Talk:Nominal group (functional grammar)

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I've created this article as an amateur. Professional SF linguists are asked to review it. Tony (talk) 12:11, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Any particular reason the picture shows a different type of apple than the example nominal group refers to?24.44.137.230 (talk) 02:52, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

I'd hoped people wouldn't notice. The reason is that Arkansas Black seems a little obscure—their colour is red, not black, and I didn't want that disjuncture to intrude. Jonathan apples look almost identical to them. Tony (talk) 08:25, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

huge nominal group: example

efficient bidirectional, modularised isolated and non-isolated electronic converter interfaces operating with a “real” fuel cell as an input and interfaced with a DC distribution bus

Tony (talk) 00:53, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Colourblindness

Colourblind people will not be easily able to read the article. We need to convey information without only using colours. NerdyNSK (talk) 03:55, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

I deliberately chose colours that are most likely to be distinguishable by most colourblind people (Accessability). Do you have suggestions for a more appropriate colour scheme? Tony (talk) 04:00, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

I have the following suggestions:

• finding colours that are visible by colour blind people is a long and unrewarding chase. The use of colour as a coding mechanism itself is the problem.
• design in monochrome, if you want to use colour, add it afterwards as a redundant code
• there are lots of ways of highlighting the text without colour. Like lots of accessibility issues, it appears difficult at first but it gets easier. You have underlines, bolding, italics, use of boxes as in tables.

Think of colour blindness as no more of a blindness than infra-red blindness (snakes can see it we can't) or ultra-violet blindness (flies can see it, we can't). If snakes and flies were to design interfaces, some of them would insist on applying infra-red and ultra-violet to human interfaces. Lightmouse (talk) 09:35, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Language

All instances of nominal groups are found in ALL languages. There is NO difference between a nominal group and a noun phrase, except the etic view. To say these exist in English is incorrect.

Maybe syntax is not the right word; maybe we should use language instead?174.3.99.176 (talk) 03:32, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

You are right on the first point, of course. "Language" is much better than "syntax", although it's a little clunky. Unsure of how to solve this. Tony (talk) 13:26, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Linguistics? Bluelinking it (i.e.: language)? Dialects? Speech? Spoken language?174.3.99.176 (talk) 17:09, 26 February 2010 (UTC)

Self-reference

The last two examples dealing with featured articles violate Wikipedia's guidelines on self-references to avoid, especially this section of the guideline. Those examples should be replaced by another multi-part procedure that non-Wikipedians could relate to. Perhaps learning a musical instrument (or any topic for that matter) or take-off/landing procedures on an aeroplane? Or inserting {{sofixit}} tags? :-) Graham87 08:06, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Initial example doesn't make sense?

"In systemic functional grammar (SFG), a nominal group is a group of words which represents or describes an entity, for example "The nice old English police inspector who was sitting at the table with Mr Morse". Grammatically, the wording "The nice old English police inspector who was sitting at the table" can be understood as a nominal group (a description of someone), which functions as the subject of the information exchange and as the person being identified as "Mr Morse"."

It seems clear to me that the nominal group describes an entity that is sitting at the table with Mr Morse, so how can the nominal group function as the person being identified as "Mr Morse"? If it's sitting with itself in some form of brain-teaser, it's a bad example. 160.34.93.227 (talk) 17:19, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

Merger discussion

Copied from User talk:Loew Galitz

Hi, it's a different concept from trad. grammar "noun phrase". I note also that Noun phrase is in an appalling state, whereas the nominal group article is not. What exactly is your rationale for merging them? Tony (talk) 07:52, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

@Tony: You've claimed that so many times, but you've never provided an example of a nominal group which is not a noun phrase or vice versa. --A. di M. (talk) 09:18, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

@A di M: Well, I suppose the simple answer is that a group is an expansion of a word, whereas a phrase is a contraction of a clause. That expansion of a word has both experiential and logical dimensions. Probably the logical dimension is easiest way to explain what distinguishes a group (e.g., a nominal group, a preposition group, a verbal group) from a phrase (e.g. a prepositional phrase, a conjunction phrase, an adverbial phrase): a phrase has no logical structure as Head and Modifier (see Nominal group) and cannot be reduced to a single element ("apples" in the example provided). The logic of the group in English is recursive: working leftwards from the Head, what kind of apples? (Jonathon apples) What kind of Jonathon apples? (shiny Jonathon apples) What kind of shiny Jonathon apples? (beautiful shiny Jonathon apples) What kind of beautiful shiny Jonathon apples (here the recursive logic breaks down, since this is a multivariate, not a univariate, nominal group—the question now is How many beautiful shiny Jonathon apples? and after that, How do those five beautiful shiny Jonathon apples relate to me the speaker/writer? ("Those" indicates "the ones over there, not close to me.") In contrast, the logic of a univariate group is unchanged right through, typical of long strings of nouns in news headlines and, say, "Wikipedia Bot Approvals Group RfC results".

So, a phrase has no such logical dimension ("on the Internet"—a prepositional phrase); but a group does ("not without a good deal of trouble"—a preposition group).

English is marked in its emphasis on the formation of nominal groups (something tells me that in your native Italian such an emphasis lies in verbs—I'm unsure, though). This is one reason English is good for writing about science and technical topics, which are very much to do with Things. I hope this clarifies why "noun phrase" as a term, and the article by that name, miss the point on a deeper level; it is like describing a house in terms of the layout of the bricks rather than the intermediate levels of structure such as walls and rooms.

The article on noun phrase is testament to the different approach of traditional grammar (I would say the fallacies of trad grammar, but that would be POV, and my opinion is of no consequence in this matter). It therefore should remain as a separate article—that is what WP is here for, to record what is in the literature: it is a very different topic to that of nominal group. The challenge is to improve the poor state of the article. The question of merging might thus be posed differently: eventually, should nominal, preposition, and verbal groups all be treated in the one article. Possibly, but that might be too big and/or complicated. Tony (talk) 13:52, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

I still don't get it. I had never heard anyone claiming that noun phrases don't have a head and/or modifiers ("and/or" because apples in "I like apples" has no modifier and John's in "I was at John's last night" has no head), or that they can't be reduced to a single element (e.g. that apples is not a noun phrase), or that they aren't recursive (at least in English, though I have heard that Pirahã might disprove some fundamentally important conjecture by Chomsky et al. about that). Saying that "a group is an expansion of a word, whereas a phrase is a contraction of a clause" also explains nothing, as a person is both an aggregate of organs and a member of a society but is still a person.

(Also, the reason why Italian sucks for writing abour science and English is so good is mostly about lexicon; there are differences in grammar but they are relatively easy to overcome.) A. di M. (talk) 14:38, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

We'll just have to disagree about the reasons why English and Italian vary WRT science writing. Noun phrases don't exist; only noun (nominal) groups. This is because nouns (in English) are always extended into word groups using a recursive logical structure. A nominal group doesn't have to have a modifier ("goat" is still counted as a group, in this sense). "I like apples" is a clause; "apples" is a nominal group. Phrases are like minor clauses, actually. Groups are definitely not. Tony (talk) 14:47, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

I guess you have a different definition of "noun phrase" in mind than I have; according to the one I know about (i.e. that given in subsection 7.2 of this), noun phrases do exist, they are not clauses (except in very special cases), and "apples" is one of them. --A. di M. (talk) 15:34, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, this one (which says noun phrases don't exist—they are groups) is in all of the literature on systemic functional grammar. It is a very different take from yours. Please do not force your opinions on articles. Tony (talk) 00:30, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

What are you talking about? Except for adding the "proposed merger" tag (which was later removed and re-added) I've never edited the article. BTW, if systemic functional grammarians don't usually use the term “noun phrase” and “traditional” grammarians do, why would the former get to decide what it means (any more than the latter get to decide what “nominal group” means)? A definition of “noun phrase” according to which there's no such thing seems pretty useless to me. (Note the scare quotes around “traditional”: Huddleston and Pullum aren't exactly “traditional” either, they even call bush a preposition.) --A. di M. (talk) 11:18, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

One might ask, "What are you talking about? You do not seem to accept that there could be a different grammatical landscape from the one you personally endorse. I'm afraid there is, and WP needs to acknowledge this in its articles. I have pointed out why merging the articles would not be useful for our readers, since traditional grammar does not seem to acknowledge the basis of SFL, and SFL does not accept that a nominal group can be regarded as a phrase. I personally find the traditional-grammar article "Noun phrase" appallingly written, and I wonder why this time isn't spent in bringing it up to standard. I know quite a lot about traditional grammar; I don't think you've ever set eyes on text about SFL, beyond my attempt to explain a few things on this page. (It looks as though I may as well not have bothered.) Huddleston and Pullum are both good fellows, and both have things to teach us; but they are rooted in a background of traditional grammar (also known as "formal" grammars, for their almost exclusive focus on word classification). Tony (talk) 12:40, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

None of your "attempts to explain a few things on this page" seems to show any actual difference (other than in the name and point of view) between SFL's nominal groups and FG's noun phrases (i.e. any situation in which a SFList would call something a nominal group but a FGian would not call it a noun phrase, or vice versa). Contrary to your claims, FG's noun phrase do have a head–modifier structure, can consist of a single element, and is recursive, with different possible types of modifiers and structures (those five beautiful shiny Jonathan apples sitting on the chair is not any less of a FG noun phrase than Wikipedia Bot Approvals Group RfC results is, and I have no idea of what the ‘logical dimension’ which not without a good deal of trouble has but on the Internet hasn't.

FWIW, I have tried to peruse Halliday's book, but I soon gave up as I had no idea of what he was trying to say (and was not even sure he was actually making any non-tautological statement about the syntax of English, as opposed to just assigning names to concepts for the sake of it). --A. di M. (talk) 13:04, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

"I had no idea of what he was trying to say". Could I suggest you look at Chapter 6, Below the clause: groups and phrases? That's the chapter in the 2nd ed; in the 3rd ed. it's a different chapter number, but I can't locate where my copy is right now. I'm sorry to hear you gave up; SFL (more commonly known as functional grammar, so FG is a confusing initialism) is widely used in the school systems in some US states, parts of the UK, and a few jurisdictions in Australia. It has a large academic following, mostly in English, but also in German and French (and probably other languages). The fact that it is complicated reflects the complicated nature of the grammar of natural language; this is no reason to reject it. Tony (talk) 14:04, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

I shall provide some examples of nominal groups that are analyzed in a different way from that which gets called noun phrase in formal linguistics (pos linguistics, generative linguistics, traditional grammar). For instance, let's consider the nominal groups (1) the two papers, (2) the two sheets of paper, (3) the two papers on the table, (4) the two sheets of paper on the table. In functional grammar, the nominal groups (1) and (2) can be analyzed as having no embedding and the nominal groups (3) and (4) can be analyzed as having a single embedded nominal group, namely the table. The structure "sheets of" can be analyzed as a facet structure, thus being a way of experiencing paper and other materials in terms of shape and utility. This structure is not something that can be easily explained in terms of Description Logic (there is a way, I'm just not considering it here for the sake of argument, SFL allows multiple alternative analyses for the same structure anyways). In generative linguistics, on the other hand, (1) has no embedding, (2) and (3) have one embedded noun phrase, and (4) has two embedded noun phrases. This means the analyses can be different. They also result in different consequences: for instance, a software generating a nominal group will never generate the two sheets of balls of paper on the table because the experiential structure is not recursive, however, a software generating a noun phrase will come up with such a nonsense. Daniel 3 November 2016 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.79.92.56 (talk) 15:49, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

Colleagues, why don't you start talking not directly from your brains but from external sources which confirm your opinions. Also let me tell you an old Jewish joke.

- Abram and Isaac are in a mild dispute, i.e., both yell "oy gevalt", but tear each other's peyess yet not. Here comes Chaim and says, "Abram, Isaac, stop that noise, you are not in qahal; just go to rabbi, he will tell you who is right".

- So they did. "Speak, Abraham", rabbi says. Abraham speaks: "This and that, rabbi". Rabbi pores through a thick book and says: "You are right, Abram".

- Isaac disagrees: "But rabbi, it was not this and that, it was that and this". Rabbi pages through six thick books in deep thought and says, "And you are right, Isaac."

- Here Chaim jumps in, baffled: "But rabbi how can it be? You say Abraham is right and Isaac is right, nu?" - "You are right too, Chaim", rabbi says. Loew Galitz (talk) 17:57, 3 February 2011 (UTC)

Kwami, concerning the page move of yours that I reverted: tagging this article with "(systemic functional grammar)", which turns the article name into a clunky duckling, would then have to be mirrored by "Noun phrase (traditional grammar)". I think there would be little support for moving all trad-grammar-based articles to that format. You're not seriously considering it, are you? I believe the current announcement of SFL at the opening of the main text is quite sufficient to ground the topic in its context. Tony (talk) 10:11, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

If the other article is only about noun phrases in traditional grammar, then yes, it should be renamed to reflect that. We would then need to write a new article on "noun phrase" in general, with this article about the NP in Halliday, the current NP article about the NP in "traditional" grammar, maybe another for the NP in formal grammar, etc. I don't see the point, but then I don't see the point of this article either.

As for your claim above that "a phrase has no logical structure as Head and Modifier (see Nominal group) and cannot be reduced to a single element ("apples" in the example provided)", this is simply false. That is exactly what a noun phrase is: a noun that functions as the head, with various modifiers, which can be reduced to the single element which is the head. The same definition as you give for nominal group. They appear to be the same thing, as others have repeatedly noted and as you have repeatedly failed to falsify. — kwami (talk) 03:49, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Kwami, there is no NP in Halliday's work. So there is no point in writing an article about the NP in Halliday. Look at my comment two paragraphs above. I give some examples in which analyses diverge drastically. TONY is right. A nominal group is not a noun phrase. There is no such thing as a phrase that has a noun as head in functional terms. This would be nonsense functionally speaking. A nominal group is anchored on something that is being represented, the Thing being described. It is not anchored on a noun. For that reason, a couple of friends and some friends are two nominal groups that can be analyzed functionally in the same way: both of them represent friends (the Thing under description) and quantify them in an imprecise fashion (the quantification). In a formal analysis, where the structures are identified based on parts-of-speech (one noun phrase per noun) and not on the function the words have in the structure, one would always find two noun phrases in the wording a couple of friend (embedding) and a single noun phrase in the wording some friends. Daniel — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.79.92.56 (talk) 16:17, 3 November 2016 (UTC)

Please don't remove merge tag while the discussion is in progress. This tag may attract other people. I have no opinion on the issue itself, but I do have an opinion about wikipedia traditions: the traditions are for a reason. Loew Galitz (talk) 17:57, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

As I pointed out on your talk page, this is a very bad time for me to engage in such a discussion. If you could leave off for half a week, that would be good. A ref to Crystal might be possible, but not with the wording you came up with, which indicates that he just hasn't got it, like most traditional grammarians. I cannot post here again today. Tony (talk) 03:57, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Fair enough. I've read the article again, and AFAICT, it's a simple description of a noun phrase. The only things I wouldn't expect in a generic NP article are Halliday's approach to grammar in general (AFAICT nothing specific to NPs; the article even gets confused as to whether it's dealing with a clause or a phrase; if "phrase" is intended and Halliday distinguishes it from a "group", it would be useful for you to say so) and his idiosyncratic terminology, like 'epithet' for 'attributive' (unless maybe epithet is a subset of attributives, in which case there's probably some other generic term he's substituting.) — kwami (talk) 06:14, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Francais

Groupe nominal definition 2A01:E0A:397:4B70:B08F:9B69:61CE:D62E (talk) 15:56, 29 September 2022 (UTC)