Some people definitly seem to dislike gerunds; they refuse to accept such a word exists and that all gerunds are in fact participles. Although I have not wiped the word gerund out of my brain, I can see some sense in why you choose to ignore that

Taking for ever to make up their minds, John and his wife, with little apprehension, care, or dignity, commited insurance fraud. In bold: Function: Subject. Head of phrase is John and wife But it is a noun phrase. There is nothing else you can

It is a logical assumption to say that she may make a fatal mistake in subsequent acts, Would you agree that 'to say' is a post modifier/adjective for the noun assumption? No. I'd say that the infinitive phrase, " to say X "

Sorry, this is simply me forgetting to add it in. Yes, it is a part of the noun phrase. As you said, it is a prep. phrase modifiying 'life.' A noun phrase is simply just the head noun plus its modifiers, in the form of prep. phrases, etc.

Why not call the whole clause a noun phrase? How do you know where to stop?? A noun phrase is just like a noun: it has to be the subject, object, complement etc within a clause. Therefore, no it cannot be a whole clause. Remember that a phrase is

<< the end of the virtuous life of Abigail will be grave. >> Please educate me about noun phrases. I'm still trying, but I'm slow to catch on. I never heard of them until I joined EF. Any group of words beginning with a noun is

Hi Guys, So, since 'albeit' is a subordinating conjunction, it is now clear that it has to join clauses . In the original sentence, 'albeit' is not joining two clauses. Conjunctions are "connectors", and can connect

I believe that what you say is true. I hasten to add one small caveat. There is a generic naming procedure which allows phrases and clauses to be named after the part of speech of the word which fronts them. This is not without its confusing

And you also think that an adjective can be an object of a preposition... Never! As I've tried to suggest, I'm in the process of restructuring. I misunderstood that people were trying to convince me than a noun phrase is so named because

'It's definitly adverbial, answering the question how' Would you say that the italicised words are a gerund phrase? And is therefore an appositive for the word, adverbial? I'd rather stick needles in my eyes. It makes me ill to say