The treatment of the noun phrase which follows includes what Quirk et al. call the "basic noun phrase" as well as the "complex noun phrase" (1972: §4.1 105, 13.1 76; cf. also Kaluza 1981). The basic noun phrase includes the head noun (or pronoun) and four classes of words–excluding adjectives–that can precede it: predeterminers, determiners, ordinals, and cardinals/ quantifiers. Determiners include the definite and indefinite articles the, a(n), some, the possessive adjectives my, your, etc., the demonstrative adjectives this, that, these, those, as well as no, which(ever),what(ever), any, enough, every, each, either, neither, and much. These four categories of premodifiers are established according to their positions in the noun phrase relative to each other and to open class premodifiers (i.e. adjectives); for example, in the following sentence the order is predeterminer + determiner + ordinal + cardinal + adjective + noun head:
Both these last two cool evenings have been pleasant
The complex noun phrase includes premodifying adjectives, various types of postmodifying structures, such as prepositional phrases and relative clauses (finite and non finite), and noun clauses (i.e. finite and non finite clauses functioning as nouns).
In 1.1-8 errors involving various aspects of the basic noun phrase are discussed. 1.9 deals with the premodification of nouns by adjectives and other word classes not included in the basic noun phrase. The postmodification of nouns is treated in 1.10. Errors involving noun clauses are described in 1.11.