Noun Phrase
Often a noun phrase is just a noun or a pronoun:
People like to have money.
I am tired.
Determiners:
Those houses are very expensive.
Quantifiers:
I've lived in a lot of houses.
Numbers:
My brother owns two houses.
Adjectives:
I love old houses.
These parts of the noun phrase are called premodifiers because they go before the noun.
We use premodifiers in this order:
determiners and quantifiers → numbers → adjectives → nouns
People like to have money.
I am tired.
Premodifiers
Determiners:
Those houses are very expensive.
Quantifiers:
I've lived in a lot of houses.
Numbers:
My brother owns two houses.
Adjectives:
I love old houses.
These parts of the noun phrase are called premodifiers because they go before the noun.
We use premodifiers in this order:
determiners and quantifiers → numbers → adjectives → nouns
Postmodifiers
Other parts of a noun phrase go after the noun.
These are called postmodifiers.
Postmodifiers can be
prepositional phrases:
a man with a gun
the boy in the blue shirt
the house on the corner
–ing phrases:
the man standing over there
the boy talking to Angela
relative clauses:
the house that Jack built
the woman who discovered radium
an eight-year-old boy who attempted to rob a sweet shop
that clauses. These are very common after nouns like idea, fact, belief, suggestion:
He's still very fit, in spite of the fact that he's over eighty.
She got the idea that people didn't like her.
There was a suggestion that the children should be sent home.
to infinitives:
I've got no decent shoes to wear.
These are very common after indefinite pronouns and adverbs:
You should take something to read.
I need somewhere to sleep.
There may be more than one postmodifier:
an eight-year old boy with a gun who tried to rob a sweet shop
that girl over there in a green dress drinking a Coke
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