The variety of noun phrases

We have so far in this book been looking at the meaning of sentences primarily in terms of the properties that entities have and the relations that hold between them. This has meant a concentration on the interpretations of verbs and verb phrases, with the meanings of the phrases that serve as their arguments, noun phrases, taking second place. Indeed, only two sorts of English noun phrase have been analysed in the grammar fragments so far: proper names and simple definite noun phrases. But there are, of course, many other types of noun phrase in English, including indefinite noun phrases like those in (1.a & b), quantified noun phrases as in (1.c & d), noun phrases containing adjectives or relative clauses (1.e & f), noun phrases with possessive modifiers (1.g), and many more.

1. a. a book.

2. b. some cat.

3. c. every dog.

4. d. each person.

5. e. the happy student.

6. f. any student who gives a good report.

7. g. Ethel's friend's dog.

The noun phrases in (1) all require a more sophisticated interpretation than the one supplied for proper names and definite descriptions in earlier chapters. Both of these expressions have been translated as expressions of type e, denoting entities in the model. Such an analysis is, however, not ultimately tenable for proper nouns, is suspect for definite noun phrases and cannot be sustained at all for the other types of noun phrase in (1).