In the sentence "john ate the cake.", the noun phrase is .

the correct answer is the cake

explanation:

a noun phrase, also called nominal phrase is a phrase composed by only a noun or a noun plus other elements such as quantifiers, adjectives, determiners, among others. in this way, most nominal phrases are composed by a determiner and a noun; a noun and an adjective or a noun and a quantifier. the function of nominal phrases in sentences varies as they can be predicates, objects or complements of prepositions. in the sentence john ate the cake, there are two nouns john and cake, nouns are words that identify places, people or things, however, cake is linked to a determiner which is the, due to this the cake can be considered as a noun phrase, additionally, in this case, the cake is the object of the sentence as it is the object that is acted upon john who is the subject.

what are the options?

need

explanation: