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In grammatical theory, a noun phrase (abbreviated NP) is a phrase whose head is a noun or a pronoun, optionally accompanied by a set of modifiers. These modifiers may be:
- Determiners: Articles (the, a), demonstratives (this, that), numerals (two, five, etc.), possessives (my, their, etc.), and quantifiers (some, many, etc.) In English determiners are usually placed before the noun.
- Adjectives (the red ball)
- Complements, in the form of an adpositional phrase (the man with a black hat), or a relative clause (the books that I bought yesterday).
In English, for some purposes noun phrases can be treated as single grammatical units. This is most noticeable in the syntax of the English genitive case. In a phrase such as The King of Sparta's wife, the possessive clitic 's is not added to the King who actually owns the wife, but instead to Sparta, to which the wife only remotely belongs. The clitic modifies the entire phrase King of Sparta.
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