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FLUP YEAR 3
INFORMATION ABOUT NOUN PHRASES, NOMINAL
CLAUSES AND RELATIVE CLAUSES.
Hello, everybody. The following information is intended to assist you in finding
your way around “A Student’s Grammar of the English Language” with respect
to noun phrases and nominal clauses, and to help you (I hope) to realise that
Grammar is not dull, forbidding, and rule-oriented just for the sake of making
Life difficult for you, but that it can be meaningful, extremely useful,- and even
fascinating and enjoyable. We do not expect that you will see this immediately,
and some of you may indeed never appreciate this, but we hope that some of you
will.
(1) A NOUN PHRASE (SGE Ch. 17.1) is any noun, pronoun, or even
determiner + adjective {e.g. The powerful = “the powerful people”}, and a
complex noun phrase is any group of words, (which may be very long), which
includes a nucleus or head as its main or central component. This “head” is
usually a noun. Just as a sentence can be complex, containing one or many coordinate clauses and subordinate clauses, so can a noun phrase be complex. As
{SGE Ch. 17} points out, several sentences can be converted into one complex
noun phrase, [called NOMINALIZATION], so it is very useful to be able to
understand how to construct good noun phrases, and to manipulate several
sentences into one or two noun phrases, because, as long as you don’t overdo it,
using noun phrases, i.e. adopting nominalization, can help you to summarise, to
be succinct, and to condense long strings of shorter or longer sentences into
fewer sentences. It also improves your style and helps to make your writing
more sophisticated. In SPEAKING, we do not tend to use long noun phrases,
and indeed, to do so would make our speech sound stilted and highly unnatural,
but in writing, it is important. We will be looking at some texts in the course of
the year which will show how much importance is attached by writers to noun
phrase structure.
2) A complex noun phrase, as well as having a HEAD, may also have a PREMODIFIER and a POSTMODIFIER.
3) PRE-MODIFICATION (see SGE 17:28ff) can be said to give the more
permanent features or characteristics of the HEAD. (This may not always be the
case, but it is often so). In its simplest form, a pre-modifier may consist of one or
more determiners, see (SGE 5:3 - 5:10), which may be pre-determiners, central
determiners or post-determiners, or a combination of any two or three of these. We will
not go into the details of types of determiners here, but you are strongly urged to read
up about these yourselves, (in SGE 5:3 - 5:10), and in the separate sheets which will be
given to you. In addition to determiners, pre-modification may, and often does, contain
an adjective or a string of adjectives, which are said to be ATTRIBUTIVE
ADJECTIVES, as they precede the head and usually state more permanent features of
the head. “The three irresponsible boys” tells us that there are three and that they are
(always) irresponsible.
“That beautiful, slim, young girl” informs us that that
particular girl is permanently beautiful and slim while she remains young, (and as long
as she doesn’t start eating like a horse!), and this situation will endure for a good few
years yet.
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4) POSTMODIFICATION ( post-modification), on the other hand, always (of
course) follows the head , and often expresses less long-lasting characteristics of
the head. Of course if we say “That beautiful slim young girl who is always
drinking” we seem to be expressing a permanent feature in the nondefining/restrictive relative clause, but if you think about it, if we continue
“……will ruin her good looks if she doesn’t give up”, we are actually saying that
she could give up the drinking if she chose, and if she did give up, her permanent
good looks, lithe figure and youth would be preserved. She can’t, under normal
circumstances, give up her beauty, (except by having plastic surgery!!), and she
cannot give up her youth until the ravages of time dictate, nor her slimness. A
clearer example of the temporariness expressed by the postmodifier would be“That stupid-looking lad who is standing on the street corner ……will get
knocked down if he doesn’t get on to the pavement”.
5) Postmodification {See SGE 17:5 - 17:27} does not have to be expressed by
relative clauses, either defining/restrictive or non-defining/non-restrictive. It
often is¸but this is by no means always the case. It can also be expressed by:a) a postposivite adjective or adjectival phrase, e.g. “The boy responsible”,
a non-finite verb phrase, e.g. “The people found to be guilty”, “The girls
organizing the party”, c) noun phrases, e.g. “The party last night”, d) adverbs
or adverbial phrases, e.g. “The ship on the horizon”, “The lady over there”;
“Phillip, when cooking his dinner…..” or e) “to” infinitive clauses, e.g. “The
person to consult….is Pedro”; “The doctor for you to see…..is Dr. Johnson”.
Please note that some of the adverbials in d) might be prepositional phrases, as
with “The ship on the horizon”. By way of postmodification, it is also possible to
have a combination of a), b), c), d) or e) above. e.g. “The dog over there that has
just watered my lawn…..should be shot.” N.B. Please read {SGE 17:5 ff } very
carefully, as it states in more detail what I have briefly said above, and gives far
more examples. There are other forms of postmodification as well, and SGE
gives clear explanations and examples of these.
6) NOUN PHRASES AS SENTENCE ELEMENTS. Most of the noun phrases
we are dealing with form sentence elements or parts of sentence elements. Usually
a noun phrase forms either S (subject), O (direct or indirect object), or C
(subject or object complement). A noun phrase can however also be A
(adverbial), as in many expressions such as “last night”, “the evening before
last”, and many other expressions mainly connected with TIME.
7)
CLAUSES. A phrase must not be confused with a clause, and a noun
phrase must not be mistaken for a nominal clause.
8)
NOMINAL CLAUSES.
This term is not to be confused with
“nominalization”, although one might “nominalize” by using nominal clauses.
{See SGE 15:1, 15:3 & 15:7}. If you like you can read the whole of this SGE
section, because it is important, but this year we shall be concentrating mainly
on “THAT” NOMINAL CLAUSES {15:3} and NOMINAL RELATIVE
CLAUSES {15:7}. However, please read up to {15:12} if you have time. The
reading will not be wasted. A nominal clause substitutes for a noun phrase, we
might say, either as S (subject), O(object), C(complement), or in a limited
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number of uses, as A (adverbial). (See {15:1 and 15:7, and 8:42(Pg 184)). When
talking of nominal clauses, we do NOT say they have a head/nucleus, premodifier or post-modifier. We cannot describe clauses in this way. “That”
nominal clauses begin with “that”, but this can be omitted in most cases,
especially in speaking. Examples are:- “I thought that he would make a good
teacher.” “I’m sure that you will find Jennifer helpful”. “That Pinochet has been
refused permission to return to Chile pleases most people.” Note that in the
latter case, where the “that” nominal clause is subject, it is much more common
to “extrapose” the subject and insert a pleonastic “it” as subject, e.g. “It pleases
most people that Pinochet has been refused…….etc.”
Other very common
examples are:- “It is known that he has lost his support” , where “that he has lost
his support” is really the subject of the sentence, but in this case has been
extrapolated and placed at the end.
9) NOMINAL RELATIVE CLAUSES.
{See SGE 15:7 & 15:8}. Read this
section carefully. A nominal relative clause may begin with “what”,”whoever”,
“whatever”, etc. To test whether it is a nominal relative clause try substituting
the above pronouns for “that which”, “the people who”, “all that”, etc. If you
cannot do this, it is more likely to be an interrogative or exclamatory clause {See
SGE 15:4 & 15:6}. Examples of nominal relative clauses:- “What I like best is
classical music.” “Whoever has done this, please own up.” “I don’t know what
you are talking about.” “Whoever did that should be punished.” “What is
especially fortunate, the child was unhurt.” (Please note that the last example is
one of a nominal relative clause being used as an adverbial).
10) RELATIVE CLAUSES. Other types of relative clauses, such as defining
and non-defining relative clauses are very important, and we have already been
studying these. [See sheets/handouts on Relative Pronouns/Clauses]. Remember
that these cannot form complete sentence elements in themselves. They usually
start with “who, which, whose or that”, (though in the case of defining/restrictive
relative clauses, where the PRONOUN IS THE OBJECT OF THE RELATIVE
CLAUSE, the pronoun may be omitted, .e.g. “ I gave the book (that) you were
talking about to John.” These relative clauses, especially defining ones, are said
to be embedded in the noun phrase, and they always form part of the
postmodification of the noun phrase.
SENTENTIAL RELATIVE CLAUSES
are the clear exception to this rule. (See below).
11) SENTENTIAL RELATIVE CLAUSES.
These begin with the pronoun
“which”, and unlike all other types of relative clause, are ADVERBIALS, forming
a complete and separate adverbial sentence element. {See SGE 15:33 & 17:12}.
They refer to either a) the whole of the main clause of the sentence, or b) to the
predication part or the verb phrase of the previous or main clause. Examples
are:- “This morning my dog refused to go for his normal walk, which very much
surprised me”. “Sylvia doesn’t know how to explain to her students what Clause
Structure is about, which I find surprising and they find confusing.” The train
arrived ten minutes early, which is unheard of in the whole history of that railway
line.”
You will notice that in most sentences containing sentential relative
clauses, there is no noun phrase immediately preceding the relative clause which
it could possibly relate to. This often makes sentential relative clauses easy to
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spot. However, in the “dog” sentence above, you have to be careful, because
although the main clause ends with “his normal walk”, it is clear that the relative
clause is not referring specifically to this noun phrase, but to “refused to go”.
12) APPOSITIVE CLAUSES. Like appositive nouns and phrases, these carry
equal weight and importance, grammatically and semantically, with the
preceding noun phrase. One has to be careful in identifying Appositive Clauses.
They usually begin with “that” and can quite easily be confused with relative
clauses. However, with an Appositive Clause, the head of the noun phrase
preceding it must be an abstract noun, such as “fact”, “suggestion”, “idea”,
“remark”, “answer”, “story”, etc.
Look at the following examples:The belief that no one is infallible is well-founded.
I don’t agree with your suggestion, that we all travel on the same plane.
The idea that if we all came from similar backgrounds we would all achieve similar
success is a complete fallacy.
It will I hope be seen that the appositive clause in each of the above cases is not
“embedded” in its noun phrase, but forms a nominal clause in its own right
which acts as an alternative subject, complement or object of the sentence. It
would be correct, although rather stilted and very formal, to say “That no one is
infallible is a well-founded belief.” Regarding Example 2 above, it would be
perfectly in order to say “I don’t agree that we all travel on the same plane.”
The following points are also important and must be borne in mind.
1) As with Example 2 above, we can have non-defining or non-restrictive
appositive clauses, but unlike non-restrictive relative clauses, the pronoun is
always “that”.
For this reason such appositive clauses can easily be
distinguished from non-defining relative clauses. E.g. “I particularly love your
idea, that we should have two extra days holiday to celebrate the victory.”
2) In NO appositive clauses can the pronoun “that” be replaced by which or
who, and indeed it should never be omitted. Compare “The story (that) I had
published sold thousands of copies” and “The story that I had printed thousands of
copies was totally untrue.” Which sentence contains the appositive clause?
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