English Noun Phrases

Author: Indigo Curnick

Date: 2026-09-20

#grammar   #linguistics   #english  


Introduction

This blog is part of a series on phrases and clauses, the hub of which you can find here.

In a previous blog, we learned about nouns. Now we will abstract the noun into the noun phrase. We see in simple sentences nouns acting as both subjects and objects, for example:

However, we are not limited to just a single word to act as the grammatical noun but rather a whole phrase:

Since much of what applies to noun phrases also applies to nouns, we can define a noun phrase as being one or more words of the following structure:

Where everything in brackets is optional.

Here's some ways we could

All of those above sentences can be the noun phrase in the sentence

Let's look at each of those categories in more detail.

Determiners

Determiners help identify the noun in question. There are three classes:

We can also string together several determiners:

Another very common determiner is a genitive. There's a lively debate within grammatical communities about the class of genitives - are they a determiner, a pre-modifier, or something else entirely? Here, I'll put a genitive within the determiner class because they help us determine which noun we're talking about. However, if as you explore grammar more you find them classified differently, do not be alarmed. Genitives kind of break out ability to easily classify themselves.

For instance, we could say

Pre-Modifiers

Pre-modifiers don't help identify the noun, but rather describe the noun in more detail. The most common kind of pre-modifier is the adjective, which we'll look at in some detail. Adjectives come before a noun to help describe its qualities:

In English, adjectives used as pre-modifiers need to come in a certain order, given by the following table:

| Order | Kind | Examples | | ----- | ---------------- | -------------------------------- | | 1 | opinion | strange, ugly, beautiful | | 2 | size | big, small, tall | | 3 | physical quality | thin, clean, smooth | | 4 | shape | round, square, rectangular | | 5 | age | young, old | | 6 | colour | purple, blue, orange | | 7 | origin | English, French, European | | 8 | material | metal, wood, plastic | | 9 | type | multi-use, three-sided, L-shaped | | 10 | purpose | cleaning, hammering, cooking |

For example:

For people learning English as a second language, this is one of those things which can just trip them up constantly. I think especially as most native speakers really struggle to articulate why some adjective orders make sense but some sound really "off".

However, it's incredibly rare to see more than three adjectives modifying a noun. Even three adjectives is pushing it. The more introduced, the more complex the phrase becomes. More complex phrases are harder to parse and understand. At worst, it can start to introduce ambiguity where it is unclear which words are modifying which.

There's some other kinds of pre-modifiers I want to touch on very briefly.

There are noun adjuncts. These are nouns which modify other nouns:

There are numerals. These give a count or number:

There are also participle phrases. These are a whole class of phrases by themselves, which deserve an entire blog. In brief, though, these are verbs which have been converted into a phrase which can modify a noun:

There are also a series of compound modifiers, which can have remarkable internal structure:

Post-Modifiers

Post-modifiers are an even more varied subject than pre-modifiers. The structure of English means that post-modifiers are just easier to process than pre-modifiers. We saw that adjectives as pre-modifiers are usually limited to no more than three. However, for post-modifiers, we can stack a lot without it becoming cluttered. This is why there are so many kinds of post-modifiers. As such, we won't look at every single type of post-modifier in detail, but instead look at the main ones and then just touch on the extended family.

The most common post-modifier by far is the prepositional phrase. In this construction, it's almost always going to start with a preposition. These help give details like location, possession, purpose, topics, sources and so on:

The next most common is relative clauses, which are introduced with a relative pronoun. The relative pronouns in English are: who, whom, whose, which, and that. In this context, we're interested in the kinds of relative clauses which help identify the subject:

In fact, relative clauses are much more complex than presented here, and I wrote about them in more detail in my blog on pronouns here.

The final kind of post-modifier we will look at is the appositive clause. Unfortunately, the English word that does double duty; it introduces both some relative clauses and appositive clauses:

We can differentiate relative clauses from appositive clauses by the fact that appositive clauses can be stand alone sentences, while relative clauses can not be stand alone sentences (without some modification):

Conclusion

We've seen a satisfactory overview of noun phrases in this blog. While every detail hasn't been covered, you should have enough information to identify noun phrases, and their substructure. The main thing to remember is noun phrases have the following structure:

I hope this gives you an appreciation for some of the subtler aspects of English grammar, and the remarkable complexity that can be achieved.

References

Murray, L. (1859 (1795)) English Grammar Adapted to the Different Classes of Learners. With an Appendix, Containing Rules and Observations, for Assisting the More Advanced Students to Write with Perspicuity and Accuracy. John Murphy & Co.

Greenbaum, S., Nelson, G. (2002) An Introduction to English Grammar. Pearson Education Limited

Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G., Svartik, J. (1985) A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. Longman.

Collins Editors, (2017). Cobuild English Grammar. Harper Collins Publishers.