Structure of Modification - Possessive and Noun Adjunct

STRUCTURE OF MODIFICATION

A.    Noun as Head

Nouns appeared very frequently as heads of structure of modification. The  modifier in such structure may belong to any of four parts of speech. Noun determiners may also be clased as modifier, so the function words may also perform this task.

The most common noun modifier is the adjective, which out – number all the others except determiner in the proposition of two or three in one. When an adjective is the sole modifier of a noun, its position is almost always directly before the noun – between the noun determiner, if there is one and the noun. The structure of this sort are so frequent and well known as hardly to need illustration,

For example ;

barbed wire                                                 M : Modifier

    M      H                                                   H : Head

the gloomy room                                         A : Article

 A      M        H                                                       P : Possessive

a great disparity

A  M        H

intense concentration

    M             H

his cheerful smile

 P        M        H

both remarkable tales

  P           M          H

In very rare case, there are adjectives which may come after the noun. This happens under two kinds of circumstances.

a.       In certain fixed phrases, often from technical vocabularies or familiar quotations : court – martial, grace abounding, darkness visible, fee simple.

b.      When the adjective is not a solitary modifier of noun, but part of a larger structure that as a whole acts a noun – modifier :

a figure vague and shadowy

a wish intense beyond belief

a man taller than I thought

Here the adjectives vague, shadowy, intense, and taller are parts of structure which act as unit modifiers of the heads figure, wish, and man.

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B.     Noun Modifier

Noun make up 25% of the single – word modifier of nouns. Except the part called appositive, those nouns come after the noun they modify. The structure of this sort are two kinds. They are :

(a)    Those in which the modifying noun has the possessive inflection, which is (-‘s).

(b)   Those in which it appears in the base form or in the plural inflection, which is (-es).

The upper part sometime called the possessive contruction and another part called adjunct construction. To gain easier understanding, we could try to compare each other by having same noun. Below are some of their examples.

Possessive                                             Noun – Adjunct

child’s play                                           child psychology

a dog’s life                                            the dog days

a day’s work                                         the day shift

my father’s house                                 a father image

that woman’s doctor                             that woman doctor

1.      Noun Adjunct and Possessive Noun

From all the examples we put above, last pair shows  probably most vivid difference in the meaning. The formal difference between them maybe described as : a construction with of may be substituted for the possessive construction and the determiner (if there is one) will then go with the modifiying noun.

Aside from it, some other kind of of construction must be substituted for the noun adjunct and the determiner goes with the head noun. Better explanation shows as below.

          my father’s houses      > house of my father

but     that father image         > that image like (a) father

          that woman’s doctor   > doctor of that woman

but     that woman doctor      > that doctor who is woman

Because of the phonemic identity of principal allomorphs of (‘s) and (‘es), sometime it is imposible to distinguish in speech between possessive and noun adjunct. In result there is a minor structure ambiguity as well as example below .

/dowz boys buks/           = those boys books

                                       = those books for boys (noun adjunct)

/dowz boys buks/           = those boys’ books

                                       = books for those boys (possessive)

Other potential ambiguity are avoided by various other particuliarities of morphemic structure or of distribution. Among these we may briefly note the following :

(a)    The noun adjunct is almost following by singular, hence an ending /–s, -es, -z, -iz/ usually indicates the possessive.

Compare example : dog days and dog’s life.

(b)   Certain noun determiner (this/these and that/those) exhibit the phenomenon of concord. It means they have one form that goes singular nouns and another that goes plural nouns.

(c)    Most nonpersonal nouns of more that two syllables do not have the  (-s) inflection, so that any form ending in /-s, -z, -iz/ must be a plural noun adjunct. Thus, communications officer, reparations, agreement, and amunitions storehouse are not ambiguous structure.

(d)   A few nouns have four distinct forms. Thus, the possessive and noun adjunct always phonemically distinct.

Example :

/wumen dakter/        = woman doctor (noun adjunct)

/wumenz dakter/      = woman’s doctor (possessive)

/wimin dakterz/        = women doctors (noun adjunct)

/wiminz dakterz/      = women’s doctors (possessive)