Abstract
The term ‘noun’ is used to describe the class of lexical items whose prototypical members refer to entities ( chair, film, leg ), substances ( butter, concrete, blood ), and named individuals or locations ( John, Paris, France ). Traditionally, the term ‘noun phrase’ has then been used to describe any phrase consisting of a noun as its central constituent (or ‘head’) and capable of functioning as an argument (e.g., subject or object) in a sentence. Examples, in which the head nouns are in bold type, are: my big red chair , the butter on the table ; John , who is a lion-tamer . The structure of noun phrases, which in many respects appears to be as complex as the structure of sentences, has become a controversial issue. While some linguists maintain that noun phrases are headed by nouns, others insist that the head of a noun phrase should be the ‘determiner’ (e.g., the definite article the in the butter on the table ). According to these theorists, noun phrases should really be called ‘determiner phrases.’
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