Noun Phrases: Premodifiers and Postmodifiers

Level: Intermediate-Advanced

PREMODIFIERS

Typically, a noun phrase consists of a noun or a pronoun while noun phrases also include:

Determiners      These shoes are very colorful.

Quantifiers         She’s worked in many companies.

Numbers             The company has about a hundred subsidiaries across the world.

Adjectives           She is one of my oldest friends.

These parts are called premodifiers as they are placed before the noun.

Premodifiers are used in this order:

determiners and quantifiers > numbers > adjectives + NOUNS

Examples:

The        three                                     ideas                     >             The three ideas

Our                        brilliant                 ideas                     >             Our brilliant ideas

Three    brilliant                 ideas                     >             Three brilliant ideas

These     three      brilliant                 ideas                    >             These three brilliant ideas

Some                    brilliant                 ideas                     >             Some brilliant ideas

All those three    brilliant                 ideas                     >             All those three brilliant ideas

Their many         brilliant                 ideas                     >             Their many brilliant ideas

Postmodifiers

Postmodifiers are the parts found after the noun.

Postmodifiers can be prepositional and -ing phrases, relative and that clauses, or to infinitives.

• prepositional phrases:

a company with a social corporate responsibility programs
that girl in that pink floral dress
the building at the end of the block

• –ing phrases :

the clothes hanging over there
the employee having a meeting with the client

• relative clauses :

the project she worked on for a year
the closet that my father assembled
the manager who proposed this initiative
an twenty-year-old lad who came by this morning 

• that clauses. This is commonly placed after nouns such as idea, fact, belief, suggestion:

They’re still not satisfied with their record, in spite of the fact that they won the competition.
Carla got the impression that her new team didn’t support her.
There was a suggestion that the public library should be renovated.

• to infinitives :

She’s got no conferences to attend.

These infinitive postmodifiers are common after indefinite pronouns and adverbs:

We should think of something to do.
They have nowhere to go.

It is also possible to have more than one postmodifier:

a fifty-year old CEO with a degree which he received from Harvard
those students on the field playing football