Can noun phrases have only one word?

Question

In Saad is now a grown man. I think that Saad is a noun phrase.

Can noun phrases have only one word?

Answer 1

There is no consensus on the status of a word as a phrase.

Traditional grammar used to say that a phrase is two or more words; however, The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, a "modern traditional" grammar, uses one-word phrases. On the other hand, transformational grammar used to say that a phrase is one or more words; however, its contemporary update no longer does so (because it does not allow unary branching).

The Wikipedia article on noun phrases summarises it nicely:

Status of single words as phrases

Traditionally, a phrase is understood to contain two or more words. The traditional progression in the size of syntactic units is word < phrase < clause, and in this approach a single word (such as a noun or pronoun) would not be referred to as a phrase. However, many modern schools of syntax – especially those that have been influenced by X-bar theory – make no such restriction.[3] Here many single words are judged to be phrases based on a desire for theory-internal consistency. A phrase is deemed to be a word or a combination of words that appears in a set syntactic position, for instance in subject position or object position.

Those who define a phrase as one or more words do so for theory-internal consistency reasons. As an English learner, I don't think anyone should fault you for using "phrase" to mean two or more words.

Edit: It seems that even traditional grammar in the second half of last century was open to the idea of a phrase being one word. Here's Quirk et al's well-known "A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (1985)" (p. 42):

The grammatical hierarchy

clauses, which consist of one or more
phrases, which consist of one or more
words, which consist of one or more
morphemes.

Answer 2

In the linguistic field of generative syntax, which is where this idea of "noun phrases" is treated scientifically, there is nothing preventing a noun phrase from only containing a single noun, just as there is nothing preventing a verb phrase from only containing a single verb, and so on. In fact, the noun is the only required element of a noun phrase in the modern formulation of generative syntax.

In common (non-scientific) usage, "phrase" is understood to be a unit larger than a word but smaller than a sentence, and does not necessarily correlate to the linguistic understanding of a "phrase". By this definition, a single word could clearly not be considered a phrase.

At the end of the day, context matters. If you're talking about the syntactic components of a sentence, as in "Saad is now a grown man" is composed of the noun phrase "Saad" and the verb phrase "is now a grown man", then it is absolutely correct to call "Saad" a phrase. But if you are just talking to someone, and you misheard them and you say "Can you please repeat that phrase?" you would not be expecting to hear a single word, and if someone says something you really like and you go "Wow, that was a beautiful phrase at the end there," they would understand you to be referring to a group of multiple words.

Answer 3

Many sources that should be reliable consider isolated nouns to also be valid noun phrases.

The Internet Grammar of English, UCL (university)

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/internet-grammar/phrases/define.htm

Noun phrases do not have to contain strings of words. In fact, they can contain just one word, such as the word "children" in "children should watch less television". ... But in a phrase-level analysis, we call children on its own a noun phrase. This is not simply a matter of terminology -- we call it a noun phrase because it can be expanded to form longer strings which are more clearly noun phrases.

[children] should watch less television

[the children] should watch less television

[the children in class 5] should watch less television

[the small children in class 5] should watch less television

Learn English, British Council

https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/grammar/english-grammar-reference/noun-phrases

Often a noun phrase is just a noun or a pronoun:

People like to have money.

I am tired.

Cambridge Dictionary

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/grammar/british-grammar/noun-phrases

A noun phrase consists of a noun or pronoun, which is called the head, and any dependent words before or after the head. Dependent words give specific information about the head.

Examples of noun phrases: [table of "dependent word(s)", "noun", "dependent word(s), ∅ added for clarity for empty cells]

∅ - love - ∅

∅ - him - ∅

the - moon - ∅

the longest - river - in the world

Analysing Language in Context, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

https://alic.sites.unlv.edu/chapter-02-02-phrases-i-noun-phrases/

... keep in mind that a noun phrase represents those structures that can fulfill a noun role. So a “noun phrase” can be a single word or multiple words.

Oxford Learners Dictionary (quoted indirectly)

https://byjus.com/english/noun-phrase/

According to the Oxford Learner’s Dictionary, a noun phrase is defined as:

a word or group of words in a sentence that behaves in the same way as a noun [...].

Mirriam-Webster

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/noun%20phrase

[A little less clearly in favour of a single word noun phrase; but suggests that a noun phrase can contain no words at all]

: a phrase formed by a noun and all its modifiers and determiners

broadly: any syntactic element (such as a clause, clitic, pronoun, or zero element) with a noun's function

York Syntax, City University of New York

https://yorksyntax.commons.gc.cuny.edu/chapter-6-noun-phrases/

... some nouns can appear alone in a noun phrase, without a determiner or any other word.

These nouns include many proper nouns....

Diagrams of such phrases are about as simple as they come:

Answer 4

I don't see cited examples that are proper nouns such as "Amazon" or "Steve".

I would argue that Steve is not a clause, a verb, a preposition, a pronoun or a phrase. Steve is not an ordinary noun unlike: "children", "people", "love", or a determiner such as "him".

M-W says stev or steve, note the lowercase "s", is the abbreviation of stevadore. It doesn't mention that Steve is also a name.

Likewise Saad is a name that is normally given to males at birth. It doesn't stand for another word, although it may have a meaning, in English we don't normally associate a person's name with its historical, or at times, archaic meaning. If we expand the proper noun to explain who Saad is then it is the phrase that follows which is the Noun Phrase "Saad is the son of Nasir”.

That's my rationale, but I am ready to be corrected.

Answer 5

As a direct answer to your example, "Saad" sounds like a person's first name, so that is most definitely not a phrase. A person's name is a proper noun. There are some exceptions to this. Firstly, you can identify people with proper noun phrases - President Lincoln, for example. Also, there are some cultures that give phrases as names, such as the Native American Sitting Bull. But a single-word name - even if its meaning can only be expressed with multiple words (for example, the name 'John' means "God is gracious") is, as far as the English language goes, not a phrase. Any historical meaning is irrelevant when using it to identify an individual.

Regarding the broader question of can a single noun be a noun phrase, I'm not going to give you any pretentious, pseudo-intellectual answer; I'm just going to give it to you straight: no. A single noun (or any word) cannot be a noun phrase.

Webster's Dictionary gives this definition of "phrase":

a word or group of words forming a syntactic constituent with a single grammatical function

So, at first glance you might say "aha! a word or group of words! So a phrase can be a single word!". But notice the rest of the definition. It must form a syntactic constituent. In grammar, a syntactic constituent is any unit that can stand alone or be substituted as a whole within a sentence. That is where the idea of nouns as noun phrases becomes untenable. In a phrase like "John likes apples", you couldn't substitute either of the nouns with other noun phrases without changing the structure of the sentence. Some noun phrases require hyphenated words, for example. You could only directly change them with other nouns, like someone else's name besides John or another fruit like a banana.

Yes, you can have single-word sentences, but a sentence is not the same as a phrase. Sentences of single words, such as imperatives and responses to questions, rely heavily on context to understand them. For example, if you asked me what my dad's name is and I said "John" you'd understand, but if a stranger randomly came up to you and said "John" you'd be confused (unless John is your name in which case there would a different kind of confusion). Another example - if you were in danger and someone shouted "Go!" you'd know that was directed at you, but if you were watching the 100m Olympic event and heard "Go!" you'd know it was directed at someone else. These examples also belie the definition of a phrase which must have an internal structure. If we're suggesting that single words can carry a bigger meaning like a phrase then that meaning would have to be consistent.

I'm really surprised at the number of upvotes to some of the answers here but often an answer is popular because it challenges norms. And that's fine, but to paraphrase the late Douglas Adams, you can prove that black is white and that's all very clever but you'll probably get yourself killed on the next zebra crossing. Likewise, claiming a single word is a phrase and backing it up with some quotes might give you a moment of glory in the classroom as you watch your English teacher squirm, but say it in public and you'll be a laughing stock. I don't even care if this gets downvoted, I'm just glad I have the reputation to give away.