english grammar: noun phrases
DESCRIPTION
Brief presentation on English noun phrases constructionTRANSCRIPT
In talking about writing, or in analyzing written texts, it is useful to have a vocabulary to describe syntax, or the grammatical structure of utterances. Different philosophies of language and different approaches to the description of natural languages produce different grammars. The approach taken here might be described as structural grammar--as opposed, for example, to "traditional" grammar or "transformational" grammar.
Structural grammar, as its name suggests, assumes that linguistic entities are "constructions"--that is, larger entities made up by combining smaller entities in certain ways. The smallest unit of a natural language, according to the structural grammarian, is the phoneme.
Phonemes are combined to make morphemes. Morphemes are combined to make words, and
words are combined to make constructions. Rules govern the ways constructions may be
formed in any particular natural language. Not just any combination of words counts as a construction: for example, an have with greenly would not count as a "well-formed" construction in English. Speakers of a language "know" the rules that govern the combining of words into constructions, in the sense that they "intuitively" use these rules.
The teacher was sitting next to the door
Two girls arrived at the party My grandmother is a kind lady
Basic Noun Phrases
The young teacherThe History teacher Two little funny girlsSeveral sleeping childrenA wounded soldier
My grandmother there Two girls dressed in white Several men bringing boxes That man with the dog The policeman that was silent
Anna Khitrova finds a diary on the body of Tatiana. She also finds a card for a restaurant. Anna thus sets out to track down the girl's family so that she can find a home for Tatiana’s girl.
Anna Khitrova, a midwife at a London hospital, finds a Russian-language diary on the body of Tatiana, a fourteen-year-old girl who dies in childbirth. She also finds a card for the Trans-Siberian restaurant, which is owned by Semyon, a boss in the Russian Mafia or vory v zakone ("thieves in law"). Anna thus sets out to track down the girl's family so that she can find a home for the dead mother's baby girl.
A young girl falls in love with a mysterious stranger, shipwrecked in the bay near her village.
A man meets a beautiful but penniless girl on a trip to Cuba.
A bored middle-aged adulterer picks up a young married woman without expecting the great love that will develop.
A student rents an apartment that looks onto the meticulously kept garden of the strange Dr Rappaccini and his beautiful daughter.
Noun Phrases: Heart of statements (Headword), modifiers (pre- and post-).
Determiners: pre-, post- and compound ones Noun Phrases positions. Order of modifiers P- groups. Form classes as object of the
preposition. S-groups. Subordinators of the “who” type. Composition Descriptions of people, places, objects, events Narrations including descriptions
Quickly describe a book you read/ film you saw/play…(around 50 words)
Focus on noun phrases and improve them to give a more accurate picture of the element described (100 wds)
Check your first and second versions to aim at accuracy
Do not send it. The procedure will be explained next class
We are going to work anonymously, cooperatively and constructively
