Structure of Modification
Successful people
Handsome man
Lovely house
Home town
University students
City Hall
Easily touched
Extremely pretty
Look at these structures!
It consists of two components:
Head + Modifier
Possible meanings of modifier:
- to broaden
- to qualify
- to select
- to change
- to describe
- to affect
the meaning of the head.
Structure of Modification
The head can be:
- noun
- verb
- adjective
- adverb
Unlike the head, the modifiers are limited
The modifiers can be:
1. ADJECTIVE: good book
great work
remarkable tales
The rule is: Adj + Noun
Rarely Adjective follows the Noun (Noun + Adjective) as
in:
- technical terms or quotations: court-martial, darkness
visible
- when adjectives is a part of a larger structure: a
figure vague and shadowy, a man taller than I thought
Noun as Head
2. Nouns:
- in possessive:
my father’s house meaning house of my father
that woman’s doctor meaning doctor of that woman
- in noun-adjunct:
a father image meaning an image like father
that woman doctor meaning that doctor who is a
woman
Appositive is a noun, noun-headed structure of
modification, or a structure of coordination made up of
nouns or noun-headed structures modifying a noun head
which it follows.
ex.: - His brother, a doctor, was there also
- Mr. Jones, the art critic, praised the
painting
- The children, both boys and girls, received
presents
- the poet, Chaucer, …
- the product, cellophane, …
- Professor Jones …
- Vice-President Smith …
- The River Duddon
Appositive
3. Verbs as modifiers
verbs can function as modifiers in the
following forms:
- present participle (pre or post head)
- past participle (pre or post head)
- to infinitive (always post head)
Pre-Head (if they are by-itself).
Examples: - running water
- baked potatoes
Post-head (if they are parts of a larger
structure)
Examples: - water running in the
street
- potatoes baked slowly
Present/past participle modifiers
Examples: - Money to burn
- The man to see
What about the following:
a. A pleasing table
b. A rotting table
c. A dining table
Can you discriminate each of those?
To infinitives
4. Adverbs as Noun modifiers
In English it seldom occurs as noun modifiers. If so, it
occurs immediately after the noun modified. They
are adverbs of then (today, daily, seldom, etc.) and
there (outside, ahead, backward, etc.) groups.
Example: - the people here
- The temperature outside
- Heavens above
And the thus/so-class (easily, slowly, aloud, etc) groups
only modify present participle verbs, such as his
speaking rapidly, our acting together.
5. Prepositional Phrases as Noun modifiers
This phrase consists of prepositions and lexical words.
Preposition can be simple prepositions (after, as, at,
about, above, across, against) compound prepositions
(across from, along with, apart from) and phrasal
prepositions (in regard to, in spite of, by means of, etc.)
Example of Prepositional phrase as modifiers:
- a way of doing
- a mile from here
- a book from under the table
Head:V
Dependents:
◦ Pre-head modifier: AdvP
◦ Post-head modifier: AdvP/PP
◦ (Post-head) complement: NP/PP/AdvP/clause
Example: The boy has run very quickly.
The boy has very quickly run.
Verbs as the Heads
• Head: Adjective
• Dependents:
• Prehead Modifier (PrHdMod): AdvP
• Posthead Complement (Comp) : PP
Example: so very improbably keen on that movie
so very improbably crazy about that movie
Adjective as the Head
• Head: Adv
• Dependents:
• prehead modifier: AdvP
• posthead complement: PP / clause
Example: more carefully than Jo
so very quickly that he fell over
Adverb as the Head
• Head: P
• Prehead modifier: AdvP
• Posthead complement: NP
Example:
straight though the intersection
almost right into the crowd
barely in the water
Preposition as the Head
