Noun Phrase

In grammar, a noun phrase (abbreviated NP) is a phrase whose head is a noun or a pronoun, optionally accompanied by a set of modifiers.

Noun phrases are very common cross-linguistically.

In English, for some purposes, noun phrases can be treated as single grammatical units. This is most noticeable in the syntax of the English genitive case. In a phrase the king of Spata's wife, the possessive clitic "-'s" is not added to the king who actually has the wife, but instead to Spata, as the end of the whole phrase. The clitic modifiers the entire phrase the king of Spata.