Language has often been characterized as a systematic correlation between certain types of gestures and meaning

VP → V (NP) (NP) (PP)*

In this rule we have explicitly written two separate NPs, rather than (NP)*, because (in general) there is a maximum of two NPs in a VP, whereas it is possible to continue adding as many PPs as you like.

There are two more types of phrases, that also need to be paid attention to: adjective phrases and adverb phrases.

Adjective phrases. As well as noun phrases, there are also adjective phrases.

Why do we need them ? Well, consider the following sentences.

He was a very talented architect [59]

As an architect he was very talented

In these two sentences, the words very happy form a phrase. So we have an adjective phrase. Just as with nouns and noun phrases, we will say that whenever an adjective appears it is inside an adjective phrase, although it may be the only element in the adjective phrase. So we can write phrase structure rules showing the structure of simple adjective phrases:

AdjP → (Adv) Adj

Now that we’ve seen adjective phrases, we need to go back and modify our rule for noun phrases. We said that an NP → (Detv) (Adj) N, but there are several problems with that rule. Firstly, we’ve said wherever an adjective appears it’s inside an AdjP, so our rule should have an Adj P in it, not just an adjective. In fact, we need an AdjP because NPs can be more complicated than the ones we’ve seen so far. We can say things in English like: a very talented architect.

Here, clearly, we have an AdjP very talented inside the NP. But we also need to expand our NP rule further, because rather than just a single AdjP, an NP can contain several AdjPs: the rather famous very talented architect.So we must change our rule for an NP to:

NP → (Detv) (AdjP)* N

The asterisk is used to indicate that there can be more than one of a constituent.

Adverb phrase. Just as we have adjective phrases, we also have adverb phrases, to take account of things like very quickly, rather carefully and so on. An adverb phrase normally consists of an adverb possibly preceded by a degree adverb, e.g.:

Very interesting friendly indeed