Building Vocabulary for Reading and Speaking

Academic literature is thought to be comprised of long, elaborate grammatical and sentence structures. Yet, research has suggested that this is not always the case. Many types of academic literature actually contain compressed sentences, which allow writers to convey a lot of information using the least amount of text as possible. These sentences can seem confusing at first, but a little knowledge of one common device – the noun phrase – can help you read more effectively and write more concisely.

A noun phrase is a group of 2 or more words which acts as a noun in a sentence. 

Every noun phrase requires a head noun (also known as a main noun) and can also include premodifiers (such as adjectives, articles, determiners, participles, and possessive [pro]nouns, and quantifiers) and postmodifiers (such as noun clauses, prepositional phrases, and relative clauses). Both types of modifiers give extra information about the head noun.

Here are a few examples of noun pharses:

Long-term unemployment

• “Unemployment” is the head noun
• “Long-term” is a pre-modifying adjective

Universities on the east coast

• “Universities” is the head noun
• “On the east coast” is a post-modifying prepositional phrase

The tall man who lives in the cottage

• “Man” is the head noun
• “The tall” is a pre-modifying article and adjective
• “Who lives in the cottage” is a post-modifying relative clause

Noun phrases appear in different parts of a sentence. Here are several examples taken from the following journal article (head nouns are bolded):

El Amine, N.R., & Cascón-Pereira, R. (2024). What does expatriate success mean? Developing a comprehensive definition through a systematic literature review. Career Development International, 29(1), 3-79.

1. “The third most frequent dimension of expatriate success was expatriate satisfaction.” (p. 11)
   • "The third most frequent dimension of expatriate success" is the subject and a noun phrase.
   • "Expatriate satisfaction" is the subject complement and and a noun phrase.
2. “They also shed light on the importance of measuring all these during expatriation and after repatriation to define success.” (p. 14)
   • "the importance of measuring all these during expatriation and after repatriation to define success.” is the object and a noun phrase.
3. “Despite the many studies covering the different dimensions, we rarely found...” (p. 10)
   • "the many studies covering the different dimensions" is the object complement and a noun phrase.

As mentioned earlier, noun phrases are useful for making writing more concise. One common noun phrase used for this purpose is called an appositive.

An appositive is a noun phrase appearing after another noun phrase that provides more information about the other noun phrase. Here is an example using El Amine and Cascón-Pereira’s article:

El Amine and Cascón-Pereira (2024), the authors of this literature review, argue that expatriate success has to be understood across individual, interpersonal, and organizational levels.

In this sentence, the bolded text ("the authors of this literature review") is the appositive to El Amine and Cascón-Pereira (2024). Adding this appositive eliminates the need to write another sentence defining who these authors are.

Aside from reading, using appositives in your own writing can be useful when you have a strict word limit for an assignment.