Noun phrases

What are they?

We often want to give more information about nouns. One way to do this is to use an adjective.

• a fat dog
• a rich tourist
• a beautiful house
• an American car

We can also give more information after the noun. We can do this by using a prepositional phrase.

Noun prepositional phrase

• tourists from America
• people with lots of money
• the children in the school

We can also give more information about nouns by using a participle clause.

Noun participle clause

• people living in the country
• the man sitting in the park
• magazines lying on the floor

These noun phrases can be used as the subject or object of a sentence in the same way as single-word nouns.

Subject verb phrase

• John went to the beach.
• Tourists from America love visiting old European cities.
• The man sitting in the park asked me the time.
• Children arriving at school for the first time are often very nervous.