Delahunty and Garvey
Under NP-3, we could have chosen a premodifier with a possessive pro-
noun and a noun modifier to give us my uncle Harry’s wife’s paintings. We could
even have selected another GenNP under NP-3, in which case we might have
gotten Harry’s cousin’s wife’s paintings. In fact, we could (in principle) go on
to infinity, producing ever longer and more genealogically bizarre structures:
Harry’s aunt’s cousin’s son’s granddaughter’s niece’s sister’s step-child’s friend’s paint-
ings.
Embedding enables language to be infinite in the number and length
of the sentences it can create. Fortunately, speakers tend to use these possi-
bilities sparingly, though occasionally writers such as Dylan Thomas, Henry
James, and William Faulkner toy with them. As you progress through this
book, you will see the pervasiveness of embedding.
Before we leave premodifiers of Ns we must address one final matter,
namely the order of premodifiers. There are many proposals in the gram-
matical and linguistic literature, many of remarkable complexity. The fol-
lowing, adapted from Frawley (1992: 482-3) is a partial list:
Det > quantity > value > physical property > age > color > Head
The five good long old brown tables
Other languages allow different orders, so your non-native English speaking
students may come up with utterances that violate the order rules, such as the
following from a Korean student:
the weakness of the each student
Exercise
Identify and draw brackets around each NP and underline its headword.
Using Tables 3 and 4, identify the type of each premodifier in the NP.
a. We noticed several suspicious details.
b. My best friend’s parents gave his younger sister a European tour
as a graduation present.
c. Three false alarms were mysteriously called in during exam week.
Complex NPs: The range of postmodifiers
As complicated as possessives are, we easily recognize the infrequency of
expressions such as Harry’s uncle’s cousin’s sister’s paintings. Much more com-
mon—and much more complex—are the various sorts of phrases and