Noun Phrase
What is the content of a noun phrase?

Animate/Inanimate—names, titles, concepts, activities
ANIMATE (ALIVE) |
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A noun phrase may refer to something that is living and breathing by a variety of names such as a title, a group, a pronoun, or an agreed upon concept such as nationality. |
PROPER NAMES |
Captain Wagner flew the aircraft. (Proper Name: Title + Name) |
TITLES |
The FAA Administrator licensed Captain Wagner. (Personal noun: title) |
PRONOUNS |
He passed his training, examination and test flight. (Personal pronoun: the pilot) |
GROUP NOUNS |
The class passed their examinations. (Group: members) The blind receive special passes. (The Group: shared attribute) |
QUANTIFIED NOUNS |
A lot of people ran toward us. A mob of fans met us at the airport. (Quantified personal noun) |
CONCEPTS |
The Dutch train their own pilots. (Nationality is an agreed upon concept of borders.)
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INANIMATE |
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A noun phrase may also refer to something inanimate such as a location name, an idea, an institution, an event, and a concept. |
PROPER NAMES–LOCATION |
The aircraft left San Francisco International Airport. (Location: Official Name) |
TITLES |
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) licensed Captain Wagner. (Institution: official name) |
PRONOUNS |
The administrators approved it. (the route) (Impersonal pronoun: reference to previous mention)
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COLLECTIVE NOUNS |
Aviation attracts new pilots. (Collective nouns: field/expertise) The Boy Scouts is an international organization. (Organization) |
QUANTIFIED NOUNS |
Five per cent of the fleet of aircraft needs replacement. (Quantified noun: limited amount) |
CONCEPTS |
Flight has been a dream for centuries. (Concept) |
ACTIVITIES / EVENTS |
The piloting of a 787 is requires a lot of knowledge. The training is intense. (Some nouns that end with -ing are true nouns.) |
TIME |
Today is a great day. / This morning is a clear. (Temporal nouns—afternoon, evening, mid-day, morning, yesterday, today, tomorrow, tonight, instant, minute, second, day, week, month, season, year, decade, century, moment) |
PLACE |
Here is a landing strip. / Outside is the stairway. (Locational nouns—ahead, away, upstairs, downhill, room, house, home, hospital, building, city, district, community, department, town, township, burgh, shire, divisision, duchy, county, area, province, kingdom, principality, state, country, empire, North, East, West, South, territory, region, continent, world, etc. |
license (Eng-US) licence (Eng-Br)
Most temporal nouns require a determiner, but not today, tonight ("this day", "this night") tomorrow ("the next day") yesterday ("day before this day")
Most locational nouns accept a determiner, but not home ("He was at home."), hospital ("He was in hospital.") [Eng-Br] or proper nouns such as Athens, Paris, Sydney, etc.
Related page: Unusual Singular/Plural Nouns.