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4 - Noun Phrases

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Andrew Radford
Affiliation:
University of Essex
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Summary

Overview

Most of our discussion in the previous two chapters has been concerned with providing empirical substantiation for the claim that sentences are hierarchically structured out of constituents belonging to a restricted (perhaps universal) set of categories, and with considering the nature of categories. Implicitly, we postulated a two-level Theory of Categories: that is to say, we tacitly assumed that there are two levels of categories in natural language, namely

  1. (1) (i) word-level categories, e.g.

  2. N = Noun; V = Verb; A = Adjective; P = Preposition;

  3. ADV = Adverb; M = Modal; D = Determiner, etc.

  4. (ii) phrase-level categories, e.g.

  5. NP = Noun Phrase; VP = Verb Phrase; AP = Adjectival Phrase; PP = Prepositional Phrase; ADVP = Adverbial Phrase, etc.

In this chapter and the next, however, we are going to argue that our existing Theory of Categories should be extended to include a third type of category intermediate between word-level and phrase-level categories. That is to say, we are going to argue in favour of positing that there are nominal constituents larger than the Noun but smaller than a full Noun Phrase, verbal constituents larger than the Verb but smaller than a full Verb Phrase, adjectival constituents larger than the Adjective but smaller than a full Adjectival Phrase … and so on.

Type
Chapter
Information
Transformational Grammar
A First Course
, pp. 167 - 225
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1988

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  • Noun Phrases
  • Andrew Radford, University of Essex
  • Book: Transformational Grammar
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511840425.006
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  • Noun Phrases
  • Andrew Radford, University of Essex
  • Book: Transformational Grammar
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511840425.006
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Noun Phrases
  • Andrew Radford, University of Essex
  • Book: Transformational Grammar
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511840425.006
Available formats
×