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LAC178 Assignment 1 Essay

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List all of the noun phrases in the passage, including the pronouns. After you have studied the list write an essay on how the noun phrases contribute to the text. How do they relate to what is being described in the extract? In Lindsey Davis’s Ode to a Banker, there are many uses of the noun phrase. The noun phrase is a phrase that contains a noun as well as other constituents (Yule 2010, p291). The noun can stand on its own as the noun phrase or include the use of articles and modifiers to enhance its effect on the reader. The following essay will look at how, through the use of noun phrases, Davis creates a sense of instability and allows her audience to experience it on a personal level through her characterisation of the narrator. …show more content…

Once again we are invited to personally experience the narrator’s feelings of uncertainty and confusion. Davis is very discriminative in her use of modifiers for her noun phrases. Modifiers in noun phrases help to enhance the noun phrase and allow for various interpretations (Short 1996, p44). This is done through the use of either pre-modification- that mainly consist of adjectives- and post-modification- that consist of either prepositional phrases, non-finite clauses or finite clauses (Crystal, pp136-138). She varies in her use of pre and post modifiers. Her post-modifiers are lengthier than her pre-modifiers as they give the audience more information about the head noun, from the phrase. One example of Davis’s use of the lengthy post-modifier is at the beginning of the extract- “in the open doorway before the lamp failed”. The narrator, here, is referring to her outline that the intruders could see. The audience is called to remember a case of where they have experienced seeing shadows in the dark, from glimmers of light. We are made to envision a room that is dark, but only just has been enveloped in this darkness as we are told that the intruders could see her “before the lamp failed”. This phrase, especially as it is at the beginning of the extract, creates a feeling of unease and dread within the audience- as well as foreshadowing what is

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