ABSTRACT
The noun phrase (NP) is a phrase which is typically headed semantically by a noun in the sense that this is the component without which we would not be speaking of a noun phrase in the first place. The category NP is assigned to constructions such as a man, the smart girl, and the guy that ran away. It also includes one-word constituents with only a noun or a pronoun, as in Jane plays tennis and He dated her. In addition, it applies to some less prototypical, many-word NPs in which the head is neither a noun nor a personal pronoun but what is basically an interrogative pronoun, a wh-word, what in the following example: what you see is what you get . Such NPs without a head noun are called "headless relative clauses." They are less prototypical because they lack some of the characteristics typically associated with an NP. For instance, they cannot combine with a determiner (e.g., article or demonstrative), which specifies the mode of reference (definite or indefinite). Neither can they combine with an attributive adjective or a prepositional phrase (PP) modifying the head. 1 The examples in (1) illustrate how typical NPs and the non-typical NPs differ in regard to these respects. Here, as in the rest of the chapter, the relevant items are underlined.
