22. Compressed Noun Phrases

Compressed noun phrases are preferred in academic and formal writing as they are economical and helpful in efficient reading. The use of these phrases is not simply required because the scholarly writers prefer their use. Actually, their use has become inevitable owing to the high information flow and word count restrictions in the recent age. For addressing these issues, this post deals with compressed noun phrase in terms of its components, lexical contribution, and complexity. 

1. Complex Noun Phrases 

Complex noun phrases, especially used in academic writing, are the ones in which the head noun is modified in some way. For this, head nouns may take pre-modifiers (e.g., a tall tree) or post-modifiers (a tree that was uprooted by strong wind). The nouns can also take both pre-modifiers as well as post-modifiers (a tall tree that was uprooted by strong wind). The understanding of complex noun phrases can help writers produce their texts in a concise manner (See 18. Noun Phrase Complexity).  For example:

1. This charity hospital has been constructed by Tehseen Cheema.
2. This charity hospital for the treatment of poor people of Cholistan has been constructed by Tehseen Cheema who is an orthopedic specialist from Pakistan.

The example (a) shows the core of the sentence which is quite simple. In (b), head nouns hospital and Tehseen Cheema have been pre & post-modified.

1.1 Syntactic Complexity

Normally syntactic complexity is assessed in terms of the length of production units (sentences), amount of subordination, coordination, nominalization and degree of phrasal complexity. Two sorts of syntactic complexity are found in texts, i.e. clausal complexity and phrasal complexity. These complexities stay as two ends along a cline. It is important to note that academic prose is more inclined to phrasal complexity.

1.2 Explicitness Vs Conciseness in Texts

Writers require to handle two competing goals, i.e., explicitness and conciseness when they try to express meaning relation in their texts. They use longer sentences with the aim to enhance explicitness. Contrarily, they use more coordinated phrases and complex noun phrases to achieve the goal of conciseness. Thus they need to strike a balance between these two extremes in their texts.

1.3 Readability of Text

A greater number of T-units (main clauses) and nominal phrases in a sentence are placed commonly for conciseness in writing. If a text has longer sentences, i.e., several T-units along with subordinations, and nominalizations, the writing will be compact and free of redundancy. However, these syntactic structures, which are complex and compressed as well, may reduce the explicitness (clarity of intended meaning) in academic writing. Further, these structures make the academic texts difficult to read because the phrasal complexity, especially noun-noun phrases cause implicitness in logical relations among elements.

2. Lexical Noun Phrases

Lexical noun phrases can comprise a single or pair of nouns as their head. Further, these phrases can be expanded by adding one or more noun-head modifiers. These may be pre-modifiers, e.g., determiners (the vehicle), demonstratives (this result), quantifiers (several reasons), adjectives or adjectival phrases (fairly considered option).  These may also be post-modifiers, e.g., prepositional phrases (birds from the mountains), and relative clauses (a discovery that has been acknowledged). The complex noun phrases can also be there which carry nominal modification, for example noun compounds (curriculum outline, conflict resolution) and genitives (the artist’s inspiration).

3. Head Noun Pre-Modifiers

Noun phrase modifiers can occur before the head noun as pre-modifiers and can follow the head noun as post-modifiers.  Pre-modifiers can be there in three structural forms: attributive adjectives, participial adjectives, and nouns. For example:

1. Adjective: brown camel
2. Participle: enduring animal
3. Noun: desert animal

The words in bold in the above phrases are the modifiers of the head nouns.

4. Head Noun Post-Modifiers

The structural forms of post-modifiers are: prepositional phrases, appositive phrases, relative clauses, non-finite participial and to clauses. 

4.1 Prepositional Phrases              

Prepositional phrases function as noun-modifiers as well as adverbials. For example:

1. the list of purchasable items
2. effort for early success

Further, of-phrases and in-phrases following a noun function as post – nominal modifiers. Their use is more frequent as compared to the other prepositional phrases as between – phrases and by-phrases.

4.2 Appositive Noun Phrases

Appositive noun phrases as noun post-modifiers occur as frequently as prepositional phrases after head nouns. For example:

1. Mirza Shahid, a govt. spokesperson
2. Tasleem Pasha, NEPRA’s chief executive
3. the principal researcher, Mr. Farhan Hameed

4.3 Clausal Post-Modifiers

Clausal post-modifiers include that clauses, relative clauses, to clauses, ed-clauses, ing-clauses, etc. For example:

1. The opinion that the truth is bitter… [that/noun clause]
2. Tea has caffeine that removes our fatigue. [relative clause]
3. We have no time to relax our bodies. [to clause]
4. The information disseminated in this quarter… [ed-clause]
5. Fruits containing calcium are…  [ing-clause]

4.4 Multiple Post-Modifiers

An important thing about noun phrases is that they can carry more than one post-modifer. For example:

1. a seventy-year old farmer [with a sickle] [who tried to collect honey from a honeycomb]
2. that waiter [close to the wall] [in a blue uniform] [clearing the tables]

5. The Role of Pre & Post Modifiers

Mostly, the pre and post modifiers of a head noun in a noun phrase are incorporated as additional or supplementary information. However, sometimes these are key elements, i.e. without them sentences make little sense. Particularly relative clauses and appositives have the role to define the head noun in the noun phrase. For example, in the sentence (Wealth is drawn to humans who are generous.) the relative clause has defining role and without this the sentence makes little sense (See 9. Classification of Pre- and Post-Modifiers in a Noun Phrase).

The details of the fundamentals given above can help understand the construction of compressed noun phases. 

6. Construction of Compressed Noun Phrases

Frequently, the writers need to convey information economically to help their readers read it in a faster and efficient way. They do it in a number of ways.

6.1 Use of Phrases Instead of Dependent Clauses

For the production of noun phrases, the writers use phrases, especially prepositional phrases, instead of dependent clauses. In this respect, the compressed noun phrases (also known as nominal phrases) typically act as nouns in sentences. These phrases can carry a huge information. However, the brevity caused through such packaging is often at the expense of explicitness.  For example:

1. The person that I met on the roadside was frightening. [dependent clause]
2. The person on the roadside was frightening.      [prepositional phrase]

6.2 The Use of Nominalizations

With the purpose to express certain concepts concisely, writers nominalize verbs, i.e. convert them into nouns. Such constructions are known as nominalizations. For example:

1. to construct versus construction
2. companies that provided daily life facilities versus daily life facilities providing companies
3. individuals exhibiting irresponsible behavior versus individual with irresponsible behavior

6.3 The Use of Adjectives before Head Nouns

The clauses that follow head nouns are turned into adjectives and these adjectives are placed before the nouns for the purpose of brevity.  For example:

1. the result that is convincing versus the convincing result
2. the pianists who are accomplished versus the accomplished pianists
3. the pools which are well maintained versus the well maintained pools

6.4 The Use of Pre-Modifying Noun before Head Nouns

The use of pre-modifying nouns before the noun head in a noun phrase helps in writing concisely. For example:

1. Police officer 
2. population control measures  
3. hurricane protection system 
4. aviation security official 
5. law enforcement communities

6.5 The Use of a Noun Phrase to Compress another Noun Phrase

The use of a noun phrase to describe or rephrase another noun phrase is also a good way to compress noun phrases. For example:

1. Muhammad Sharif, head of the school for blind children
2. The grand building, center of literary activities
3. The food production policy, a prop of national health

6.6 The Use of Prepositional Phrases as Nominal Post-Modifiers

Prepositional phrases when used as nominal post-modifiers contribute noun phrase compression. For example:

1. the reduction of prolonged screen time amongst students
2. the development of valid research instruments
3. the improvement of research procedures

On the whole, for achieving the compression of phrasal constructions, the writers require sophisticated use of linguistic and rhetorical resources. Compressed noun phrases are one such resource which stay tightly packed into the clauses. The compressed noun phrases as lexical items perform the role of the syntactic units in sentences.

In sum, complex and compressed noun phrases play an important role in the writing of academic prose. In this post, first, both the phrasal and clausal complexities have been dealt with. Next, lexical complexity has been elaborated. Later, components of a complex noun phrase have been mentioned. Finally, various ways of writing a compressed noun phrase have been detailed. Thus, the learning writers have been provided with a manageable information about the compressed noun phrase so that they can write their academic prose texts economically.

Sources Consulted

1. Biber, et al. (2009)
2. Biber and Gray (2016)
3. Halliday (1993)
4. Ravid and Berman (2010)
5. Ruan (2018)