Word Order Distribution in the English Noun Phrase

Abstract

This study was carried out to investigate the word order distribution of English Noun Phrases (NPs) by using Saussure’s notion of structural linguistics and Reid’s meaning-based approach. The data from non-literary texts and short stories were examined to see if they comply with the patterns of NPs which have been proposed by other traditional linguists. The results of this study revealed that both literary and non-literary writings share similar word order distribution of simple noun phrases (i.e. ‘determiner + modifier + head noun’) with some slight differences pertaining to the positions of the modifiers in both texts. The analysis can be further improved by focusing on one category of word order distribution to identify the occurrences and to precisely elaborate on the occurrences of the word order