My point of view, colored admittedly by fluency in German, is that this sentence involves a compound noun.  The question about what a word is comes up, because we naturally write the expression as a set of separate strings divided by spaces.  They don't do that in German.  Such German monstrosities often become laughingstock for non-Germanicists that would encounter them.  



"Houston Symphony Partners'" is a possessive noun phrase denoting sponsorship with the possessive clitic merging with the plural morpheme "-s".  This noun is compounded out of "Houston Symphony" and "partners."  "Houston Symphony" is in turn compounded out of the two words that denote the city and the music making organization associated with it. This possessive is a proper noun that is then used as part of the determiner to modify the main noun of the noun phrase.  



The main noun is a compound noun comprised of multiple stages of morphological derivation, which may be reversed by segmenting it as a left-branching structure.  Some of the elements are also left-branching.  "Sale" becomes "Clearance Sale" which then combines with a left-branching compound "Spring Cleaning" to become "Spring Cleaning Clearance Sale."  Presumably the l.-b. compound "Symphony Surplus" denotes items that are no longer needed by the Huston Symphony.  There is apparently the idea that these items may be salvaged by selling them.  Thus we have the l.-b. compound "Symphony Surplus Salvage" combining next on the left.  "Mad-as-a-March-hare" seems to be an adjective phrase formed into an attributive compound adjective possibly meant to describe the kind of bartering that will go on at the sale, which has been described and restricted in the rest of the noun so far compounded.  Attributives normally follow the article in a noun phrase.  However, this point is not very important, since it seems that in this case the non-restrictive adjective has been attached as a part of the name of this particular Symphony Surplus Salvage Spring Cleaning Clearance Sale.  The whole compound noun is then a proper noun used to refer to a rather unique event.  Because of this I think that who the sponsor is becomes secondary and non-restrictive in the whole phrase.  



"The Mad as a March Hare Symphony Surplus Salvage Spring Cleaning Clearance Sale" is actually a proper noun, not a noun phrase at all (some are tempted to remove the definite article from the noun).  It's syntax is in the morphology of English.  The rules in this component can still be stated in the same form as the phrase structure rules of the syntax of English, but I think it should be pointed out that they are usually kept separate as part of Lexical Structure rather than of the Phrase Structure.  





-----Original Message-----

From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Peter H. Fries

Sent: Monday, December 07, 2009 10:07 PM

To: [log in to unmask]

Subject: Pushing the boundaries: A noun phrase that won't stop (almost)



Recently a colleague and I were searching the Corpus of Contemporary

American English (Mark Davies <www.americancorpus.org>) and discovered

the sentence below, which I thought might interest members of the list.





>>You'll have a chance to take home some classical pieces

>>of memorabilia at the Houston Symphony Partners' Mad

>>as a March Hare Symphony Surplus Salvage Spring

>>Cleaning Clearance Sale.





This sentence ends with the single noun phrase:



the Houston Symphony Partners' Mad as a March Hare Symphony Surplus

Salvage Spring Cleaning Clearance Sale



As I looked at this noun phrase several questions occurred to me.



1.  Exactly which words function as Head? Is it simply the noun 'sale'?

Or 'clearance sale'? Or 'spring cleaning clearance sale'? Or more?



2. At the other end of the phrase, does the phrase that ends with the

apostrophe begin with 'the' or with 'Houston'? To put it another way is

it the clearance sale *of the Houston symphony* (i.e. it’s a kind of

possessive)? Or should we interpret 'Houston symphony's' [without the

word 'the] as a sort of descriptive genitive. (Sorry Herb, I know you

don’t like that terminology, but I have to use the terminology I'm used

to.) There are two consequences of interpreting 'Houston Symphony's' as

a descriptive genitive: a) 'the' functions as the determiner of the

noun phrase as a whole, and b) 'Houston Symphony's … clearance sale' is

interpreted much like a noun + noun sequence where 'Houston Symphony's'

functions as the first noun (sort of) and describes a type of sale,

while 'clearance sale' (or whatever you think the Head is) functions as

the second noun.



3. It is clear that 'Mad as a March Hare' is to be treated as a single

constituent. What sort of a constituent is it? (e.g. Adjective,

Adjective phrase, Other?) Would you analyze its internal structure or

would you prefer to treat it as not having an internal structure?



4.  The sequence of seven nouns at the end of the phrase contains

several recognizable phrases -- e.g. Symphony Surplus, Spring Cleaning

and Clearance Sale. Would you assign an internal grammatical structure

to match these semantically determined phrases. The result of imposing

such a structure would be to read the sequence as involving something

like the following sequences:

(Symphony (Surplus))

 (Salvage)

(Spring (Cleaning))

(Clearance (Sale))



There is an alternative answer to question 4. That is to treat these

seven nouns as simply an unstructured sequence of nouns which get

INTERPRETED as having an internal semantic structure. That is, any

structure we perceive in this sequence of nouns is merely a semantic

structure, not a grammatical structure.



I would be interested in seeing any answers list members might supply.

In this context, I would particularly ask you to provide arguments to

support your answers so far as possible.



In addition, certainly other interesting / valuable questions could be

asked about this construction. It might be interesting to explore the

range of useful questions that might be explored in conjunction with

this construction. Let me particularly encourage teachers -- and their

students to contribute.



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