The order and zones of premodifiers in English nominal phrases

Abstract

It is a fact that nominal phrases are a crucial part of natural language. However, noun phrases are known for exhibiting extremely complex structure in many cases. Given to this fact, it is also important to consider semantic relationships among the words that serve as premodifiers in nominal phrases. Despite the fact that pronominal modifiers are often marked by explicit semantic and lexical clues – in nominal phrase that are premodified with one or few premodifiers. Nevertheless, when students of English as foreign language, study complex nominal phrases - that exhibit a string of premodifiers, the clues appear to be vague – unless we manage to clearly divide them into zones of premodification. The importance of nominal phrases and nominal premodifiers has already been well-established due to their commonness in one hand and their complexity on the other. Nonetheless, herein – I have in addition sought further explanation for the order of the premodifiers in English nominal phrase. Moreover, the aim of this thesis is to truly attempt the validity of rather divergent explanations suggested by well-renowned authorities in English linguistics. The method employed in this thesis was to conduct a wide survey of English nominal phrases that I could collect from many varieties and registers of English. However, I have focused my research on nominal phrases that, by observation, exhibit a long string of premodifiers, and then analyze the order of premodifiers at all levels, including semantics, pragmatics, syntax, etc., for the purpose of ascertaining the accuracy of the gained results against the one hundred million word British National Corpus. Based on the conducted research, this thesis suggests how the elements of the approaches - used in the past by the recognized academicians – can be integrated into a comprehensible scholarly explanation, and offers a new and important element that may bridge the gaps found in previous explanations. Namely, that the words’ semantic structure, which indeed is a combination of various types and dimensions of meaning – that builds up the sense of each premodifier. The new elements included in this research are nominal phrases that are nominal phrases that are premodified by a long string or long groups of nominal premodifiers – up to ten words that enabled me to analyze them and attempt to ascertain why premodifiers occur regularly in various positions in the order. Moreover, I have sought to explain also the historical development of premodifier order in English nominal phrases.