Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
In linguistics, a modifier is an optional element in phrase structure or clause structure [1] which modifies the meaning of another element in the structure. For instance, the adjective "red" acts as a modifier in the noun phrase "red ball", providing extra details about which particular ball is being referred to.
In linguistics, a verb phrase (VP) is a syntactic unit composed of a verb and its arguments except the subject of an independent clause or coordinate clause.Thus, in the sentence A fat man quickly put the money into the box, the words quickly put the money into the box constitute a verb phrase; it consists of the verb put and its arguments, but not the subject a fat man.
Proper nouns are a class of words such as December, Canada, Leah, and Johnson that occur within noun phrases (NPs) that are proper names, [2] though not all proper names contain proper nouns (e.g., General Electric is a proper name with no proper noun).
A clause typically contains a subject (a noun phrase) and a predicate (a verb phrase in the terminology used above; that is, a verb together with its objects and complements). A dependent clause also normally contains a subordinating conjunction (or in the case of relative clauses, a relative pronoun, or phrase containing one).
Until the late 1980s, linguists assumed that, in a phrase like the red ball, the head was the noun ball and that the was a dependent. But a student at MIT named Paul Abney proposed, in his PhD dissertation about English noun phrases (NPs) in 1987, that the head was not the noun ball but the determiner the , so that the red ball is a determiner ...
The first rule reads: A S consists of a NP (noun phrase) followed by a VP (verb phrase). The second rule reads: A noun phrase consists of an optional Det followed by a N (noun). The third rule means that a N (noun) can be preceded by an optional AP (adjective phrase) and followed by an optional PP (prepositional phrase). The round brackets ...
Typically, the situation is denoted by a sentence, the action by a verb in the sentence, and the agent by a noun phrase. For example, in the sentence "Jack kicked the ball", Jack is the agent and the ball is the patient. In certain languages, the agent is declined or otherwise marked to indicate its grammatical role.
A generative parse tree: the sentence is divided into a noun phrase (subject), and a verb phrase which includes the object. This is in contrast to structural and functional grammar which consider the subject and object as equal constituents. [9] [10]