Real Grammar - Susan Conrad, Douglas Biber 2009
Modifiers in Noun Phrases
Unit 39 Evidence for life on Mars
What have you learned from your grammar textbook?
There are several different kinds of modifiers that can occur in a noun phrase. Adjectives, participles, and nouns as modifiers occur before the head noun:
• beautiful flowers
• interesting story
• vegetable soup
Adjective clauses, adjective phrases, and prepositional phrases occur after the head noun:
• a friend who lives next door
• the girl sitting over there
• the lamp on the table
What does the corpus show?
A
In informational writing (newspaper and academic writing), over half of all noun phrases include a modifier. But in conversation, most noun phrases consist of only a single noun or pronoun.
B
In writing, modifiers before the head noun and after the head noun are about equally common. Many noun phrases have both:
• the educational goals which they set for disabled pupils
• a new wake-up service that eliminates rude alarm clock awakenings
C
Frequency information. Adjectives and nouns are common BEFORE the head noun in writing, but participles are relatively rare.
D
Frequency information. There are four main types of modifier that occur AFTER the head noun in writing.
*See Units 41—43, and 47.
**See Units 44 and 45.
Prepositional phrases are by far the most common type of modifier in academic writing. They often occur together in a series. Usually, these prepositions do not have their literal “physical” meaning (see Unit 46):
• Certain characteristics of matrices are of particular importance in dynamical studies of systems.
• The College of Pharmacy has gathered information from world literature on the chemistry of 70,000 plants.
Activities
1 Notice in context: Read the two paragraphs from different academic texts. Circle the head nouns and underline each noun modifier.
1. The history of the printers’ union in Scotland.
Attempts to establish a national printers’ union in Scotland began in 1836. Eventually the Scottish Typographical Association (STA) was founded in 1853. It included small offices in towns where there was a moderate amount of printing activity. The STA had a continuous existence from 1853, but there were still inequalities between offices in terms of number of members, strength, and administration.
2. Education reform in Zambia.
In the decade after independence, the high price of copper allowed the government to finance a large expansion of education and other social services. Zambia’s first development plan set the ambitious goal of providing primary school facilities for all children by 1970. There was also an emphasis on getting urban and rural children through seven grades of primary school. This rapid expansion, combined with a large teacher training program, was a huge task.
2 Analyze discourse: Look back at Activity 1. Find some noun modifiers that are examples of the following types and write them down.
1. noun before the head noun: Printers, ...
2. prepositional phrase after the head noun: in Scotland, ...
3. adjective phrase after the head noun: ...
3 Practice writing: The sentences are from an article about a political experiment. Combine each group of simple sentences to make a longer and more natural-sounding sentence, use a variety of modifiers from Sections C and D. You may need to omit some words and phrases to make your new sentence grammatical. When you are finished, compare your sentences with a partner's. Answers may be different.
1. D.T. Campbell is a famous social scientist. He once designed a social experiment. It included several towns. The towns were divided into two groups. The groups were based on citizen characteristics.
D. T. Campbell, a famous social scientist, once designed a social experiment with several towns divided into two groups based on citizen characteristics.
2. Each town had a newspaper. The newspapers were persuaded to participate in the experiment.
3. They wrote phony articles. The articles were about political candidates. They contained information about their ideas and popularity. The information was false.
4. Scientists made comparisons. The comparisons covered the two groups of towns. Each town had citizens. The citizens answered questions about the candidates so the scientists could make the comparisons.
4 Practice writing: what is your ideal situation? Be as descriptive as possible to describe exactly what you want. Circle the head nouns and underline each noun modifier as you write them.
Now with a partner think of three other topics. Write your own descriptions of what your ideal would be and compare it with your partner's ideal.