Structure: Noun Phrases I

You studied noun phrases when you were in Senior Secondary 1. You learned that a noun phrase is a phrase whose main word or head is a noun. Examples include a big bag, an empty treasury, the last drop of blood, my sister’s old handbag. (Note the main word in bold in each of the examples above)

Recognizing the Noun Phrase:

An expression that is a noun phrase usually begins with any of the articles a, an, or the. Consider the following examples:

1. A candidate in an examination hall … – WASSCE, June, 1998
2. An intelligent law official in the Ministry …
3. The courage to fail … – WASSCE, November, 1998

The noun phrase may also begin with a pronoun (my, his, her, our, their, etc), a gerund, or a ‘to + infinitive’

Example:

1. My mother’s love for pets.
2. His arrogant disposition toward his subordinates …\

A gerund is a verb that ends in –ing and functions as a noun.

… leaving his retinue of wives, children, servants, and relations behind … – WASSCE, June, 1993

When the root of a verb (infinitive) combines with the preposition ‘to’, the expression that results may function as a noun.

Example:

1. To + err = To err is human
2. To + visit = To visit my grandparents is always interesting

Functions of the Noun Phrase:

The noun phrase functions as a single noun in a sentence. It may function as:

a)   a subject

b)   an object

c)   a complement

a)   Noun Phrase as Subject

Consider the following sentence:

Kolo makes good benches. (Who makes good benches? – Kolo, a single noun. Therefore, Kolo is the subject of the sentence.)

We can change Kolo to a noun phrase. Suppose that Kolo is a carpenter who lives in a village, we can re-write the sentence to read thus:

The hardworking village carpenter makes good benches. Note that instead of Kolo (a single noun), we have used a phrase – The hardworking village carpenter. Just as Kolo is the subject of our original sentence, the hardworking village carpenter is the subject of the expanded sentence.