Noun phrase

A noun phrase usually begins with a determiner. It normally has a noun as its most important word, or headword. But often the headword is a pronoun.

A noun phrase can act as subject, object, or complement in the clause. It can also follow a preposition.

Let's see some examples of noun phrases. The determiner is in bold; the head-word is marked like this: head-word:
(1) the future
(2) the problem
(3) a young woman
(4) an old man
(5) all the schools in the country
(6) the people at the meeting yesterday

The other parts of the noun phrases (not marked) are modifiers. They include adjectives (before the noun) and prepositional phrases (after the noun).

Notice that some noun phrases contain one word only. We still call them noun phrases, because they can act as subject, object, etc. in a clause.

noun phrase		noun phrase	noun phrase
subject		indirect object	direct object	phrases have:
(1) My mother	gave	my sister	this phone.	2 words
(2) Marriage	brought	Sam	unhappiness.	1 word

Noun phrases like those in example (1) and (2) in the table above can be replaced by pronouns. (The noun phrases in the following examples are in bold print.)
My father gave this phone to my sister.
-> He gave it to her.

A pronoun is (usually) the only word of its noun phrase. It it still called the head-word.

I hope this article helps. If you have any question, please leave a comment below.