbal head discovered, to make the NP a
recently discovered fo ssil.

(b) Post-head modifiers

[38] pp

11 ADJP

1Il APPOSITIVE NP

iv NON-APPOSITIVE NP

V FINITE CLAUSE

vi NON-FINITE CLAUSE

the tree by the �ate,Jood fo r the baby, a hut in the fo rest,

a house of ill repute, a man without scruples

people fond of animals, the ones most likely to succeed

the opera 'Carmen', my wife Lucy, our friend the mayor

a woman my age, someone your own size, a rug this colour

the guy who spoke first, the knife with which he cut it,

the money that he gave me, some people I met on the

train

the person for you to consult, students living on campus,

a letter written by his uncle

,� The PPs in [i] are NOT syntactically licensed by the head like those in [31-34]

above.

01> AdjPs in post-head position usually contain their own dependents, especially post­

head ones; the AdjPs shown in [ii] would not be possible before the head noun.

.;I Appositive NP modifiers are distinguished from the non-appositive ones by their

ability to stand alone in place of the whole NP: instead of They invited my wife

Lucy we could have simply They invited Lucy.

� Finite clause modifiers are all relative clauses.

� Non-finite clauses may be infinitival, gerund-participial, or past-participial.

Combinations of modifiers

There is no grammatical limit to the number of modifiers that can occur within a
single NP. The following examples contain two, three, four and five respectively:

[39] a l!ig black dog

11 the two French novels we had to study

iii an old Italian woman with six kids who was complaining bitterly

iv that nice little old man at the library with the umbrella