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CHAPTER II

REVIEW OF LITERATURES, CONCEPTS, AND THEORETICAL

FRAMEWORK

2.1 Literary Review

There are some previous studies done by some researchers who conducted the

research in the same field. The first paper was Widayadi‟s English Noun Phrase

Structure in Washington Irving’s Prose Rip Van Winkle in 2007. He explained the

structure of the English noun phrase and how the X-Bar theory applied toward the

noun phrase in the text. His paper was based on the theory of the noun phrase, either

in standard in 1965 or X-Bar theory in 1970, focusing on internal structure of the

English noun phrase function and interaction with other constituents and the

application of the X-Bar theory. This writing referred to some theories: firstly, the

theory which referred to the English noun phrase structure, and secondly is the X-Bar

theory. The theory were adopt from an introduction to the principle of

transformational grammar by Akmajian and Henry. There are several finding on this

paper. First, the structure of noun phrases found in Irving‟s Rip Van Winkle and the

application of the X-Bar theory toward the structures stated that multiple-determiners

was considered as an ill-form in En

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sh noun phrase construction. Second, the application of X-Bar theory toward the

structure presented that it should be there are three levels categories, namely N, N-

bar, and N-double bar in noun phrase.

The second is the student‟s undergraduate thesis done by Parwata (2001)

Compound Nouns in English. The aims of his writing were to analyze the compounds

proposed by Baurer, but this paper analyzed only two sub–classifications of

compounds, namely compound nouns and their comparison to phrase compounds.

The supporting data in this study were collected by library research. The result of the

data analysis showed that there were actually similarities and differences between

compound nouns and phrase compounds. The comparison was done based on certain

variables namely: elements which form compounds, criteria of compounds and

productivity of compounds. The last one is productivity of compounds which means

the pattern of compounds can be used synchronically in the production of new forms.

The aim of his study is to analyze compound noun, then compared to phrase,

particularly compound nouns and phrase compounds which are related to the

problems above, as well as to distinguish both of them.

The third thesis was finished by Darmawati(1997) in her thesis entitled“The

analysis of noun phrase used in Shagan’sThe discovery with reference to leech’s

seven types of meaning” (1997.) In order to identify the characteristics of language by

the speaker, the aims of her study are to analyze the noun phrase in terms of their

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meaning. The theory applied in her paper is proposed by Geoffrey Leech in his book

entitled Semantics the Study of Meaning (1981). The data are derived from one

source, it is the novel entitled The Discovery by Steve Shagan. In this case, the data

was analyzed on the basis of Noun Phrase related to Seven Types of Meaning. The

analysis shows that the use of Reflected meaning occurs mostly than other types of

meaning. This is basically influenced by story of the novel, in that case about

detective story. Her specific purpose is trying to give a clear description on the

analysis of the Noun Phrases used in the novel entitled The Discovery and then relate

it with the analysis of Seven Types of Meaning.

The ford reviewed done by Dewi entitled “ The analysis of English Noun

Phrases in Tourism Brochures”(2004) she discusses type of Noun Phrases selected as

appropriate to different types of situation in tourism brochures. Her study was an

attempt to answer and solve three basic problems : First, What is the realization of

context of situation used in tourism brochures; second, What type of Noun Phrases

that is used in the tourism brochures, and the third is, What is the function of noun

phrases in the tourism brochures. The data was collected from three different

hospitality industries. All of them were analyzed based on two main theories. They

are discourse theory proposed by Halliday and Hasa (1985) concerning three

components of context of situation and another theory from Dixon (1991) concerning

classification of nouns.

This literary review enclosed an article from international journal retrieved

from Rush‟s The Noun Phrase In Advertising English it can found in journal of

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pragmatic Volume 29, Issue 2, February 1998, Pages 155-171. The purpose of this

journal is to give formal description of two unusual features of the noun phrase in

English print advertising: its ability to operate as an independent clause in all areas of

a headline, subhead, signature line, text and its complex pre-modifying structures.

Pre-modification in the noun phrase is characterized by the abundant use comparative

and superlative adjectives and colorful compounds, ad by the tendency to place the

product (or made) name in first or early position in lengthy designations. This last,

unusual feature disrupts the traditional word-order of pre-modifying adjective in the

noun phrase. Examples selected for analysis are chiefly from current (1993-1996)

Canadian and American newspaper and magazines.

The previous studies have investigated the research on the same area. They

analyzed or discussed about noun phrase and their syntactic patterns of the sentences.

Compared to those previous studies, this study has an obvious similarity, namely

analyzing English Noun phrases in term of their structure and this study also used

theory of tree diagrams to analyze the syntactic pattern of sentence as those previous

studies. However, this study has different subject of the study. It analyzed the

syntactic patterns inthe novel entitled Angels and Demons. Parwata analyzed the

syntactic patterns inof the compound noun, whereas, Dewi analyzed noun phrases in

the Tourism Brochures and Cok Istri Ari analyzed in Shagan’s The discovery, and the

last literary from international journal by Rush, analyzed noun phrase in the

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advertising English Furthermore, this study used different Data source. The data was

taken from the novel entitled “Angels and Demons”.

2.2 Concepts

This section discussed about the basic concept of noun phrase, the definition

of noun, phrase and noun phrase. The concept of the study based on the theory by the

experts in the field of syntaxes like Bornstein, leech et.al and Fromkin that support

this study and the explanations follows:

2.2.1 Noun

According to the Oxford Advanced Learner‟s Dictionaries (1978, 1039), noun

is a word that refers to a person, (such as Ann or doctor), a place (such as Paris or

city) or a thing, a quality or an activity (such as plant, sorrow or tennis).

Noun is very large of words which refer to entities (person, things, substances,

places, and abstraction of various kinds).

Bornstein (1977:55) defines a common noun that is the name that can be

applied to any member of a class of living beings or lifeless thing such as man, book,

house, car, etc. A proper noun is the name of particular living being or lifeless thing

such as Shakespeare, Napoleon, New York, England. An abstract noun is the name of

quality, action, state, or general idea such as freedom, growth, honor, etc. A collective

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noun is a noun naming a group f things, animals, or persons. For example: flocks,

committee, class, jury, etc.

2.2.2 Phrase

According to the Oxford Advanced Learner‟s Dictionaries (1978, 1135),

phrase is a group of words without a finite verb, especially one that forms part of a

sentence. „the green car‟ and „on Friday morning‟ are phrases.

Phrase is a grammatical unit which may consist of one or more than one word,

and which is one of the classes of constituent into which simple sentences can be

divided. The main types of phrase are noun phrase, verb phrase, prepositional phrase,

adjective phrase and adverb phrase. Each is named after the word class which plays

the most important part in its structure. It is usually functioning as a single unit in the

syntax of the sentence. For example, the big black dog at the end of the street is a

phrase. It acts like a noun. It can further be broken down into two shorter phrases

functioning as adjectives: at the end of the street and of the street, a shorter

prepositional phrase within the longer prepositional phrase. At the end of the street

could be replaced by an adjective such as nearby: the nearby house or even the house

nearby.

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2.2.3 Noun Phrases

According to the Oxford Advanced Learner‟s Dictionaries(1978,1039), noun

phrase is a word or group of words in a sentence that behaves in the same way as a

noun, that is as a subject, an object, a complement, or as the object of a preposition.

According to Bornstein (1977:55), noun phrase is a group of words in which

the head word (main word) is a noun or pronoun. The noun phrase can consist of a

single noun or pronoun, or of noun or pronoun with modifiers. Bornstein (1977:242)

states in traditional grammar, noun is defined as the name of a person, place, quality,

or thing.

2.3 Theoretical Framework

There are so many theories about noun phrase but, this study used the theory

of Leech, et.al. in their book entitled English Grammar for Today as main theory

(Structure and function of noun phrase).

There are several ways to classify the types of nouns that exist in the English

language. In traditional grammar, nouns are taught to be words that refer to people,

places, things, or abstract ideas. Here are several different kinds of nouns. This sub-

chapter describes about the class or types of noun:

1.3.1 The class of NOUNS (N) is far by the most numerous word class.

According to Leech, et.al.(1982) Structure there are several class as follow:

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1) FUNCTION: Noun can function as head (H) of a noun phrase(NP). A good

way to recognize an NP is to see whether it will fit into a frame such as have

you heard about….? Or Did you know about …? It is generally possible for

an NP to begin with the, and so good test for a noun ( which does not apply,

however, to proper nouns is whether it can fit the frame „the-„, The, the most

common word in English, has a special name: the DEFINITE ARTICLE.

2) FORM:

a) Many nouns have characteristic suffixes: e.g-er (singer), -ist

(hypnotist), -hood (falsehood), -ence (preference), -ness

(goodness).there are many exceptions, however, longer, is an

Aj, linger is a V.

b) Most nouns can change their form from SINGULAR to

PLURAL by adding –s or -es (goal, goals; dress, dresses)or by

some other change of form (woman, women; foot, feet;

bacillus, bacilli).Such nouns are count nouns, as opposed to

mass nouns.

3) MEANING: Nouns typically refer to physical phenomena: people. Objects,

places, substances, etc. Such nouns are called CONCRETE nouns; but there

are also ABSTRACT nouns referring to events, states, activities, processes,

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time, occasions, etc.: birth, happiness, refinement, revival, birthday, and

meeting.

Member of such a large class of words as nouns will obviously not all

behave in the same way. We can distinguish these subclasses in term of form,

function and meaning:

a) COUNT/MASS: Count Nouns (e.g. table, dog, idea, mile) refer to

thins that can be counted, and can therefore have a plural form (tables,

etc.). Mass Nouns on the other hand, refer to substances, qualities,

etc., that we do not think of as coming in countable „lumps‟; such

nouns normally have no plural (*golds,*happinesses). Notice

however, that the same noun may belong to both categories: in Her

hair is brown, hair is a mass noun, but in I found a hair in my soup, it

is a count noun. A/an is termed the INDEFINITE ARTICLE, and, like

the numbers one, two, etc., is a maker of count nouns: a hair makes

good sense, but not *a sunshine.

b) PROPER/COMMON: Proper nouns denote an individual person,

place, etc., whereas common nouns classify things into types. A

proper noun normally begins with a capital letter: Jhon, Goldilocks,

London, Africa, etc.; it generally has no plural form (*Jhons,

*Africas), and cannot generally occur after the ora/an: (*a Jhon, *an

Africa). Common nouns, on the other hand, can occur after the. So all

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the count and mass nouns discussed in (a) are common nouns, for

examples:

noun + noun bedroom, water tank, motorcycle, printer cartridge

noun + verb rainfall, haircut, train-spotting

noun + adverb hanger-on, passer-by

adverb + noun onlooker, bystander

adjective + noun greenhouse, software, redhead

c) COLLECTIVE NOUNS: These are generally count nouns, but even in

the singular form they refer to groups of people, animals or things:

family, government, and committee. Grammatically, the thing to notice

about collective nouns is their ability, sometimes, to go with plural

verb even when they themselves are singular: her family live/lives in

Manchester. (sometimes, however, proper nouns are treated like

common nouns: there’s a London in Ontario; I know several Johns,

etc.)

In language like German and Latin, nouns vary their form for CASE (e,g. subject

versus object function) and have differences of GENDER (e.g. masculine, feminine).

These notions usefully apply to English pronouns, but not to English nouns.

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2.3.2 Noun Phrase Structures

According to Leech, et.al.(1982:61) Structure of NPs are very diverse, but the

chief elements include the following:

2.3.2.1. The Head of an NP may be:

1) A noun : (the H

doll), (dear H Margaret), etc.

2) A pronoun : (H It), (

H herself), (

H everyone (in the street)), etc.

Pronouns function as head (H)

a) Personal pronoun: I, we, you, he, she, it, they, me, us, them, myself,

yourself, herself, himself, etc.

b) Demonstrative pronoun: this, that, these, those.

Quantifier pronoun:

a) General: all, some, any, none, several, etc.

b) Compound: everybody, someone, anything, nobody, etc.

c) Gradable: many, much more, most, few, fewer, little, least, etc.

Wh- pronoun: who, whom, whose, what, which, whichever, etc.

The simple rule is that word from these classes which function as head

are pronoun, and those which function as modifiers are determiners. This role

has one exception: the so-called possessive pronouns my, your, their, whose,

etc., occur as modifiers, as in my sister, your book, etc. but strictly, these are

cases of subordination, the possessive pronoun acting as head of a genitive

phrase: (M

GP(H

pnyour) M

AjfavoriteH

Nbook), (M

GP(H

pn her) M

N dislike M

PP(of

J.R.)).

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3) an adjective : (the H absurd),

There are two types-of adjectives that can function as nouns. The first

type includes adjectives that refer to groups of people by specifying some

quality, including nationality, that they have in common, e.g.:

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

This wing of the hospital is reserved for the critically ill.

The British and the French do not always understand each other.

These adjectives functioning as nouns always have generic reference,

do not inflect for number or the -s genitive, and require a singular verb. There

are other cases where adjectives may be said, function as nouns at a

superficial level, but it would be more accurate to say that they represent or

substitute nouns (i.e. as pronouns), e.g.:

Do you prefer Irish coffee or Turkish (coffee)?

We ordered mashed potatoes, but he served us boiled (potatoes).

The red dress is prettier, but the green (dress) suits her better.

The noun head in such sentences is elliptic, i.e. retrievable from

context (most often in the preceding clause); it can have specific or generic

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reference and be singular or plural. These cases of ellipsis can thus be

distinguished from the adjective-nouns described above. With the first type,

referring to groups of people, only a noun such as people or human beings

could be inserted:

Rich people get richer and poor people get poorer.

This wing of the hospital is reserved for people who are critically ill.

British people and French people do not always understand each other.

With the second type, although it is sometimes possible to insert a

vague word like thing, there is often no corresponding noun:

The best (thing) is yet to come.

In science one sometimes has to distinguish the unknown (facts,

things) from the unknowable (facts, things).

4) an enumerator : (all H fifteen),

Enumerator can act as a head which is a cardinal or ordinal number, e.g.

NP [The Hninth] is my particular favorite

NP [The other Hseven] continued with the trip

5) genitive phrase : (H (jhon‟s)).

The Genitive Phrase (GP)

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Function. GPs function either as pre-modifier (M) or as a heads (H) in

Nps.

Structure. GPs are just like NPs except that they end with the

particle „s („) (i.e. GP=NP‟s), which is not, however, always separately

pronounced. Some possessive pronouns are irregular, in that they function

as GPs, but do not end „s – e.g. my, mine.

2.3.2.2. The Premodifier of an NP may be:

1) Determiners : (M

this morning), (M

what M

a girl), etc.

2) Enumerators : (M

two eggs), (the M

third man), etc.

3) Adjectives : (M

red shoes), (M

older music), etc.

4) Nouns : (aM

garden fence), (a M

gold ring), (M

London pups),

etc.

5) Genitive phrase : (M

(Fred‟s) whisky), (M

(someone else‟s) problems),

etc.

6) Adverbs (in initial Position): (M

quite a noise).

7) Some less clear-cut categories, such as adjective phrases (M

AV (Awfully

bad) weather); other phrases (M

PP (round the clock) service); Compound

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words of various kinds ( a slow-witted bumpkin); ven and ving forms of

verbs (grated cheese), (a running total).

This last set of premodifiers is so miscellaneous that we cannot hope to deal with

it thoroughly.

2.3.2.3. The Postmodifier of an NP may be:

1) Prepositional phrase : (the best day M

PP(of my life)).

2) Relative clauses : (a quality M

[which I admire]).

3) Various other types of modifier, including ADVERBS (the girl

MAVupstair), ADJECTIVES (something nasty

MAJ(In the woodshed)),

NOUN PHRASES in apposition ( the abandicoot, M

NP(a tiny marsupial)),

etc.

2.3.2.4. Pronoun (pn) and Determiners (d)

Pronoun and determiners are two closed word classes in the noun phrase

which have similar subdivision:

Pronouns function as head (H)

a) Personal pronoun: I, we, you, he, she, it, they, me, us, them, myself, yourself,

herself, himself, etc.

b) Demonstrative pronoun: this, that, these, those.

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Quantifier pronoun:

d) General: all, some, any, none, several, etc.

e) Compound: everybody, someone, anything, nobody, etc.

f) Gradable: many, much more, most, few, fewer, little, least, etc.

Wh- pronoun: who, whom, whose, what, which, whichever, etc.

Determiner function as modifier:

1. Article: the, a/an

Quantifier determiners:

a) General: all, some, any, no, every, etc.

b) Gradable: many, much more, most, few, fewer, little, least, etc.

Wh- determiners: what, whatever, which, whichever, etc.

The simple rule is that word from these classes which function as head are

pronoun, and those which function as modifiers are determiners. This role has one

exception: the so-called possessive pronouns my, your, their, whose, etc., occur as

modifiers, as in my sister, your book, etc. but strictly, these are cases of

subordination, the possessive pronoun acting as head of a genitive phrase:

(M

GP(H

pnyour)M

AjfavouriteH

N book), (M

GP (H

pn her) M

N dislike M

PP (of J.R.)).

2.3.2.5. Prepositional Phrase (PP)

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Structure. PPs have exactly the same structures as NPs, except that they are

introduced by a preposition; i.e. PP = pNP. Normally prepositions are inseparable

from the head (and modifier) which follow them.

The adverbial PPs have various meanings. Thus in three PPs are adverbials of

time-when, means, and place, answering the questions When? How? And Where? In

NPs, AjPs and PPs subordinate PPs act as Post modifiers.

2.3.2.6. The Genitive Phrase (GP)

Function. GPs function either as pre-modifier (M) or as a heads (H) in Nps.

Structure. GPs are just like NPs except that they end with the particle „s („)

(i.e. GP=NP‟s), which is not, however, always separately pronounced. Some

possessive pronouns are irregular, in that they function as GPs, but do not end „s –

e.g. my, mine.

2.3.3 Noun Phrase Functions

According to Leech, et.al. (1982:60) in their book entitled English Grammar

for Today; A New Introduction, there are some functions of noun phrase in the

sentence or clause, like word, phrase can be classified partly by their external

function and partly by their form. Typically, in a phrase composed of head and

modifiers, pre-modifiers tend to be single words and post-modifiers tend to be

phrases or clause noun phrase, according to explanations above Leech, Deuchar, and

hoogenraad were classify the functions of noun phrase into six, such as:

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These are functions of noun phrase:

1) [S

NP (the house) P

(was) C

(quite empty)]. NP = S

2) [S(we)

P (have bought)

ONP (the house)]. NP = O

3) [S(this)

P (must be)

CNP (the house)]. NP = C

4) [S(we)

P (waked)

ANP (five miles)

ANP (last week)]. NP = A

(On adverbial, Subordinate NPS can act as modifiers in otherNPS )

5) (H

N man M

NP (the hunter)). NP = M

6) (M

N champion H

N unicyclist M

NP(H

N Wilbur J. Beanstalk)). NP = M

The syntactic functions and the categories illustrated as follows:

Subject Predicator Object Complement Adverbial

VP NP AjP AvP PP

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2.3.4 Tree diagram

Leech et.al. (1982:29) states that the convention of bracketing and

diagramming should be our slaves and not our master: we should use them only to

show what is pertinent for our purpose.

Fromkin (1983:70)states that syntactic rules determine the order of words in a

sentence. The words of a sentence can be divided into two or more groups, and within

each group the words can be divided into subgroups, and soon, until only single

words remain.

Leech (1982: 59) states that A MAIN PHRASE is one which is direct

constituent of a clause, i.e. which is not part of another phrase, while

SUBORDINATE PHRASES are those which are parts of other phrases.

Main phrase Subordinate phrase

[….(Ph)….] [….(Ph)….]

In terms of tree diagrams, the following configurations indicated main and

subordinated phrase respectively:

Cl Ph

Main: Subordinate:

Ph Ph

Tree diagram example proposed by Leech (1982: 60):

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NP

GP N PP

pn p N PP

p d aj n

his book on gastronomy in the dark ages

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