By Noun phrases, Definite articles

We didn't refer to this words alone. It were noun phrases buit therewith that we called definite or indefinite. And since nouns can be (in)definte, that's all right.

Hello "The definite article the marks a noun phrase as definite: that is, as referring to something which can be identified uniquely in the contextual or general knowledge shared by speaker and hearer." question: What does the second as mean? What comes after the second as? Is it an elaboration...

Briefly (and reasonably accurately), the direct object receives the action of the verb, while the indirect object receives the benefit of the action:I bought my wife a new can opener.I -- Subjectbought -- Verbmy wife -- Indirect object: I didn't buy my wife, I bought a can opener, but she...

And hello yet again, Hela! In the sentences in your first post there is only one adjective phrase: "very little", in sentence # 3. An adjective phrase is a construction that has an adjective as its "head" (the most important word. In "very little", "little" is the head -it's an adjective- and...

Hello Infinity. I'm a mere English learner from Japan, but could you allow me to throw my 2 cents on your question? Frankly speaking, I'd say you'd better give up the hope you could get a conclusive answer to the question. I have raised a similar question before in this forum but I could not...

Hello, Nobody replied to my previous post, but I hope someone will for this one 1) The representative told the press a lie out of fear of retribution. Parts of speech: The = definite article Representative = noun Told = ditransitive verb Press = noun A = indefinite article Lie = noun Out...

Hi Taka, Yes I've found the reference-- it's over in 'adjectives', and has to do with the rather anomalous order of adjectives with intensifiers 'how, too' etc. where the order of indefinite article and attibutive adjective is reversed. So, just as we cannot have 'X how lovely flowers these...

Hello, runner I don't know if this will be very easy to understand. It will depend, perhaps, on how familiar you are with syntactic analisis. "a person or object" is a noun phrase which has two heads: person and object. Both heads appear in coordination (linked by the conjunction "or"). The...

Dave, First of all, and even when everyone is surely aware of this, I must insist that even when I believe my knowledge of the English grammar is good, I'm not a grammarian or a linguist. It would be completely absurd for me to try and analyse a language that is not even my own in depth when I...

The full grammatical explanation is that an adjective modified by the intensifiers 'too', 'so' or 'enough' can be separated from its complementation if the adjective is placed before the indefinite article of the noun phrase. Let's take "It was so hot a day that we went out." Adjective:...