Nominal Group

A nominal Group is a grammatical constituent composed of a noun and, in some cases, other kinds of words, whose job is to describe, qualify, and give more details about the Head of the Nominal Group. These groups are known as expanded nouns. 

The structure of nominal groups has three parts, pre-modification, head/thing, and post-modification. The order of these three elements has a relevant role in the meaning of the Nominal Group. Pre-modifiers are in the uppermost rank position in comparison to post-modifiers. The lower rank positions of the post-modifiers are called rank-shifting. 

Nominal Groups have three functional elements. The first functional element is interpersonal, which refers to the interaction between people throughout clauses. The second functional element is ideational, and it alludes to the meaning of the clause. The last functional element is textual, which refers to the structure or order of the words within a sentence.

Head / Thing

The Head and Thing of the Nominal Group often conflate and are represented by one word. Although, in some cases, Head and Thing are different words within the Nominal Group. The Head has the experiential function of representing the Thing. Thus, Thing represents inanimate and animate objects.

References

• Bloor, T. & Bloor, M. (2004). Structure of the nominal group. The functional analysis of English (pp. 138-153). Arnold.
• Lock, G. (1997). Representing things II: More on noun groups. In Richards, J. C. (ed.), Functional English grammar (pp. 22-42). Cambridge University Press.