Introdungcing English language part 6: 'In this exciting new textbook, Louise Mullany and Peter Stockwell have provided a fresh and imaginative set of alternatives for teaching and learning a huge amount about the English language. The book allows tor creative and lateral approaches to developing an understanding of important linguistic concepts and, together with the thought-provoking activities, and accessible readings, guarantees there is something to stimulate every learner. | A4 16 INTRODUCTION KEY BASIC CONCEPTS The phrase constituent is defined by its head so an NP is defined by the main headword or noun within it here in the last example the noun is cakes . Put another way for a phrase to be an NP it must contain a noun as its head. There might be other words also in the NP but the noun is the essential one. In my last example here the NP also has two pre-modifiers which are first a determiner the and second an adjectival phrase beautifully decorated . In many sentences an NP can consist of only a single noun the sentence could make sense as cakes fit with no difficulty. but not as the beautifully decorated fit with no difficulty unless you reinterpret beautifully decorated as a noun which isn t the same sentence at all . The noun in an NP could also be followed by a post-modifier or qualifier the cakes altogether fit. . All the elements apart from the noun are optional though so notationally we can formulate this as NP det mod N qual This means a noun phrase is constituted by an essential noun as its head with an optional determiner such as the a some this and an optional modifier such as an adjective and an optional qualifier another adjective . In our example NP above we have det mod N. The verb phrase VP in our example consists only of a verb fit . Again a V is the essential head in a VP which can also have an optional auxiliary preceding it have stolen was caught might have been running and an optional completor following it as in the phrasal verbs run up cast off look after rabbiting on . So VP aux V compl The adverbial phrase AdvP in the example is with no difficulty . This is an adverb because it modifies the verb fit or describes the manner in which the verb is acted out. Notice that on the surface it looks very like the prepositional phrase PrepP that follows it into boxes . . This is because both the AdvP and the PrepP in this sentence are constituted by a preposition with into followed by another NP. In the AdvP the .
