Writers are frequently faced with the challenge of expressing their target concepts and packaging dense information in their written discourses. For this they require to use lexical and grammatical resources innovatively. In other words, the communicative demands of written discourse ask for effecting lexical and grammatical innovations. One of such innovations is the use of nominal structures in academic prose that carry extensive phrasal modifications and a relative absence of verbs. In this post, various pre & post-modifiers have been discussed particularly in the terms of their lexical contribution and information packaging capacity.
1. Lexical Contribution of Pre-Modifying Nouns
The pre-modifying nouns can be put into three categories. The first category of these nouns includes title nouns (Doctor Akbar, Captain Shareef, King Suleman, etc.). The second includes specific and general location nouns (Arabian Desert, India Company, town hall, farm houses, etc.). The third category includes concrete nouns (tea house, canal water, cricket ball, etc.). Besides, pre-modifying nouns commonly refer to institutions (e.g., family background, state department, etc.), and states or conditions (cancer hospital, maternity leave, dehydration results, etc.). They also refer to other intangibles (e.g., marriage bureau, heat wave, currency market, class time, etc.)
2. Nominalizations as an Instrument of Information Packaging
There are four grammatical elements that are nominalized for the purpose of information packaging, i.e., verbs, intangible nouns, attributive nouns and adjectives. Nominalizations derived from verbs can be used in noun-noun sequence, both as the pre-modifying nouns and head nouns. Nominalizations in the position of pre-modifiers refer to processes or activities (investigation report, service rules, publication standards, etc.). Sometimes, verbs (as nouns) themselves take the position of pre-modifying nouns (e.g., research article, trade deficit, murder incident, etc.) Intangible nouns also perform the function of pre-modifiers. These intangible pre-modifying nouns perform two functions. First, they represent concepts, ideas, or qualities (e.g., weight gain, administrative powers, welfare department, research initiative, etc.). Second, they stay as nominalized forms (e.g., population increase, study design, transport means, anti-terrorism operation, regression analysis, etc.). Besides, nominalized forms derived from nouns or adjectives can also play the role of pre-modifiers. These nominalized forms (nouns) present abstract attributes or qualities rather than processes (e.g. birth rate, safety measures, security threats, loyalty level, etc.).
3. Pre-Modifying Nouns and Head Noun as Nominalized Processes
In some complex noun phrases, both pre-modifying nouns and head nouns are nominalized processes. For example, a growth measurement means someone measures the quantity of the growth that has occurred. Further, particular pre-modifying noun and head noun sequences show specific meanings. Examples of such sequences are given below.
- school system, i.e., a system on the basis of which schools are run
- medication reports, i.e. reports that show record of medication
- emergency measure, i.e. measures taken in an emergency
- poverty ratio, i.e. a ratio that measures poverty
- vaccination boycott campaign, i.e. a campaign to induce people to boycott vaccination
- research committee meeting minutes, i.e. decisions and suggestions that came out during the meeting of the research committee
- education policy enforcement action, i.e., actions taken to enforce policy for the purpose to gain good results
On the whole, it can be said that there is a large increase in the frequency of nouns as pre-modifiers of head nouns in noun phrases. Along with this, a major expansion has occurred in the range of meaning relationships underlying the pre-modifying nouns and head nouns sequences in noun phrases.
4. The Use of Nouns in Phrases for Information Packaging
Nouns are no doubt important in themselves, but even more important is how they are used in phrases. The way they are used creates deeper meaning than the words alone. For example:
- This village is connected to the town by uneven path of compact material called compound.
In this example, the noun material is head noun of the noun phrase, i.e., wavy roads of compact material called building compound. This noun phrase carries multiple modifiers to clarify the material’s properties, i.e. (uneven), shape (path), its purpose (compact), and its name (compound). These modifiers indicate that a big information has been packed into the noun phrase (seven words) in italics (See 22. Compressed Noun Phrases).
5. Pre-Modification of Nouns by Converted Nouns and Possessive Case
After the general adjectives as pre-modifiers, the next most frequent pre-modifiers of head noun in academic prose are converted nouns. When we see semantic relations that are realized through the noun + noun sequences, the genitive relation (of-relation) is expressed by most pre-modifying nouns in academic prose. For example:
- metal cylinders, body height, birth process, race duration
- weight gain (object relationship), a fur coat (source/composition)
6. Multiple Pre-Modification
Multiple pre-modification comprises converted nouns, participles and the possessive case. For example:
- this stingy and self-contained family, certain interesting stories, various other financial hardships
- the university’s most respected and recognized scholars, a constant high blood pressure, a vast grassy, bushy area, for a month or so (approximation)
The representation of adjectives in multiple pre-modification is higher in academic prose.
7. Types and Functions of Pre-Modifying Adjectives
Classifying adjectives do the function of labels or identifiers and thus they help place head nouns into distinct categories or sub-classes. On the other hand, qualifying adjectives describe inherent qualities or characteristics of a head noun in a noun phrase. In addition, adjectival modifications in academic register are also mostly classificatory whose function is to denote subclasses of the superclass denoted by the head noun. The adjective performs this function (i.e., classificatory) either alone or in conjunction with other pre-modifiers. For example: a flat-footed man, the Arabian long-necked camel, the hairless grass rat, etc. The two-word structure of pre-modifying adjectives is a prominent terminological feature in general and has stylistic relevance as well.
7.1 – Past Participles
Past participles (-ed-participles) stay in a noun phrase as adjectives and modify head nouns through providing additional information about head nouns. Particularly, these describe a state or completed action associated to the head noun. The states that past participles describe are either a state of being or a quality of the head noun, e.g. uninflated wheel. In this phrase, ‘uninflated’ modifies ‘wheel’ and indicates the state of wheel. On the other hand, in the example, i.e., ‘the purchased items,’ ‘purchased’ indicates that the action of purchase is complete. On the whole, the past participles supply details and a tone to the head noun they modify. Thus, these enrich the description of the head noun.
However, post-modifying past participles occur more frequently in academic register. Further, past participles are used more frequently in fiction but without evaluative coloring of meaning. For example:
- a plan based on the previous experience
- the tall black man known in this area as a superman
7.2 The Gerunds
Gerunds (ing-participles staying as nouns) are the members of the semantic class of classifiers, e.g., stressing and relaxing problems, a warning sign, the winding path. When gerunds are in the post-modifying function, they take various prepositions before them, e.g., the duration of their staying at the hotel, their pleasure at receiving such an honour, no reason for rejecting my application, an ideal worth pursuing.
7.3 Appositives
An appositive, an appositive phrase, or an appositive clause is a linguistic device which provides further information about head noun. This information may be in the form of exemplification or enumeration or a consequence of the content of the first appositive, which is a finite clause (See 11. Appositive and Appositive Phrase as Noun Post-Modifiers). For example:
the desert ship, the camel; hibernation, a period of dormancy that frogs use to survive winter; the wild animals – wolves, lions, foxes, jackal, etc.; the social media such as face book, twitter, etc.; human beings have no wings – a fact which obliges them to walk instead of flying.
Further, the appositional information may be in nominal form. For example:
- NP + Comma + NP (Allama Iqbal, the poet of the east)
- NP + Parenthesis + NP (The difference of performance of two groups was brought out through a statistical test (T-test)
7.4 Relative Clauses
Relative clauses are commonly found in academic prose. Their function is to identify or characterize their antecedents. The relativizers may be who, that, which or zero in object position. For example:
the police man, who signaled the car to stop; a tall man who was later identified as a murderer; the tree (that) they cut yesterday were growing speedily
Where the relativizer performs the object function (mostly zero), its antecedent is mostly an inanimate entity. In case of subject relativizers, inanimate entities as antecedent do not occur many times (See 12. Functions of Modifying Elements in a Noun Phrase).
For example:
The gift my friend gave me; the car that ran over a child; such a speech, in which the speaker’s communicative capability appears
In sum, the writers of academic prose have commonly two targets i.e., realization of their aimed at meanings and package their information in their sentences economically. For the achievement of these targets, they mostly rely on complex noun phrases. These phrases are mostly characterized with nominalization, i.e., the pre-modifiers and head nouns are nominalized. Further, the writers use multiple pre-modifiers in a repeated manner to package their information. The elements that play their role in this respect are pre-modifying adjectives, ed-participles, gerunds, appositives and relative clauses. Therefore, details of all these elements have been incorporated in this post.
Sources Consulted
- Biber et al. (1999)
- Biber and Gray (2011)
- Dušková (2009)
- Swierzbin (2014)
