Unit 8 Attributives: Modifiers in Noun Phrases
Check Your Understanding
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2.
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5.
F
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F
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In-Class Activities
1. (1) a. This is a sleeping child.
b. This is utter nonsense.
More examples: That is sheer fabrication/ * The fabrication is pure; He’s a real hero/ *The
hero is real; He is a complete fool/* The fool is complete; He is a firm
friend/* The friend is firm; I’m aware of it/* He is an aware man; He is fond
of music/* The fond music is very beautiful.
(2) No. If the age of my friend is under focus, the sentence will be fully acceptable.
(3) The former is acceptable because “careful” is a dynamic adjective, which can be used after
a progressive “be”, an imperative “be”, and an infinitival “be” preceded by verbs such as
“persuade”, while “tall” is a stative adjective and thus cannot be used in such structures.
2. The participles to be underlined are: revealing, hidden, increasing, excited, increasing.
(1) No. The participle “excited” should be changed into “exciting” because “situations” can
only be “exciting” (i.e. to make entities such as human beings feel excitement) rather than
“feeling excited”; the participle “increasing” should be changed into “increased” because
the increase of heart rates here is the result of the excitement caused by the exciting
situations, or it is passive rather than active in sense.
(2) The circled adjectives should be “visible”. “Visible” should be interpreted as “can be seen
or noticed”; that is, it takes a passive sense. Adjectives of this type that take a passive sense
include: contemptible, credible, desirable, respectable, etc.; adjectives of this type that take
an active sense include: contemptuous, credulous, desirous, respectful, troublesome, etc.
(3) All of them can be accepted as adjectives and included as independent entries in my
dictionary because they appear as pre-modifiers before head nouns with a high frequency.
3. (1) No. Among the sentences above, (Ab), (Bb), and (Cb) are unacceptable. (Ab) is wrong
because “afloat” can only serve as the post-modifier; (Bb) is wrong because when used as
the modifier to the indefinite pronoun “anything”, “interesting” can only appear after the
head “anything”; (Cb) is wrong because when used as the post-modifier to the subject, the
adjective “brave” cannot be separated from its complementation. That is to say, the
sentence “She is brave enough a student to attempt the course” can be acceptable, for the
adjective phrase headed by “brave” is used as the post-modifier to the subject complement
of the sentence and the head noun is preceded by the indefinite article “a”. The sentences in
(D) and (E) are both acceptable because the adjectives “easiest” and “complicated” can be
separated from their complementations in those contexts. The two sentences in (F) are both
correct because the adjective “responsible” can serve as the pre-modifier as well as the
post-modifier.
(2) The two sentences in (D) and (E) can be interpreted in the same way, but those in (F) have
different interpretations: “the person responsible” can be understood as “the person who has
the job or duty of doing sth.”; “a responsible person” can be understood as “a person that
you can trust and rely on”.
(3) When the head is the compound indefinite pronouns ending in -body, -one, and -thing, the
adjectival modifier should be placed after it. When the adjective itself takes a
complementation realized by such constructions as an infinitive and a prepositional phrase,
it is usually placed after the head noun or pronoun. Besides, in several institutionalized
expressions (mostly in official designations), the adjective is usually post-positioned, e.g.:
the president elect, heir apparent, attorney general, from time immemorial, vice-chancellor
designate, court martial, notary public, Longman Group Limited, etc.
4. (1) In the noun phrase “No-fee ATM/Visa check card” in the first picture, the head noun is
“card” and thus only pre-modifiers are used. In the second picture the following four noun
phrases can be identified: “United Nations Development Corporation”, “a not-for-profit
corporation of the State and City of New York created to provide facilities for the United
Nations”, and two embedded noun phrases “the City of New York” and “the United Nations”;
In “a not-for-profit corporation of the State and city of New York created to provide facilities
for the United Nations”, the head noun is “corporation”, and thus the hyphenated compound
“not-for-profit” is used as the pre-modifier, the prepositional phrase “of the State and the
City of New York” and the past participle clause or phrase “created to provide facilities for
the United Nations” are both used as post-modifiers; in the noun phrase “the City of New
York”, the prepositional phase “of New York” is also used as the post-modifier to the head
noun “city”; in “the United Nations”, the head noun is “nations” and past participle “united”
is used as the pre-modifier. In the third picture, the head noun of the noun phrase
“end-of-season clearance event” is “event” and thus the hyphenated compound
“end-of-season” and the noun “clearance” are both used as pre-modifiers.
(2) The hyphenated compound “no-fee”, “not-for-profit” and “end-of-season” can be
interpreted correspondingly as “(card) which charges no fee”, “(corporation) which is not
for profit”, and “(event) which is held at the end of the season”, but the hyphenated
pre-modifiers are comparatively compact and concise.
5. (1) Yes. They can be understood substantially in the same way if the differences in style are
ignored. The same is true of Group B and Group C.
(2) They can be expanded as: The man who will help you is Mr. Johnson and The man who
helps/ is helping you is Mr. Johnson.
6. (1) The appositives usually appear after the head noun phrase, but sometimes it can also appear
before the head noun phrase [as in (Ab)]. The most typical appositive should be a noun
phrase [as in (A) and (Ba)], but sometimes appositives can also be realized by non-finite
clauses [as in (Bb) and (Bc)] and finite clauses [as in (Bd)]. But, Bc can be controversial.
The infinitive can be seen as a post-modifier, too.
(2) Yes. The possible transformations are:
a. Your brother, who was a proud and unbending man, refused all help that was offered him.
b. Sharks, which are considered/known as streamlined swimmers and bloodhounds of the
sea, are equipped with an extraordinary sense of smell.
c. Lucy, who was the daughter of a poor and ignorant miner, was born in a small town of
North America.
(3) No. Only the appositive in the second can be turned into an attributive clause. The possible
transformations can be: She liked her job, which was teaching English/ to teach English.
(4) The that-clause in (Ca) is regarded as an attributive/relative clause, which is mainly used
together with the article “the” to determine and modify the reference of the head noun
“announcement”, but the that-clause in (Cb) is usually viewed as an appositive clause,
which is mainly used to elaborate the content of the “announcement”. A rule of thumb for
judging whether a clause subordinate to a noun phrase is attributive or appositive is whether
or not the introductory “that” serves as a functional element in the clause after it.
Post-Class Tasks
1. The NPs with attributives are:
a. a philosopher named Jeremy Bentham;
b. Jeremy Bentham, who was universally recognized to be a very wicked man;
c. a very wicked man;
d. the first time that I came across his name when I was a boy;
e. a statement by the Rev. Sydney Smith to the effect that Bentham thought people ought to
make soup of their dead grandmothers;
f. the effect that Bentham thought people ought to make soup of their dead grandmothers;
g. their dead grandmothers;
h. a moral point of view;
i. a bad opinion of Bentham;
j. one of those reckless lies;
k. those reckless lies in which respectable people are wont to indulge in the interests of
virtue;
l. respectable people
m. the interests of virtue.
2.
a-e CCBBA
f-j BAACD
k-l AA
3. a. The farmers have requested a small modern agricultural laboratory.
b. There is a table standing in the corner.
c. Today women have more opportunities for a challenging position in business and the
professions than their grandmothers did.
d. I will read the memo which Pat hopes will be sent to you.
e. I was greatly impressed with Anna’s willingness to do the job.
f. The food eaten/being eaten/which has been eaten was for tomorrow.
g. What’s the time when she normally arrives?
h. The train which has arrived at/arriving at platform 1 is from York.
i. The person for you to consult is Mr. Smith.
4. a. Henry James is an American novelist, whose reputation has undergone many changes since
his death in 1916. The relativizer “whose” is used as the connector here. It is used as a
determiner in the relative clause. The relative clause here is non-restrictive.
b. His early novels that were, for the most part, about the differences between American and
European life, were very successful. The relativizer “that” is used as the connector. It is used
as the subject of the relative clause. The relative clause is restrictive.
c. One of his most popular early novels, Washington Square, has an American setting. The
words taken out are “is” and “it”.
d. One of his most popular early novels, Washington Square, which was made into a successful
play and motion picture called The Heiress, has an American setting. The relativizer
“which” is used as the connector. It is used as the subject in the relative clause. The relative
clause is non-restrictive.
5. The last version would be the best one, because it is well-formed not only grammatically but
also semantically: it is balanced in structure and clear in meaning.
6. a. He insisted on building another house, which he had no use for./ He insisted on building
another house, though he had no use for it.
b. Nowadays it is understood that a diet which contains nothing harmful may result in serious
disease if certain important elements are missing. / Nowadays it is understood that even if it
contains nothing harmful, a diet may result in serious disease if certain important elements
are missing.
c. They have built up a new college here, where students will be trained to be engineers and
scientists./ They have built up a new college here in order to educate the students to be
engineers and scientists.
d. A solid fuel, like coal or wood, can only burn at the surface, where it comes into contact
with the air./ A solid fuel, like coal or wood, can only burn at the surface for the surface can
come into contact with the air.