Search results for 'tag:Noun phrases tag:Definite articles' matching tags 'Noun phrases' and 'Definite articles'

review

somer — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 19:49:02 GMT

3a) A cat ate the small animal.

3b) A cat is a small animal.

The syntactic analyses of the two sentences are differents. In the sentence 3a) we have (s, v, do) while, in the second sentence 3b) we have (s, v (copular), sP).

In 3a) âa cat âis noun phrase (a is determiner indefinite article, cat is head noun of noun phrase âa catâ), âateâ is verb in past simple tense,â the small animal â is noun phrase consist of determiner âtheâ, âsmallâ is adjective , âanimalâ is the head noun of the noun phrase, all the noun phrase functions as direct object.

In 3b) âa catâ is noun phrase (a is determiner indefinite article, cat is head noun of noun phrase âa catâ) function as subject, âisâ copular verb in simple present tense,â a small animalâ noun phrase consist of the indefinite determiner âaâ , the adjective small , and the head noun of the noun phrase âanimalâ, the noun phrase function as subject predicative.

Differences in the meaning: the first sentence means that there was a cat and it ate the small animal "the small animal" should be mentioned before, or known to the reader, while the second sentence means that a cat is a kind of animal and it is small. We are talking generally here.

What types of phrase have been underlined?

ericsteef — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 17:45:46 GMT

I answered this question i just need someone check my answer and tell me if there a mistake and what is the correction of it.

What types of phrase have been underlined? Analyse the phrases and give information about what elements they contain and what sort of words they consist of.

Hercule Poirot made his first appearance in The Mysterious Affair at Styles, Participial Phrase called upon by his friend Hastings, to solve a most mysterious murder. This Belgian refugee from the First World War began his career as a police officer - Christie felt it only fitting that he had a professional background as it would explain his knowledge of police proceedings when he later became a private detective. He began his private career on the continent, which is where he formed his lifelong friendship with Hastings.

Poirot would be the first to call himself a great man - he has never been known for his modesty - but with such success in his career he is quite justified in his opinion! He finishes each case with a dramatic dÃ©nouement, satisfying his own ego and confirming to all, that he is truly âthe greatest mind in Europe.â His love of elegance, beauty, and precision, as well as his eccentric mannerisms are often ridiculed by the local bumbling policemen, but it is always Poirot who has the last word!

Christie's inspiration for Poirot lay behind the Belgian refugees who had escaped the war and made their home in the Parish of Torre. Christie had seen how the locals had opened their arms to them and how some, not understanding the British way of life, preferred to do things their own way. Christie decided to make Poirot more mature, a decision she would later regret; âthe result is that my fictional detective is well over a hundred by now.â

But not even Christie could ever have imagined how popular Poirot would become, nor how many stories she would write about him. He would star in thirty-three novels and fifty-four short stories, including some of Christieâs best such as Murder on the Orient Express, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and Death on the Nile.

Poirot deserves his place in crime fiction history and this was certainly achieved on his death in 1975; Poirot became the only fictional character in history to be honoured with an obituary on the front of The New York Times!

(Adapted from the official Agatha Christie page (http://uk.agathachristie.com)

a professional background:

it is NP âaâ is indefinite article function as determiner.âProfessionalâ is adjective,â

a professionalâ is a premodifier of the noun phrase, âbackground âis the head noun of the noun phrase.

2-Christie's inspiration for Poirot :

it is NP âChristieâsâ is noun of the noun phrase form functions as Premodifier ,â inspirationâ the head noun of the noun phrase âfor Poirotâ i

2-Christie's inspiration for Poirot :

it is NP âChristieâsâ is noun of the noun phrase form functions as Premodifier ,â inspirationâ the head noun of the noun phrase âfor Poirotâ is Prep: P âforâ preposition âPoirotâ noun and all the phrase âfor Poirotâ is the postmodifeir of the noun phrase.

3-More mature:

adjective phrase in its comparative form consists of âmoreâ determiner function as premodifier of the adjective phrase and âmatureâ adjective is the head of the adjective phrase.

Could have imagined:

verb phrase consists of, âcouldâ modal auxiliary verb, âhaveâ grammatical auxiliary, imagined stative verb in past participle form and all the phrase in the present perfective tense.

In thirty-three novels:

prepositional phrase consists of preposition âinâ,â thirty three" Post determinerâ âNovelsâ is the head noun of the noun phrase.

Re: When the teacher (had) arrived, they stopped talking.

Ant_222 — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 12:21:49 GMT

New2grammar
My problem with definite and indefinite articles is less than with definite/indefinite pronouns. I think I'm starting to see other and another as indefinite articles, my as definite article and mine as indefinite article.

There's no such corellation, except for "another", which is in fact "an" + "other", so dont' need to think of these words as capable of rendering a noun definite or indefinite on their own.

"Take by my hand" â how can it be definite when we don't no which hand is in question?

"Your English is better than mine" â how can it be indefinite when it's a comparison of the English skills of two people?

... And so on.

New2grammar
I have to say referring to other, another, my, mine as definite/indefinite is something new to me.

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.

as

Inchoateknowledge — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 17:03:01 GMT

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 on what definite means?

thanks

Re: labelling

Mister Micawber — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 07:14:04 GMT

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 -- Subject
bought -- Verb
my wife -- Indirect object: I didn't buy my wife, I bought a can opener, but she receives the benefit of my purchase.
a new can opener -- Direct object: this is directly what was purchased.

The new coach seems determined and competent

The new coach -- Subject (a noun phrase containing the definite article the and the adjective new)
seems -- (Linking) Verb
determined, competent -- Predicate adjectives
and -- Coordinating Conjunction for the compound predicate, determined and competent.

Re: adjective phrases

miriam — Tue, 11 Oct 2005 02:34:32 GMT

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 the adverb "very" is a premodifier.

In your other sentences there are adjectives but not adjective phrases. For example, in "a beautiful young girl", "beautiful" and "young" are separate adjectives that modify the same noun, but they are not an adjective phrase.

You also ask if a subject could a subject have the form of an adjectival phrase or is it always a nominal. The answer to that is "yes". Certain adjectives can function as heads of noun phrases and so they can be subject of the sentence, complement, object, and object of a preposition. Have a look at these examples. In all of them, the words underlined are adjectives acting as nouns:

Adjective as subject: "The old and sick were helped out of the building."

Adjective as object: "He admires the mystical."

Adjective as subject complement: "The T.V programme you're talking about is The young and the restless".

Adjective as object of a preposition: "He is a big magnet for the undesirable."

In the examples above, determiners (such as the definite article) are part of the adjective phrases, but that is only because the adjectives are "acting" as nouns. On the other hand, in the sentences you posted, the articles are not part of any adjective phrase. They are sort of "independent" modifiers of the nouns.

Miriam

Re: Countable Or Uncountable?

paco2004 — Sun, 24 Apr 2005 11:56:17 GMT

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 get enough persuasive responses (Post:56071).

As for some nouns (especially substantive nouns), English distinction between countable/uncountable seems mostly reasonable cross-linguistically. But for some nouns (above all abstract nouns), the distinction cannot be logically understood to non-native English speakers. I think we should take this kind of distinction as a matter belonging to the realm of linguistic habit particular to English rather than to the realm of universally available reasons. Countableness for some nouns is different even between similar European languages. For example, "information" is deemed as uncountable in English but it is countable in French and German. So I think we had better learn English's countableness of nouns without asking why it is so. (BBC grammar QA).

Nevertheless, I'd like to add about your question what I feel personally. I think English people someway has a tendency to take a thing as countable in the case they could feel there would be things similar to that thing. For example, let me take the case of "knowledge". When you say "knowledge" without adding the indefinite article "a", it means a general and indefinable amount/sort of "acquaintance with something through experience and intelligence". But when you say "He has a knowledge of biology", the noun phrase "a knowledge of biology" is interpreted to imply "a certain sort/amount of knowledge on biology such as that you can imagine other people also might have one similar to that. It is my humble opinion.

Anyway as I'm a beginner of English learning and don't know much about English, you'd better not believe me so much. Our teachers and other native speakers must give you much much better answers. Please wait until then.

paco

Re: Sentence analysis

hela — Sun, 16 Jan 2005 13:19:46 GMT

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 of = complex preposition
Fear = noun
Of = preposition
Retribution = noun

Sentence elements:

The representative = subject
Told = verb
The press = indirect object
A lie = direct object
Out of fear of retribution = adverbial of reason

2) Children should watch less television.

Parts of speech:

Children = noun
Should = modal auxiliary
Watch = transitive verb
Less = comparative adjective (?)
Television = noun

Sentence elements:

Children = subject (noun phrase)
Should watch = verb (verb phrase)
Less television = direct object (?) (noun phrase)

3) We walked five miles to a garage.

Parts of speech:

We = subjective personal pronoun
Walked = intransitive verb (?)
Five = determinative adjective / cardinal numeral (?)
Miles = nouns
To = preposition
A = definite pronoun
Garage = noun

Sentence elements:

We = subject
Walked = verb
Five miles = adverbial (?)
To a garage = adverbial of place

See you for another post,
Hela

Re: Exclamatory sentence

Mister Micawber — Wed, 13 Oct 2004 01:12:02 GMT

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 are', we also cannot have 'X how a lovely flower this is'.-- we must use 'what' in both cases. However, with the inversion rule, we can also have 'how lovely a flower this is', 'I bought too big a house', etc.

As for a logical reason, all I can do is quote Greenbaum and Quirk: 'In exclamative clauses, the exclamative element is formed with what as predeterminer in a noun phrase and how as intensifier of an adjective, adverb or clause; the exclamative element is positioned initially regardless of its normal position in a declarative clause.' This doesn't really explain anything, though.

Hope this helps.

Re: In which

miriam — Wed, 07 Jul 2004 10:06:28 GMT

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 indefinite article "a" doesn't modify the noun "person" only; it modifies the whole construction "person or object".
"a" is a premodifier of the whole noun phrase and, within that construction are the two heads (nouns).

The construction "a person or an object", which you suggested, is also possible. Both are grammatically correct.

Miriam