Module 15: ASEAN Food Production and Supply

Table of Contents

Language Focus

Language Focus 2: Noun phrases


A noun phrase is a group of words containing a noun and functioning in a sentence as subject, object, or prepositional object.


A noun phrase may contain determiners, quantifiers and modifiers, as well as a noun.

 

Determiner

Quantifier

Modifier

Noun

Determiners are the articles (a, an, the), demonstratives (this, that, these, those) and possessives (my, your).

Quantifiers come before the noun (much, many, a lot of, each, all, half some, etc.)

Nouns can be modified by an adjective or by another noun (small package, food label).

Nouns refer to physical things, ideas, qualities, events, roles and names.

Basic structure of noun phrases

Quantifier (+of) Determiner Adjective modifier Noun modifier Noun Other modifiers

 

a

 

 

company

 

 

a

multinational

 

firm

 in the ASEAN community

 

the

 

 

business

 

all

these

 

 

regulations

here

lots of

 

medical

 

products

 

a lot of

their

 

 

food

 

enough

 

 

 

exits

 

some

 

nice

Halal

dishes

 

each  of

 the

fresh

durian

chips

 of the company

 

Example:
Quantifiers
A quantifier can be more than one word, e.g. one hundred and fifty kilograms.
  1. A noun phrase can contain both a quantifier and a determiner, e.g. all that food.
  2. Some quantifiers come after a determiner, e.g. one of these products
  3. A possessive form functions as a determiner. ‘Many’, ‘few’, or ‘a number’ can be used after the, these, those or a possessive, e.g. the ten  countries
  4. A possessive form also functions as a determiner, e.g. the customer’s choice
  5. There can be more than one adjective or noun modifier, e.g. ASEAN Halal products
  6. The modifier can be a gerund or participle, e.g. some cooking oil,  a cooked meal
  7. An adverb can be used before a quantifier or an adjective, e.g., almost all the  time (adverb + quantifier), some really fine Thai silk (adverb + adjective)
  8. A noun phrase can be a subject, an object, a complement, or an adverbial, as well as the object of a preposition.
Grammatical Unit Example
subject ASEAN sets a food label standard.

object

Our company just launched a new product.

complement

The cost of a carton was 20 baht.

adverbial

That day something unusual happened in our warehouse.

prepositional object

The food was sold out in an hour after the opening.