what is a noun phrase?
A noun phrase is a form of words that identifies an object or a set of objects. There are two in the example sentence: THE LITTLE CHEST ON THE ROUND TABLE and MY SMALLEST KEY. You ll notice that the first of these itself contains two noun phrases, separated by eek! a preposition. Let s call the smaller versions noun groups. A noun group looks like it can have an article first (but it doesn t have to) then any number of adjectives (and I guess we could put integers here, too) then a noun (or presumably a pronoun). At this point, we re down to the level of individual words, so we can t do any more.
