2.3 Nominal Group
According to Droga 2002: 42 nominal groups name and describe people, places, things and events and typically, but not always, realize the
participant roles in a clause. Nominal groups can also be part of a circumstance in the clause. The choices in nominal groups contribute to the
experiential meanings in a text. They also say a lot about the field of a text. A nominal group consists of a main noun or ―head‖ word and has the
potential to be expanded by adding information before the head word pre- modification and after it post-modification. For example, we could say
―my dog loved those bones‖ or we could say ―my dog loved those three smelly lamb bones from the butcher shop
‖. In the second example, the nominal group provides a more detailed description of the ‗bones‘ because
of the pre- and post-modifiers.
My dog Loved
those three smelly Bones lamb from the butcher shop.
Premodifiers Head
Postmodifiers
Probe questions could be employed to examine the kind of information provided by each element in the nominal group. It can also
describe each element functionally. The tables below provide a summary of
the choices available or the potential of the nominal group for naming and describing.
Table 2.1 Probe and functional label Probe
Example Functional Label
What? bones
Head word Thing
Which ones or whose?
those bones
Deictic How many?
those three bones Numerative
What like?
those three smelly lamb bones
Epithet What kind?
those three smelly lamb bones
Classifier More details after
head? Those three smelly lamb
bones
from the butcher shop
Qualifier Source: Droga, 2002: 42
The pro be ―what?‖ will lead to what thing is talked about, which in
this example is ―bones‖; while ―which one?‖ will point to the deictic which is represent by ―those‖ ones. In the case of ―numerative‖, we can employ the
probe ―how many?‖ like in the above table which pointing to ―three‖ bones. ―What like?‖ probe can find the epithet function: ―smelly‖, while ―what
kind?‖ will lead to the classifier: ―lamb‖. Finally, the probe ―more details after head?‖ will determine the qualifier ―from the butcher shop‖.
2.4 Grammatical Metaphor