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the textbook "The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language", page 412:

the diagram of a fused head

It's easy to say what the NP is here: the NP is "few of her friends".
But how to describe with words, what the nominal is here?

my attempt:
The nominal is the head part of "few" plus "of her friends". — Does this sound good in terms of linguistics?

If I add the word "very", the diagram would probably be the following:
the diagram of a fused head

It's easy to say what the NP is here: the NP is "very few of her friends".
But how to describe with words, what the DP is here?

my attempt:
The DP is "very" plus the determiner part of "few". — Does this sound good in terms of linguistics?

Update: I'm adding some diagrams which might be help.

a diagram from "CGELBank: CGEL as a Framework for English Syntax Annotation":

the diagram of a fused head

The branch from "Head: Nom" to "Determiner-Head: DP" goes strictly to the word "Head".

a diagram from the textbook "The Oxford Handbook of English Grammar" (the chapter "Modern and traditional descriptive approaches" relating to the CGEL), page 218:

the diagram of a fused head

The left branch from the NP and the left branch from the nominal converge above the middle of "Det-Head".

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In CGEL, nominals by definition cannot include a determiner (Det). In a fused-head NP where the head is combined with and is inseparable from a determiner, there's no describing the nominal alone "with words."

In few of her friends, for example, we can't say the nominal is the entire phrase.

In very few of her friends, I believe CGEL would treat the entire very few as Det-Head in a diagram. Again, we can't describe in words what the nominal is.

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    You are confusing the syntactic function of 'Determiner' with the phrase label 'nominal'. And as you can clearly and unequivocally see from the CamGEL diagram, the phrase label "nominal" applies to the whole phrase. Determinatives can indeed anyhow appear in nominals. Consider "The few people who bothered to ask", for example. And, they can indeed, head them "Any two will do" etc etc.
    – Araucaria - Him
    Commented Sep 20 at 8:56
  • @Araucaria-Him (1) I believe 'nominal' is also a syntactic function, as shown in the the second diagram on the same page, where Nom consists of Mod-Head: Adj second. (2) if few of her friends were a nominal and an NP at the same time, the NP and the nominal would exhibit singular branching, instead of the binary branching shown in the OP's diagram. (3) CGEL would analyze few in The few people who bothered to ask as not a determiner but a modifier. (cf. p394 [65ii]). Similarly, two in Any two will do would be a modifier-head in CGEL (though it's not as clearly written as few).
    – JK2
    Commented Sep 20 at 9:53
  • No, nominal's not a syntactic function. It is a phrase label. See this Wikipedia page in which the phrasal categories and syntactic function table and diagram were contributed by Brett Reynolds. You will see clearly that "nominal" appears in the phrasal category table and does not appear in comprehensive overview of the syntactic functions.
    – Araucaria - Him
    Commented Sep 20 at 10:00
  • @Araucaria-Him OK. Thanks for pointing that out. But still, you'd have to respond to my (2) and (3).
    – JK2
    Commented Sep 20 at 10:18
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    @JK2 We can come up with a logic for Araucaria's opinion. For example, it can be based on the fact that determiners and determiner-heads are different functions. That is, when a nominal includes a determiner-head, that doesn't mean this nominal includes a determiner.
    – Loviii
    Commented Sep 23 at 22:10

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