THE NOUN

☻ The basic noun phrase

In grammatical theory, a unit that does not have the structure of a sentence or clause, and cannot therefore be analysed in terms of subject, verb and object is called a phrase. There are five types of phrases, taking their names after the main word or head: noun phrase (a very beautiful girl), verb phrase (can be skating), adjective phrase (extremely polite), adverb (or adverbial) phrase (rather cold), prepositional phrase (along the corridor).

The noun phrase functions as subject, object, complement of sentences, and as complement in prepositional phrases. We can have different subjects such as:

Table I. The noun phrase.

The classification countable and uncountable is similar with the traditional distinction between abstract (immaterial) nouns like breadth, and concrete (tangible) nouns like bed. But while abstract nouns may be countable like idea, answer or uncountable like length, there is some overlap between abstract and uncountable nouns. This is specific to language and a strict classification of nouns as countable or uncountable is sometimes unreliable. L. G. Alexander suggests rather thinking in terms of countable and uncountable uses of nouns. The following examples are usually uncountable in English but countable in other languages:

Accommodation, advice, anger, applause, assistance, baggage, behavior, bread, business (meaning commerce), capital (meaning money), cardboard, cash, chaos, chess, china, clothing, coal, conduct, cookery, countryside, courage, crockery, cutlery, damage, dancing, dirt, education, evidence, flu, flood, fruit, fun, furniture, garbage, gossip, grass, hair, happiness, harm, help, homework, hospitality, housework, information, jealousy, jewellery, knowledge, laughter, leisure, lightening, linen, luck, luggage, macaroni, machinery, meat, melancholy, money, moonlight, mud, music, news, nonsense, parking, patience, peel, permission, photography, poetry, the post (meaning letters), produce, progress, publicity, research, resistance, rubbish, safety, scaffolding, scenery, seaside, sewing, shopping, smoking, soap, spaghetti, spelling, steam, strength, stuff, stupidity, sunshine, thunder, timber, toast (meaning bread), traffic, transport, travel, underwear, violence, vocabulary, wealth, weather, work, and writing.

Nevertheless, we can refer to a single item or a part of a whole by means of partitives. Words such as piece or bit can be used with a large number of uncountable nouns. They may be called specific partitives. They refer to:

Specific items or amounts: a bar of chocolate, a book/box of matches, a bar/cake of soap, a cloud of dust, a flash of lightning, a head of hair, an item of news, a loaf of bread, a peal of thunder, a portion of food, a slice of meat;

Containers: a barrel of oil, a can of beer, a carton of cigarettes, a jug of water, a mug of coffee, a vase of flower;[1]

Small quantities: a blade of grass, a breath of air, a crust of bread, a grain of rice, a lock of hair, a scrap of paper;

Measures: a gallon of patrol, an ounce of gold, a pint of beer, a pound of coffee, a spoonful of medicine;

A game of: billiards, bridge, cards, chess, darts, squash, volley-ball;

Abstract: a bit of advice, a branch of knowledge, a fit of anger, a piece of research, a spot of trouble;

Types/species: a brand of soap, a kind of biscuit, a species of insect, a type of drug, a variety of pasta, a brand/make of car;

A pair of: boots, braces, glasses, knickers, pants, pliers, pyjamas, scissors, shears, shoes, shorts, skates, slippers, socks, stockings, tights, tongs, trousers.(Alexander 1994: 322)

There is often considerable difference in meaning be 919d37j tween nouns both countable and uncountable and this corresponds to concreteness in the countable usage and abstractness or generalisation in the uncountable usage. For example,

Table II. Nouns both countable and uncountable.

Sometimes we can distinguish countable and uncountable nouns by using different lexical items: sheep - mutton; calf - veal; pig - pork; loaf - bread; table - furniture. Theoretically all uncountable nouns can be treated as countable nouns when used in taxonomic senses:

There are several Spanish wines I greatly enjoy. (Kinds of wine)

There is a bread I can include in my diet. (Kind of bread).

☻ Number

Invariable nouns

English nouns can be singular, which denotes one, and plural, which denotes more than one. The singular category of nouns includes common uncountable nouns and proper nouns. Countable nouns are variable, occurring with either singular or plural number (book-books), or have invariable plural (sheep). There is a third category where we may distinguish dual number: both, either and neither. They can only be used with reference to two.

I have two sons. Both go to college in another town.

Neither of them wanted to study in their hometown.

Invariable nouns ending in -s

The following classes usually take a singular verb (exceptions are mentioned):

a)    News: The news is good.

b)    Some diseases: measles, mumps, rickets, shingles.

Sometimes a plural verb is also accepted.

c)    Subject names ending in -ics (usually with singular verbs): classics, phonetics.

d)    Some games: billiards, darts, dominoes.

e)    Some proper nouns: Athens, Brussels, Flanders, Wales; the

United Nations and the United States have a singular verb when considered as units.

Plural invariable nouns

Summation plurals: summation plurals refer to tools and

items of dress consisting of two equal parts joined together. We can count them using 'a pair of': bellows, pliers, tongs, tweezers, pants, pyjamas. Many of the summation plurals can take the indefinite article, especially with pre-modification: a garden shears.

Other pluralia tantum in -s Pluralia tantum refers to

nouns that only occur in the plural. Among them, the following nouns end in -s, although many cases are without -s, sometimes with difference in meaning: the Middle Ages, amends, annals, the Antipodes, archives, arms, arrears, ashes, auspices, banns (of marriage), bowels, brains, clothes, the Commons, contents, customs, dregs, earnings, entrails, fireworks, funds, goods, greens, guts, heads (in 'heads or tail?'), holidays, letters (in 'a man of letters'), lodgings, looks, the Lords (the House of Lords), manners, means ('a woman of means'), oats, odds, (in betting), outskirts, pains, particulars, premises[2], quarters, headquarters, regards, remains, riches, savings, spirits ('mood, alcohol'), stairs, suds, surroundings, thanks, troops, tropics, valuables, wages , wits.

Unmarked plurals. Some nouns followed by verbs in the

plural: cattle, clergy, folk (informal folks), gentry, people, police, vermin, and youth.

Variable nouns

Regular plurals

Variable nouns have two forms, singular and plural, the singular being the dictionary entry. Most of the nouns vary in this way and usually the plural is predictable both in sound and spelling, although the latter has some exceptions.

a)    Nouns ending in -y. Except the regular nouns like city-

cities, there are nouns in -y to which -s is added without any change:

with proper nouns: the Kennedys;

after a vowel: days, journeys;

in a few other words such as stand-bys.

b)    Nouns of unusual form sometimes have the plural in -s:

letter names, "You never dot your i's";

numerals, in the 1890's (or 1980s);

abbreviations, two MP's (or MPs).

c)    Nouns in -o have the plural in -os, with some

exceptions, which have either optional or obligatory -oes:

Plurals in -os and -oes: archipelago, banjo, buffalo, cargo, commando, flamingo, halo, motto, tornado, and volcano.

Plurals only in -oes: echo, embargo, hero, Negro, potato, tornado, torpedo, veto.

Compound nouns They form the plural in different ways but group (c) is the most usual.

a) Plural in the first element: attorney(s) general, notary(ies) public, passer(s)-by, mother(s)-in-law, grant(s)-in-aid, men-of-war, coats-of-mail, mouth(s)ful(s), spoon(s)ful(s).

b)    Plural in both first and last element: gentlemen farmers,

menservants, and women doctors.

c) Plural in the last element: assistant directors, boy friends, breakdowns, grown-ups, sit-ins, stand-bys, take-offs, forget-me-nots.

Irregular plurals

They are unpredictable and have to be learned as individual words. In the cases where foreign words are involved, particularly from Latin and Greek, it is good to know about the original plural, especially in formal or written language. Thus, on the model of analysis → analyses, we can infer the correct plurals: axis - axes, basis - bases, crisis - crises. But we cannot always rely on etymological criteria because plurals like areas and villas, for instance, do not take the Latin plural.

Voicing in the -s plural Some nouns which in the singular end in the voiceless fricatives spelled -th and -f, have voiced fricatives in the plural, followed by /z/. In one case the voiceless fricative is /s/ in the singular and the plural has /ziz/: house - houses.

a)    Nouns in -th. There is no change in spelling. The plural is

regular with a consonant before -th: berth, birth, length, etc. With a vowel before -th, the plural is often regular, as with cloth, death, faith, moth, but in a few cases has voicing (mouth, path) and in several cases there are both regular and voiced plurals: bath, oath, sheath, truth, wreath, and youth.

b)    Nouns in -f(e). Plurals with voicing are spelled -ves.

Regular plural only: belief, chief, cliff, proof, roof, and safe.

Voiced plural only: calf, elf, half, knife, leaf, life, loaf, self, sheaf, shelf, thief, wife, and wolf. Both regular and voiced plurals: dwarf, handkerchief, hoof, scarf, and wharf. The painting term still life has a regular plural: still lifes.

Mutation involves a change of vowel in the following seven nouns: foot - feet, tooth - teeth, goose - geese, mouse - mice, louse - lice, woman - women, and man - men. Policeman - policemen and other nouns of the same formation have no difference in pronunciation at all between singular and plural /p lism n/.

The -en plural occurs in three nouns: brother - brethren[4], child - children, ox - oxen.

Zero plural

Some nouns have the same spoken and written form in both singular and plural. There is a difference between invariable nouns, which are either singular, like music, or plural like cattle, and zero plural nouns, which can be both singular and plural:

I caught a fish.

The fish are fried.

Animal names often have zero plurals. They tend to be used partly by people who are especially concerned with animals, partly when the animals are referred to as game[5]. Where there are two plurals, the zero plural is the more common in context of hunting, whereas the regular plural is used to denote different individuals or species:

He set out on an expedition to research the fishes of the Indian Ocean.

The degree of variability can be listed like this:

v   Regular plural: bird, cow, hawk, hen, bear, etc.

v        Usually regular: elk, crab, duck (zero only with the wild bird).

v        Both plurals: antelope, reindeer, fish, flounder[6], herring.

v        Usually zero: pike[7], trout, carp, deer, moose.

v        Only zero: grouse, sheep, plaice[8], salmon.

Quantitative nouns

The numeral nouns hundred, thousand, and usually million have zero plurals except when they are not preceded by a number. The same happens with dozen, brace, head (of a cattle), yoke, gross, and stone. Other quantitative and partitive nouns can be treated similarly, though the zero plurals are more common in informal or technical usage.

There were about four hundred people in front of the Town Hall.

Hundreds of people were gathered to meet the President.

Nouns in -(e)s A few nouns can be treated as singular or plural: species, series. With certain other nouns such as barracks, gallows, headquarters, means, works, usage varies; they are sometimes treated as variable nouns with zero plurals, sometimes as pluralia tantum.

Foreign plurals

They often occur along with regular plurals. They are more common in technical usage, whereas the -s plural is more natural in everyday language. Thus we have formulas (general) - formulae (in mathematics), antennas (general and electronics) - antennae (in biology).

Table III. Foreign plurals.

☻ Gender

The English language makes very few gender distinctions. Where they are made, the connection between the biological category 'sex' and the grammatical category 'gender' is very close so that the natural sex distinctions determine English gender differentiation.

Personal masculine/feminine nouns

These nouns are of two types. Type 1 has no obvious marking that suggests morphological correspondence between masculine and feminine, whereas in Type 2 the two gender forms have a derivational relationship.

Morphologically unmarked for gender: bachelor -

spinster, father - mother, gentleman - lady, king - queen, man - woman, monk - nun, uncle - aunt.

Morphologically marked for gender: bridegroom -

bride, duke - duchess, emperor - empress, god - goddess, hero - heroine, host - hostess, steward - stewardess, waiter - waitress, widower - widow, usher - usherette.

Some masculine/feminine pairs denoting kinship have common (dual) generic terms, e.g. parent, child. Some optional feminine forms (poetess) are now rare, being replaced by the dual gender forms.

Personal dual gender

This is a large class including nouns like: cook, criminal, enemy, friend, inhabitant, neighbour, student, teacher. Sometimes it is necessary to use a gender marker: boy friend, woman student. The dual class is increasing but when we expect that a certain activity is performed by a male or female we make use of sex markers: a male nurse, a woman engineer.

Common gender

Common gender nouns are intermediate between personal and non-personal. The pronouns used (who, he/she/it) do not imply that all these are possible for all nouns in all contexts. Somebody who is not personally concerned with a child is likely to use it, but a mother will not refer to her baby as it.

Collective nouns

These differ from other nouns in taking as pronoun substitutes either singular it or plural they, without change of number in the noun (the army ~ it/they). Thus the verb may be in the plural after a singular noun (though less commonly in AmE than in BrE).

The committee has/have met and it has/they have rejected the proposal.

The alternative reflects a difference in attitude: the singular stresses the non-personal collectivity of the group and the plural the personal individuality within the group. We can distinguish three subclasses of collective nouns:

a)   specific: army, clan, class, club, committee, crew, crowd, family, flock, gang, government, group, herd, jury, majority, minority;

b)   generic: the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie, the clergy, the élite, the gentry, the intelligentsia, the laity, the proletariat, the public;

c)    unique: the Arab League, the Congress, the Kremlin, the Papacy, Parliament, the United Nations, the United States, the Vatican.

Big animals

Gender in big animals is mainly observed by people with a special concern: buck - doe, bull - cow, cock - hen, dog - bitch, gander - goose, lion - lioness, stallion - mare, calf - heifer. A further class of 'common big animals' can be set up using which - it, who - he/she to account for horse, cat, tiger, when no sex distinction is made or known. In such cases, he is more usual than she.

Big organisms

Names of countries have different gender depending on their use.

As geographical units they are treated as inanimate:

Speaking about France, it is one of the largest countries of Europe

As political/economic units the names of countries are often feminine:

France has been able to increase her exports.

England is proud of her poets.

Especially in BrE sports teams representing countries can be referred to as personal collective nouns:

France have improved their chance of winning the cup.

The gender class is set up to contain these characteristics, and we can place here ships, cars and other entities towards which an affectionate attitude is expressed by a personal substitute:

You've got a lovely boat. What is she called?

Small animals and inanimate nouns

Small animals do not differ from inanimate nouns, that is both lizard and shoe have which and it as pronouns. Sex difference can be indicated by a range of gender markers for any inanimate noun when they can be relevant: she-goat ↔ he-goat, male frog, hen-pheasant.

☻ Case. The genitive

English nouns have a two-case system: the unmarked common case (man) and the marked genitive case (man's).

The forms of the genitive inflection. The 's genitive of regular nouns is realised in speech only in the singular. In writing, the inflection of regular nouns is realised in the singular by 's and in the plural by putting an apostrophe after the plural -s. By contrast, an irregular noun like man preserves a number distinction independently of genitive singular and genitive plural distinctions: man, man's, men's.

In addition to its use with regular plurals, the 'zero' genitive occurs:

a)    with Greek names of more than one syllable: Euripides' plays;

b)    with other names ending in /z/ where, in speech, zero is a variant of the regular /iz/ genitive. The most common pronunciation is /iz/ and the spelling with an apostrophe only: Dickens' (less common Dickens's);

c)    with fixed expressions of the form for . sake as in for goodness' sake.

Two genitives

In many cases there is a semantic identity between a noun in the genitive case and the same noun as head of a prepositional phrase with of. We refer to the -s genitive for the inflection and to the of-genitive for the prepositional form. For example,

What is your daughter's name?

What is the name of your daughter?

Some grammarians think of the two constructions as variant forms of the genitive.

The 's genitive is mostly used by animate nouns particularly persons and animals with personal gender characteristics. A further factor that influences the choice of genitive is information focus, the 's genitive enabling us to give end focus to one noun, the of-genitive to another:

The storm damaged the church's tower.

He liked best the Tower of Pisa, from all the towers he had seen.

The relevance of gender is also shown in the fact that the indefinite pronouns with personal reference admit the 's genitive, while those with non-personal reference do not: someone's shadow, but not *something's shadow.

Choice of the 's genitive

The following four animate noun classes normally take the 's genitive:

a)    Personal names: Lincoln's Memorial;

b)    Personal nouns: the teacher's book;

c)    Collective nouns: Parliament's approval;

d)    Big animals: the tiger's claws.

The inflected genitive is also used with certain kinds of inanimate nouns:

e)    Geographical and institutional names: Europe's nations, the university's staff;

f)     Temporal nouns: a moment's thought, today's newspaper;

g)    Nouns of special interest to human activity: the mind's general development.

Choice of the of-genitive

This genitive is mainly used with nouns that belong to the bottom part of the gender scale (especially inanimate nouns): the cover of the book. In measure, partitive, and appositive expressions, the of-genitive is the usual form, except for temporal measure and in idioms such as, at arm's length.

Some examples of partitives are given at the beginning of the chapter (p. 9).

Collective nouns followed by 'of': a band of soldiers, a bunch of grapes, a circle of friends, a clump of trees, a colony of ants, a crew of sailors, a crowd/mass of people, a deck/pack of cards, a drove/herd of cattle, a fleet of ships, a gang of thieves, a group of people, a hive of bees, a horde of children, a mob of hooligans, a panel of experts, a party of visitors, a plague of locusts, a school/shoal of fish, a set of teeth, a string of pearls.

The implied genitive

The noun modified by the 's genitive may be omitted if the context makes its identity clear.

My car is more expensive than Tom's.

With the of-genitive in comparable environments, a pronoun is normally necessary:

The population of Bucharest is greater than that of Iasi.

Ellipsis is found especially in expressions relating to places:

I shall be at my aunt's, where the appropriate head can be house, flat, or digs. By contrast,

I shall be at the chemist's/dentist's, would refer to the professional establishment and the same applies to proper names where these refer to commercial firms, offices, churches or cathedrals:

I buy all my things at Harrod's/Macy's.

I'm going to the dentist's.

Have you visited St. Paul's?

Double genitive

An of-genitive can be combined with an 's genitive in such a construction. The noun with the 's genitive inflection must be both definite and personal: a book of my teacher's. There are conditions which also affect the noun preceding the of-phrase. This cannot be a proper noun. Thus, we can have: Mrs. Prim's Eliza, but we cannot have *Eliza of Mrs. Prim's. This noun must have indefinite reference, that is, it must be seen as one of an unspecified number of items attributed to the post-modifier:

A relative of the neighbour's has written, not

*The daughter of Mrs. Prim's has moved to America.

A (Any) daughter of Mrs. Prim's has moved to America.

We can use demonstratives: that friend of yours, where familiarity is always presupposed and the demonstratives are not being used in a directly defining role.

EXERCISES

41. Give the feminine forms of the following nouns: a) son - daughter h) hero -

b) nephew - i) uncle -

c) duke - j) stag -

d) barman - k) bachelor -

e) drake - l) heir -

f) dog - m) emperor

g) stallion - n) gander -

Give the plural of the following nouns:

a)      bus - buses  h) craft -

b)      lady - i) goose -

c)      toy - j) trout -

d)      roof - k) basis -

e)      wolf - l) louse -

f)       tooth - m) dwarf -

g)      woman - n) criterion -

Fill in the gaps with a suitable word from the list:

ball, slice, drop, kilo, bottle, tube, sheet, jar, piece, bar.

1. Eat your steak with a ..slice. .of bread.

2. He bought a .of oranges to give his grandsons.

Put your toothbrush and the .of toothpaste in a glass.

I'm so thirsty that I'm craving for a .of water.

Write your name and address on a .of paper.

Please, fetch the .of wine from the pantry.

To tie all these parcels you need a whole .of string.

I need a .of soap. Will buy me one if you go shopping?

This problem is a .of cake. I wonder why you cannot find the solution.

He saw the .of jam on the top shelf but he couldn't reach it.

44. Underline the correct form of the verb in the following sentences. Sometimes both forms are possible.

The police (is/are) searching for the criminal everywhere.

The news (was/were) very good for everybody in the team.

Measles (is/are) a catching diseases.

The cattle (is/are) grazing in the field.

Check first to see if the information you got (is/are) correct.

The audience (was/were) at an ecstasy at the end of the show.

All the fish in this restaurant (is/are) served with a white sauce and french fries.

His clothes (was/were) dirty and torn after such a long walk on foot through the woods.

American aircraft (is/are) better equipped than any other elsewhere.

The staff of the school (was/were) debating the latest prank played by one of the best students.

Fill in with the appropriate word or phrase from the list:

discovery, finding, breakthrough, invention, exploration, nose, flair, eye-opener, realisation, treasure-trove.

There is now growing ..realisation..that things cannot go on like this for much longer.

One of the main .of the survey was the confusion about the facilities already in place.

The encyclopaedia is a vast .of in information and knowledge.

The .came hours before the UN deadline.

Everybody was stunned at the .of the ozone hole over the South Pole.

This trip to Greece was a/an .for her as she could see antique places at a low price.

Their work has all the usual punch, panache and .one would expect.

We devoted several days to the .of the Maya sites of Copan.

Martha has a great sense of news, a good .for trends, and a wide range of contacts.

More than eight million books were printed within fifty years after the .of the printing press.

Fill in the gaps with the missing words from the following list: talks, showbusiness, Princess, actor, story, sequel, press, movie, idea, death.

The Princess of Wales had (1) ..talks.. with actor Kevin Costner about appearing in a (2) . to his hit (3) . The Bodyguard.

Diana was keen on the (4) . which would have further blurred the line between the Monarchy and (5) ..

Costner has confirmed the (6) . in a TV interview with Michael Parkinson. The (7) . was asked about rumours that emerged after Diana's (8) . in Paris in 1997 suggesting they had planned to star in a film together.

Costner said: "I talked about this, and this is your (9) . so I want to be really respectful here, and everything I've ever said in the (10). has always been true, whether it's written true or not."

(Daily Express - 16 March, 2001)