The boy ate the it in the pie. They d say The boy ate it. The pronoun replaces the complete noun phrase, the apple in the pie . The goal of reading, we noted above, is not to recognize grammatical features, but to find meaning. The goal is not to break a sentence or part of a sentence into as small pieces as possible, but to break it into chunks in such a way that fosters the discovery of meaning.
Book is a noun at the center of the noun phrase.
But table is also a noun. We don't want to recognize every little noun phrase. We want to recognize the larger ones that shape the meaning. The Senate of the United States is composed of two legislators from each State. We read the sentence as The Senate of the United States is composed of two legislators from each State.