The complexity of noun phrase in online newspaper

following the reviewed theoretical background, the analysis with several typical examples was extracted from the corpus of 15 random online newspapers to discover the frequency and compl

HANOI UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

SCHOOL OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES



FL3221 Syntax Class 136717 K64

The Complexity of Noun Phrase in Online

Nguyễn Thị Lan Anh 20193480 Trần Thị Lan Anh 20193486 Nguyễn Thị Nga 20193564 Trần Chúc Nhi 20193576

Table of Contents

I Introduction (Nguyễn Thị Nga) 3

II Literature Review (Nguyễn Thị Lan Anh) 4

1 Online newspaper 4

2 Noun phrase 4

3 Previous research 7

III Analysis 9

1 Data (Nguyễn Thị Nga) 9

2 Number of NP (Nguyễn Thị Nga) 9

3 Analysis of the complexity of NP in the quantity of DET, pre-modifiers, and post-modifiers (Trần Chúc Nhi) 10

3.1 The complexity in the number of DET 10

3.2 The complexity in the number of pre-modifiers 11

3.3 The complexity in the number of post-modifiers 12

4 The complexity in structure of NP’s components (Trần Thị Lan Anh) 14

4.1 The complexity in structure of NP’s components 14

4.2 The occurrences of the NP’s complex components 17

4.3 Analysis of the complexity in determiner and post-modifier 17

V Implication 20

V Conclusion 20

VI Limitation 20

References: 22

Abbriviations 23

Appendix: A list of 15 online news 24

I Introduction (Nguyễn Thị Nga)

It is human nature always to have the desire to capture information to keep up with the situation of the world, that's why newspapers were created And taking advantage of the development of the internet, the emergence of online newspapers is an inevitable trend of the times, making it easier for people to read This type helps people update news quickly and continuously, especially accompanied by concise and condensed information To meet this, the authors have used noun phrase structure in the articles Since discovering the special relationship between noun phrase structure and online newspapers, our research will focus on analyzing the use of noun phrase structure in online newspapers, based on articles

in different topics thereby clarifying the complexity of noun phrases used in online articles in the first part of this essay, the review of literature about online newspapers and noun phrase structure will be stated in detail following the reviewed theoretical background, the analysis with several typical examples was extracted from the corpus of 15 random online newspapers to discover the frequency and

complexity of applying noun phrase structure in online newspapers Next, practical application in

mastering academic writing as well as teaching grammar through understanding and using noun phrase structure will be clarified in the conclusion Ultimately, those are the limitations of this study

II Literature Review (Nguyễn Thị Lan Anh)

1 Online newspaper

1.1 Characteristics of online newspaper

Online newspapers are probably one of the most widely read forms of media available to people today for informational purposes The following are the traits of this genre, as this study examines the use of complex noun phrases in online newspapers in depth Since the 1970s, online newspapers have been published (Krumsvik, 2017), and they are becoming more popular with the strong development of the 4.0 technology revolution According to Bell (2005), “online readerships now outpace and outstrip offline newspapers” Online newspapers were described

by Schoenbach (2005) as “mostly free of charge, often updated throughout the day, easily accessible for everyone with an Internet connection; and they can be visited while working on one's PC.”

1.2 The reason for choosing online newspapers for analysis

According to Schoenbach (2005), online newspapers can also be helpful as an “alarm medium,” providing breaking news at a glance throughout the day (as cited in Sparks, 2000) This indicates that a variety of topics on domestic and international issues will be covered by the online newspaper Due to this diversity, we anticipate that authors will use noun phrases, particularly complex noun phrases, to diversify their articles

2 Noun phrase

2.1 Structure of noun phrase

According to Roberts (2016), the basic form of noun phrases in English is presented below:

DET + NOM

First, it's critical to understand what the word "DET" means and how it functions in the noun phrase DET means determiners which are an article (a/an, the), demonstratives (this, that, these, those), certain quantifiers (some, any, no, each…), and possessives (my, your, his, her,…) Meanwhile, NOM means nominal and it is DET’s sister NOM can consist just of nouns or nouns with modifiers which are optional (Roberts, 2021)

 Adjective phrases: the most prominent pre.mod

Eg: a beautiful flower, a handsome boy,…

 Quantifying adjectives

a Like adjectives, they co-occur with and follow determiners

Eg: those many bags

b Like adjectives, they may occur in the VP (verb phrase), functioning as predicatives

subject-Eg: It wasn’t much

c Like adjectives, they are gradable

Eg: so many gifts, a few books,…

d Numerals

Eg: the one mistake

 Participle phrases: the non-finite form as the progressive, perfect, and passive

Eg: - a missed opportunity (perfect or passive)

- the sleeping princess/ working parents (progressive)

 Nouns: themselves may act as pre.mod of nouns and “always appear last because they can't be separated from the head noun” stated Roberts (2021)

Eg: disinformation via pro-Russian media outlets

Same as above, the next vital part is the theoretical basis for post.mod According to Biber's et

al research (2008), post.mod can consist of phrasal post.mod (prepositional phrases and appositive noun phrases) and clausal post.mod which can be finite relative clauses, non-finite participial clauses anh to-clauses

On the basis of that research, we can give a few specific examples for each type as follows:

Clausal post.mod:

 Relative clause: children who lost their parents in the war

 Ing-clause: students not taking the test on Monday

 Ed-clause: an account topped up by the government

 To-clause: the movie to watch

Phrasal post.mod:

 Prepositional phrase: the ratio of nursery staff

 Appositive noun phrase: Sir Terry Leahy, Tesco’s chief executive

Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman

From the above theoretical foundations, the basic structure of noun phrases continues to be given based on the research of Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad, and Finegan (1999, p 574), as cited in Jitpraneechai (2019):

Determiner + (pre-modification) + head noun+ (post-modification and complementation) 2.2 Structure of complex noun phrase

The structure can potentially be more complex when multiple pre.mod or post.mod are added, Jitpraneechai (2019) said This means that a complex noun phrase is formed when not one but many pre.mod and post.mod are added to the simple structure of the noun phrase: DET + NOM

makes them become more grammatically complex, according to Jitpraneechai (2019) as cited

in (Biber & Gray, 2016)

To make it easier to understand here is an example of the structure of a complex noun phrase:

The aid budget on refugees in the UK

NP

DET NOM

Pre.mod N Post.mod

The aid budget on refugees in the UK

2.3 Functions of noun phrase

Andrews (n.d.) states that noun phrases can perform three major functions: semantic, pragmatic, and grammatical However, we will only discuss the “semantic function” in this essay because it is directly related to the type of text we have chosen - online newspapers Andrews defined semantic functions, also known as semantic roles, are the various ways a sentence can describe an entity's participation in a situation Therefore, when the noun phrase serves a semantic purpose, the newspaper becomes more interesting and lively

3 Previous research

These previous studies have shown the frequency of using noun phrases or complex noun phrases

in some types of documents such as academic writing, literature, and editorials, and give a solution to the remaining issues

Jitpraneechai (2019) used manual coding to compare how Thai and native students at university use complex noun phrases in their argumentative English essays It concluded that prepositional phrases were the most common post.mod, while attributive adjectives and nouns were most

Meanwhile, Liu & Li’s (2016) research about Noun phrase complexity in EFL academic writing by advanced Chinese EFL students and published writers gave the results that noun phrase complexity

in the student corpus was significantly lower than in the published corpus

All of the above studies are based on data that comes from scholarly texts that employ formal writing However, there have been no studies to assess using noun phrase complexity in online newspapers

So we conducted this research to fill in the gap of previous studies, with the desire: to identify the frequency of using complex noun phrases in online newspapers; to assess the complexity of the noun phrases used; to suggest some implications to using complex noun phrases more effectively

III Analysis

1 Data (Nguyễn Thị Nga)

This study is based on a corpus of 15 online newspapers covering a variety of topics such as fashion, the environment, politics, and so on These articles were sourced at random from 4 reputable online newspapers: The Guardian, National Geographic, The Week, and The Daily Mail

2 Number of NP (Nguyễn Thị Nga)

After collecting the necessary online newspapers for analysis, the authors of this study created the table below to summarize the total number of sentences and noun phrases found in those online newspapers The data shown in the table below clearly shows that there are a total of 375 sentences in 15 selected online articles and of which the number of noun phrases is 1181 Which means that each sentence has about 3.15 NPs on average Thereby we see that the frequency of occurrence of noun phrase is quite a lot, and it plays an extremely important role to form a complete sentence

Total number of sentences Total number of NPs

No of NP per sentence: 3,15

One of the reasons for the high number of Nps (3.15 on average) in a sentence is that each complex noun phrase contains other noun phrases

For example:

Extract 1

“The ruling will be a bittersweet victory for the LGBTQ+ community in Kenya, whose

members have been subject to harassment, exclusion and violence.”

(The Guardian - Kenya’s LGBTQ community wins bittersweet victory in battle for rights)

As can be clearly seen, "the ruling" is a noun phrase that acts as the subject, with "the" being the determiner and "ruling" being the head noun Additionally, "a bittersweet victory for the LGBTQ+ community in Kenya, whose members have been subject to harassment, exclusion and violence" is the second noun phrase that acts as the predicate, with "a" plays the role of determiner, "bittersweet" is the pre-modifier, " victory" is the head noun and "whose members have been subject to harassment, exclusion

clear that noun phrases are not only highly numerical but also highly complex, as will be demonstrated in

the following analysis

3 Analysis of the complexity of NP in the quantity of DET, pre-modifiers, and post-modifiers (Trần Chúc Nhi)

The structure of NP will become more complex when different DET, pre-modifiers, and post-modifiers are added to it, as was stated in the Literature Review Of 1181 NP in online newspapers, there are 134 complex

NP that has more than one DET, pre-modifiers, and post-modifiers, accounting for around 12 percent The rate of this kind may not high, but it has an essential role in delivering dense textual information that contributes to fast and economical reading (Biber and Gay, 2010, as cited in Jitpraneechai, 2019)

The frequency of Complex NP in the quantity of DET, pre-modifiers and post-modifiers

Total of NP Complex NP in

the quantity of DET, pre-modifiers and post-modifiers

More than one DET

More than one pre-modifiers

More than one post-modifier

(%) 100% (%) 11,34

According to the statistics, the complexity of NP in the quantity of DET is the highest, followed by the complexity of NP based on the number of pre-modifiers they carry, with more than a half in total for each type However, when compared with the total of NP, they are just making up around 6 percentage each category Thus, the use of adding numerous post-modifiers in online newspapers is the lowest, accounting for 2,7 percent

3.1 The complexity in the number of DET

The first sign that an NP is complex is the presence of multiple DETs within the NP There are two DET, including the possessive DET "'s" and the definite articles "the," in the NP "the government's new farm," for instance Roberts (2016) claims that possessive DET can be used with the majority of DET, including articles, demonstratives, possessives, etc This is also the most typical DET structure that adds to the

3.2 The complexity in the number of pre-modifiers

In addition, when several modifiers are included, NP can become complicated A complicated modifier can be created in a number of ways because the pre-modifiers of NP can be nouns, participles, adjectives, and quantifying adjectives

For instance, the NP “the 3,445 different plant species recorded during firework” carries three modifiers: quantifying adjective/numeral (3,445), adjective (different), and noun (plant)

pre-NP

Another NP that consists of three pre-modifiers is “a globally focused UK science sector” with an adverb (globally), participles (focused), and nouns (UK science)

NP

Due to the need for newspapers to pack as much information as possible into a small amount of text, authors of web newspapers frequently use pre-modifiers with two or three elements With regard to all pre-modifiers, the frequency of using nouns as pre-modifiers is quite high, making up 20% of all types of pre-modifiers Overall, the complex NP has functioned effectively to display concise information However,

in some instances, the excessive use of pre-modifiers will make the NP too complicated and difficult for people to understand For instance, the NP “a US Supreme Court child sexual abuse images case on a desk”, with the head noun as “case”, all these pre-modifiers “US Supreme Court child sexual abuse images” make the NP too heavy, unnatural, and people may need time to process the information

3.3 The complexity in the number of post-modifiers

Last but not least, the intricacy of the post-modifiers also adds to the complexity of the NP's structure The post-modifiers of NP can be split into two categories, as stated in the Literature Review: clausal post-modifiers, such as relative clauses, -ing clauses, -ed clauses, and to- clauses), and phrasal post-modifiers, such as prepositional phrases, and appositive noun phrases)

Take the NP “all the species that depend on them including insects, bats and birds” as an example of clausal post-modifiers This NP consists of 2 post-modifiers, including a relative clause (that depend on them) combined with an “–ing” clause (including insects, bats and birds)

Furthermore, an example of a phrasal post-modifiers is the NP “the Oscars for the second year in a row” in the sentence “The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has reportedly been snubbed by the Oscars for the second year in a row” It contains 2 prepositional phrases expressing time (for the second year) and place (in a row)

In conclusion, although the post-modifiers can help authors add more information to the subjects; however, since it’s often a long phrase or clause, it will make the sentence seem heavy and not logical if the NP’s position is on the front or the middle of the sentence

4 The complexity in structure of NP’s components (Trần Thị Lan Anh)

The determiner, the previous modifier, the head noun, and the post-modifier are the four basic components of the NP structure, according to Literature Review This study of online newspapers also discovers that, in addition to the number of determiners, the preceding modifier, and the post-modifier, the complexity of NP is represented in the structure of the determiner and post-modifier

4.1 The complexity in structure of NP’s components

According to statistic, the complexity in NP structure is illustrated in the structure of determiner and modifier There is no recorded example in previous modifier

post-The complexity of determiner structure

There are three kinds of determiners: demonstratives (DEM), certain quantifiers (Q), and possessives (POSS) However, in selected online newspapers, one determiner structure is as the diagram below:

NP DET

NOM POSS

1.a) half of Britain and Ireland’s native plants

1.b) a third of California's water

1.c) the supreme court’s ruling

The complexity of post-modifier structure

“Every modifier must be immediately dominated by a NOM” (Burton-Roberts, 2016) Therefore, the NOM includes the previous modifier, the head noun, and the post-modifier The previous modifier can be a word

or a phrase; however, no occurrences of the complexity of the previous modifier have been found On the contrary, in many situations, the post-modifier can be considered much more complicated

The post-modifiers can be phrasal and/or clausal, and whenever they are complex phrase or include the complex phrase, they become complex post-modifier, or a complexity of post-modifier can be seen through them A complex post-modifier and its tree diagrams are shown below (which are italic):

1.d) the dispute over the Northern Ireland protocol

This NP the dispute over the Northern Ireland protocol has one phrasal post-modifier which is over the

Northern Ireland protocol, and this post-modifier contains another NP the Northern Ireland protocol which

is a quite complete version of a NP: the (det.) Northern Ireland (pre.mod) protocol (HN)

4.2 The occurrences of the NP’s complex components

or both complex determiner and post-modifier

However, the statistic shows that the amount of complexity in determiner and post-modifier is not the same In fact, the number of complex post-modifiers is nearly 4 times that of complex determiners, and the occurrence of accompany of both complex determiner and post-modifier is much lower compared with the total of complex components: 18 per 338, approximately 5%

4.3 Analysis of the complexity in determiner and post-modifier

Analysis of the complexity in determiner

The complexity of the determiner in NP structure mainly comes from the possessive determiner, because

in this kind of determiner, there is always a possessive adjective or a noun accompanied by genitive case When the determiner contains a noun, it is quite likely that the noun will join with other words to form a complicated structured NP containing a more complete meaning

For example, 1.a) half of Britain and Ireland’s native plants, they can just write half of native plants, is is a correct NP with 2 previous modifier half of and native, which modify the plural noun plants However, to

reduce the length of the sentence and to create a more complete meaning of the NP, they add the genitive

case of Britain and Ireland to define the native plants mentioned belong to Britain and Ireland As a result,

the NP has a new function: is one component of the determiner of NP

NP det

Analysis of the complexity in the post-modifiers

The complexity of the post-modifier structure bases on two points: the features of online news, and the functions of NP in sentence First, online news is short, concise, neutral but contains a lot of information The functions of complex NPs fully meet these requirements: a NP are the shortest version of an expression, contains as much as information it can and create a balance perspective

For example:

3.a) the impact of the government’s own funding cuts on women and girls in low-income countries

This example 3.a) is an NP and can be analyzed:

the (det.) impact (HN) of the government’s own funding cuts on women and girls in low-income countries

(post-modifier)

Moreover, the post-modifier contains 2 NPs the government’s own funding cuts on women and girls and

low-income countries Each of the two NPs can be analyzed in deeper with determiners, previous modifiers

and post-modifiers which are very complicate However, the two NPs and the linking words are connected

to form a complex-complete NP, and the two NPs the government’s own funding cuts on women and girls and low-income countries can be considered as the immediate constituents of the NP from the example

3.a) This is the difference to distinguish this kind of complex NP to the previous kind in part 3

I

V Implication

We can see the complexity of the noun phrase in the sentence from the above analysis As mentioned in literature review, noun phrases help to add variety to the style so that students can apply simple and complex noun phrase structures in their writing For example, instead of writing "Mai is a doctor, and she

is 30 years old She is from Vietnam," they might write "Mai, the 31-year-old Vietnam doctor." Sentences become much shorter and more concise, helping students create higher quality texts EFL students have always strived to create academic texts, and understanding the characteristics and functions of noun phrases can assist students in refining their sentences

Not only that, but by understanding the components of a noun phrase, students can improve their own translation abilities Students will be able to clearly analyze long sentences with complex noun phrases and come up with a quick and efficient translation if they come across them

V Conclusion

To summarize, the goal of this study was to examine the complexity of noun phrase structure in a variety

of online newspapers covering a variety of topics The literature review covered all the concepts required for analyzing the complexity of noun phrases in online newspapers The study revealed the frequency of noun phrases in online newspapers, as well as the complexity in the number and the structure of the noun phrase component In particular, the noun phrase can appear as complete or incomplete in terms of structure (determiner/pre-modifier/post-modifier) And whatever form they appear in, they can be complex In the first case, in a noun phrase, there can be more than 1 determiner, pre-modifier, or post-modifier This may include the sister's immediate constituents In the second case, in a noun phrase, the determiner and the post-modifier can become complicated because the immediate constituents complement each other Because of this complication, understanding the noun phrase is critical for practical application

VI Limitation

Due to time limitations and the small number of collected online newspapers and data, this paper was unable to cover the full information If given chance to conduct additional in-depth research, this essay will more compelling and can reach more objective findings

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Appendix: A list of 15 online news

1 Kenya’s LGBTQ community wins bittersweet victory in battle for rights

Supreme court rules for freedom of association but landmark decision sparks backlash from government and churches

The supreme court of Kenya has criticised the government for failure to register an association for LGBTQ+ people, saying the decision discriminates against the rights of the community

Although same-sex unions remain illegal in Kenya, the court ruled that everyone has a right of association

It is the culmination of a decade-long legal battle, and a victory for the LGBTQ+ community

In a majority decision, the court ruled that the non-governmental coordination board was discriminatory and infringed on the community’s constitutional right to association by refusing to register any of six names proposed by the community’s representatives, among them the National Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission and the Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Council

The government body had said that permitting registration would contravene sections of the country’s penal code that criminalise gay and lesbian unions, including a British colonial law laying down a 14-year sentence for anyone convicted of homosexual acts

“The court was of the view that the [government’s] decision was discriminatory and that it would be unconstitutional to limit the right to associate, through denial of registration of an association, purely on the basis of the sexual orientation of the applicants,” states the ruling

It added: “Human rights are inherent and held simply because of being a human All human beings, including LGBTIQ persons, are entitled to the full enjoyment of all the rights under chapter four of the constitution, not by reason of their sexual preferences as LGBTIQ but as human beings Just as the rights enjoyed by heterosexuals are not based on their sexual orientation but by virtue of common humanity.” The ruling has been met by strong opposition, mainly from evangelical churches and conservative politicians, while the hashtag #SayNoToLGBTQinKENYA has been trending for the past week A media statement by Calisto Odede, presiding bishop at the Christ is the Answer Ministries, said the ruling could embolden “other illegal practitioners like paedophiles and those involved in incest” to also have the right

of association

“There may be many people who are struggling with different kinds of sexual desires but they have not gone to court for the whole nation to recognise them,” states the church, which has a large following in