Is the concrete noun always the Head of a noun phrase?

Question

Is the concrete noun always the Head of a noun phrase?e.g. The Hell cats. "Hell" and "cats" are both nouns but the concrete noun is "cats" which is the head of the sentence. "Hell" is abstract and isn't the head.similarlyA dogs Heaven."Dogs" is concrete and is the head isn't it?

BillJ · Accepted Answer

AnonymousIs the concrete noun always the Head of a noun phrase?e.g. The **** cats. "****" and "cats" are both nouns but the concrete noun is "cats" which is the head of the ~~sentence~~ PHRASE. "****" is abstract and isn't the head.

No, the head of an NP is not a matter of concrete or abstract. The head is always the most important element in the phrase; it may be a concrete noun or it may an abstract noun. The other words in the phrase such as determiners and modifiers are dependents; in the case of modifiers, they may well be nouns (concrete or abstract) themselves. In the NP 'The **** cats', 'cats' is the head, not because it's a concrete noun but because it's the most important word in the phrase. The abstract noun '****' is merely a modifier describing which kind of cats are being referred to.

Anonymoussimilarly A dogs Heaven."Dogs" is concrete and is the head isn't it?

No, the abstract noun 'heaven' is the head because it's the most important word in the phrase. The noun 'dog's' is a dependent, a modifier defining the kind of 'heaven'; it's not the head of the phrase.

BillJ

Is the concrete noun always the Head of a noun phrase?

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