Phrases(30) NP
N PP
concerns P NP
about Art N
the future
(31) a. songs about rebellion
b. clocks on the wall
c. walks with my mother
d. arguments about abortion
e. reasons for my hesitation
f. sources of concernExercise
Provide a fully labeled tree diagram for each of the NPs in (31a-f).
A problem that arises with expressions in which a N is followed by a PP
is whether the N and PP actually combine to form a noun phrase, as in the
examples in (31), or whether they are simply a non-unified sequence of N
followed by PP, as in Put the book on the shelf. In this expression, the N book is
not combined with the PP on the shelf into an NP. It is important to have ways
of identifying which kind of expression we are dealing with.
Remember that we said that one test for phrasehood is the possibility of
being replaced by a single word. In the case of NPs these words would be
pronouns. So, if a sequence of words can be replaced by a pronoun, then it is
very likely an NP. For instance, you could replace all of the expressions in (31)
by some form of the word they. Let’s call this test the Pronoun-Substitution
(Pro-Sub) Test. To see how it works, let’s consider (32):
(32) a. Woody admired the picture on the wall.
b. Woody put the picture on the wall.