Noun phrases in English can be of two types: those with a copula and those without. The first type has a subject followed by a predicate containing a copula, while the second type lacks a verb but implies it. Zero copula is common in some languages and informal speech.
In English, the term “noun phrase” can refer to two types of sentences. The first type of noun phrase is a phrase whose predicate is not a verb but is joined to the subject by a copula containing a verb. The second type of noun phrase does not contain a verb at all.
The first and most common type of noun phrase is a phrase in which the subject is followed by a predicate that contains a copula, or connection, and a predicate. The copula is a form of the verb “to be”. For example, the sentence “Jane is a doctor” is such a noun phrase. The predicative in this case is called nominative predicative because it is centered on the noun “doctor”.
The second, rarer type of noun phrase is a phrase in which the verb “to be” is absent but implicit in the sentence structure. Examples of this type of sentence include phrases such as “the sooner the better” or “the more the better”. Both of these sentences can be used as sentences, despite not containing a verb at all. The missing verb ‘to be’ is implied, with the full meanings of the sentences being ‘the sooner the better’ or ‘the more, the merrier’. This type of sentence is rarely used in formal English and is more common in slang or casual speech.
Noun phrases are relatively rare in English, but are much more frequent in some other languages. For example, in Hebrew, the noun phrase “Jane is a doctor” would consist only of the noun “Jane” and the word “doctor”. Translating the sentence into English requires the translator to insert the correct form of “to be”. This is true not only in Hebrew but in other languages such as Arabic, Russian and Latin.
The practice of linking subject and predicate without copula, as in these languages, is known as “zero copula”. Zero copula occurs in about 175 languages and does not occur in over 200 other languages. As we have seen, however, even in some languages where zero copula is not strictly grammatical, such as English, it still sometimes occurs in informal speech.
This type of phrasing often recurs in newspaper headlines as well. It comes from the habit of eliminating short words like contractions to save space. A newspaper headline might therefore read “Jones Winner” rather than “Jones is the Winner.”
Protect your devices with Threat Protection by NordVPN
