Noun-phrase

History

An early conception of the noun phrase can be found in First work in English by Alexander Murison. In this conception a noun phrase is "the infinitive of the verb" (p. 146), which may appear "in any position in the sentence where a noun may appear". For example, to be just is more important than to be generous has two underlined infinitives which may be replaced by nouns, as in justice is more important than generosity. This same conception can be found in subsequent grammars, such as 1878's A Tamil Grammar or 1882's Murby's English grammar and analysis, where the conception of an X phrase is a phrase that can stand in for X. By 1912, the concept of a noun phrase as being based around a noun can be found, for example, "an adverbial noun phrases is a group of words of which the noun is the base word, that tells the time or place of an action, or how long, how far, or how much". By 1924, the idea of a noun phrase being a noun plus dependents seems to be established. For example, "Note order of words in noun-phrase--noun + adj. + genitive" suggests a more modern conception of noun phrases.