UNIT 9MODIFYING NOUN

PHRASES

Adjectives and Participles

Focus 1: Overview of Word order in Noun Phrases

What’s a noun phrase? A determiner and a noun, plus its

modifiers. So then what’s a determiner?

What’s a modifier?

Determiners can be articles (a, an, the), demonstratives (this, that, these, those), possessives (my, your…), quantifiers (some, many…)

Modifiers include adjectives, participles, nouns, prepositional phrases, participle phrases and relative clauses

Order for Categories of Modifiers

Determiner

Intensifiers

Adjectives and

Participles

Noun Modifier

Noun Modifying Phrase

The/a/an Really Old/new Stone Wall Next to the river

Some/no Very Interesting

University Campus River

My/your Slightly Well-known

described

Each/every

These/those

In the brochure

Focus 2-Order of Descriptive Adjectives

Evaluation/opinion

Appearance

Age Color Origin

Good Size/measuremen

t (big)

Old Red Geographical (French)

Interesting Shape (round)

Antique Purple striped

Material(vegetable)

Intelligent Condition (broken)

New Bright blue wooden

Put these words in the right order to make the sentence correct:1. broken, dish, an, ceramic, ugly, white2. Car, a, little, funny, metal3. rubber, blue, a, ball, pretty, new

1. An ugly broken white ceramic dish.2. A funny little metal car.3. A pretty new blue rubber ball.

Focus 3-Particple modifiers

Participles can be used like descriptive adjectives to describe nouns too.

Verb Present participle

Past participle

Study Studying Studied

Forget Forgetting Forgotten

Interest Interesting Interested

Just add –ing for present participle and –ed for past participle but don’t forgetabout irregulars!

Focus 4-Meaning of Participles That movie was boring. We were bored. It was an interesting novel, but I wasn’t

interested in the story. We we’re excited to see the movie. I

hope the movie is exciting! What is the difference between these

sentences? We use present participles (verb +ing) to

describe the agent, or the doer in the sentence. We use the past participle to describe receivers.

Adding information to Participles Often when we add a noun or an adverb to a

participle we use hyphens. Some foot-tapping music (noun+present

participle) A fast-moving train (adverb+present participle)

Adjective-noun + past participle combinations describe physical characteristics A blue-eyed baby A short-legged dog

We don’t always use hyphens, especially with –ly adverbs A deeply depressed individual A manmade lake

Focus 6-Modifiers that Follow Noun Phrases

Participial phrases can be used to modify a noun phrase and can come before or after the noun and changes the meaning. It comes after the noun to give more

information about the particular noun we are talking about.The man speaking to John told him some

shocking information. It comes before the noun if it has already been

identified and the participle describes more about it.Speaking to the man, John found out some

shocking information.