Identifying Noun Phrases Exercises

What a noun phrase is

A noun phrase is a word or group of words that works like a noun in a sentence. Its most important word is the head noun. Everything else in the phrase gives more information about the head.

A noun phrase can be as short as one word:

• People like to have money. (People and money are noun phrases.)
• I am tired. (I is a pronoun and counts as a noun phrase.)

It can also be long:

• the old man
• two new books
• the girl in the red coat
• a plan to open a café

Noun phrases can be the subject of a sentence, the object of a verb, the complement after be, or the object of a preposition.

Parts of a noun phrase

Before the head noun (premodifiers):

• determiners: the, a, this, those, my, her
• quantifiers and numbers: some, many, two, six
• adjectives: old, new, tiny, wooden
• sometimes nouns used as modifiers: a school bus

These usually appear in this order: determiner or quantifier, then number, then adjectives, then the head noun. For example: those two tiny blue cups. When there are several adjectives, a common order is opinion, size, age, shape, colour, origin, material, so we say a beautiful old Italian car, not an Italian old beautiful car. This order is a strong tendency in English rather than an exact law.

After the head noun (postmodifiers):

• prepositional phrases: the house on the corner
• relative clauses: the film we watched
• -ing or -ed phrases: the man standing over there
• to-infinitives: a plan to open a café
• that clauses after nouns like idea and fact: the idea that learning is easy

A method for finding noun phrases

1. Find the verb first. The phrases before and after it are often noun phrases.
2. Find the head noun. Ask which noun the phrase is really “about”.
3. Add the words that belong with it. Include determiners and adjectives before the noun and any modifier directly after it.
4. Use a substitution test. If you can replace the whole group with it, they, he, she or them, it is probably a noun phrase.
5. Watch for nested phrases. In the girl in the red coat, the longer phrase contains a smaller one (the red coat).

Exercise 1: Find the noun phrases

Write down every noun phrase and underline its head noun. Ignore noun phrases nested inside longer ones, except where noted.

1. The old man sat on a wooden bench.
2. My sister bought two new books yesterday.
3. The girl in the red coat is my cousin.
4. Everyone enjoyed the film we watched.
5. Maria’s brother has a plan to open a café.
6. Those three tired children fell asleep.

Exercise 2: Find the head noun

1. the extremely popular Italian restaurant
2. the idea that learning is easy
3. some students from Brazil
4. an eight-year-old boy with a red kite

Exercise 3: Put the words in order

Arrange the words into one noun phrase.

1. blue / those / two / tiny / cups
2. a / big / red / ball
3. leather / brown / her / old / bag

Answers

Exercise 1 (head noun in capitals)

1. The old MAN; a wooden BENCH
2. My SISTER; two new BOOKS (yesterday is an adverb)
3. The GIRL in the red coat (the phrase the red coat is nested inside it); my COUSIN
4. EVERYONE (a pronoun); the FILM we watched (a relative clause follows the noun)
5. Maria’s BROTHER; a PLAN to open a café (the nested phrase a café is inside it)
6. Those three tired CHILDREN

Exercise 2

1. restaurant
2. idea
3. students
4. boy

Exercise 3

1. those two tiny blue cups
2. a big red ball
3. her old brown leather bag

Common slips

• Stopping too early. The girl is a noun phrase, but in the sentence above the full phrase is the girl in the red coat. Include postmodifiers that belong to the noun.
• Including the verb. A noun phrase does not usually include the main verb of the sentence.
• Forgetting one-word phrases. Pronouns and bare plural nouns, such as Everyone and Students, are also noun phrases.

Once you can find noun phrases, you can recognise other sentence parts more easily. See the exercises on indirect objects, which are often noun phrases, and the practice with independent clauses. For mixed editing practice, try the sentence correction exercises.