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5 Nouns and Determiners 5 Nouns and determiners 5.1 Types of noun phrase Noun classes: count, noncount, and proper nouns Concrete and abstract nouns Nouns with dual class membership Reclassification Partitive constructions Partition in respect of quality Partition in respect of quantity Measure partitive nouns Noncount nouns and their count equivalents Determinatives Central determiners The articles Other central determiners Central determiners and noun classes Predeterminers , All, both, half All and whole The multipliers double, twice, etc The fractions one-third, two-fifihs, etc Postdeterminers (a) Cardinal numerals (b) Ordinal numerals and 'general ordinals' (c) Closed-class quantifiers (d) Open-class quantifiers The use of articles with common nouns Specific and generic reference Specific reference : definite and indefinite Uses of the definite article (a) Immediate situation (b) Larger situation (general knowledge) (c) Anaphoric reference: direct (d) Anaphoric reference: indirect (e) Cataphoric reference (f) Sporadic reference (g) The 'logical' use of the (h) The use of the with reference to body parts Uses of the indefinite article Nonreferring uses of the indefinite article (Bb) Pluralia tantum ending in -S The indefinite article and the numeral one (BC) Unmarked plural nouns: people, police, etc Uses of the zero article (C) Regular plurals The zero article compared with unstressedsome The pronunciation of the regular plural The zero article with definite meaning The spelling of the regular plural Noun phrases in a copular relation (D) Irregular plurals Noun phrases with sporadic reference (Da) Voicing and -S plural (a) Some 'institutions' of human life and society (Db) Mutation (b) Means of transport and communication (DC) The -en plural (c) Times of day and night (Dd) Zero plural (d) Seasons (I) Animal names (e) Meals (11) Nationality nouns (f) Illnesses (111) Quantitative nouns Parallel structures (IV) Nouns with equivocal number Fixed phrases involving prepositions Foreign plurals (De) Nouns from Latin ending in -us /as/ The articles in generic reference (Df) Nouns from Latin ending in -a /a/ The generic use of the indefinite article (Dg) Nouns from Latin ending in -urn /am/ The generic use of the zero article (Dh) Nouns from Latin ending in -ex, -ix The generic use of the definite article (Di) Nouns from Greek ending in -is /IS/ With singular noun phrases (Dj) Nouns from Greek ending in -on With plural noun phrases (Dk) Nouns from French: bureau, corps, etc Some nationality words (Dl) Nouns from Italian ending in -0 /au/ The articles with abstract noncount nouns (Dm) Nouns from Hebrew: kibbutz - kibbutzim Compounds Proper nouns Forms of address Proper nouns behaving as common nouns (a), Number Gender (b)! Determination \ (a/b) Personal malelfemale nouns (c) I Modification (c) Personal dual gender Names with no article (d) Common gender Personal names (e) Collective nouns Temporal names (f/g) Higher animals Geographical names (h/i) Lower animals and inanimate nouns other locative names consisting of proper noun Names of countries + common noun descriptor Names with the definite article Case Structure of names with the Common case and genitive case Classes of names typically preceded by the The forms of the genitive inflection The 'zero genitive' Number The genitive and the of-construction Number classes Genitive meanings (A) Singular invariable nouns Gender of the genitive noun (B) Plural invariable nouns The genitive in relation to noun classes (Ba) Summation plurals The genitive with superlatives and ordinals Noun classes: count, noncount, and proper nouns 245 Noun heads with the genitive Types of noun phrase The grammatical status of the genitive 5.1 Genitive as determinative The noun phrase typically functions as subject, object, and complement of clauses and as complement of prepositional phrases. Consider the different Genitive as modifier subjects in the following sentences: The group genitive The independent genitive The girl The 'local genitive' The blonde girl The blonde girl in blue jeans The 'post-genitive' is my sister. The blonde girl wearing blue jeans The blonde girl who is wearing blue jeans Bibliographicalnote She Sentences [l -51 are alike in having the same noun (girl) as noun-phrase head (cf 2.28, 17.2). The noun phrase in [l] has the simplest structure, consisting of only the definite article and the head; in [2] it also has a premodifying adjective (blonde); in[3-51 the noun phrase has, inaddition, postmodification: in [3] a prepositional phrase (in blue jeans); in [4] a nonfinite clause (wearing blue jeans); and in [5] a relative clause (who is wearing blue jeans). In [6] the noun phrase consists of only one word (she), which is one of a closed class of grammatical words called personal pronouns. Such pronouns can 'deputize' for noun phrases and hence cannot normally occur with determiners such as the definite article, premodification, or (normally) postmodification: *the blonde she ?she in blue jeans Since noun phrases of the types illustrated in [2-51 include words and structures that will be dealt with in later chapters (adjectives, prepositional phrases, clauses), it will be convenient to reserve the treatment of 'complex' noun phrases incorporating such items until Chapter 17, which deals with the noun phrase as a whole. The present chapter will be restricted to the constituency of the 'basic' noun phrase, ie the classes of nouns together with articles or other closed-class determinative elements that can occur before the noun head, including predeterminers like all, central determiners like these, and postdeterminers like last and few: all these last.few days Noun classes: count, noncount, and proper nouns 5.2 It is necessary, both for grammatical and semantic reasons, to see nouns as falling into different subclasses. That this is so can be demonstrated by taking the four nouns Sid, book, furniture, and brick and considering the extent to which it is possible for each to appear as head of the noun phrase functioning as object in the sentence I saw . .: without any determiner (a); with the lightly stressed determiners the /21a/ (b), a /a/ (c), some /sam/ (d); and in the plural (e). The result of this test can be seen in Table 5.2: 246 Nouns and determiners Noun classes: count, noncount, and proper nouns 247 Table 5.2 Test table for noun classes Concrete and abstract nouns 5.3 Cutting across the grammatical and semantic count/noncount distinction, there is a semantic division into nouns like pig which are CONCRETE (ie (a) Sid *book Jurniture brick accessible to the senses, observable, measurable, etc) and nouns like di8culty (b) *the Sid the book the furniture the brick which are ABSTRACT (typically nonobservable and nonmeasurable). But while (C) *a Sid a book *afurniture a brick abstract nouns may be count (like remarklremarks)or noncount (like warmth/ (d) *some Sid *some book some furniture some brick *warmrhs), there is a considerable degree of overlap between abstract and (e) *Sids books *furnirures bricks noncount (cf 5.58). Figure 5.3 shows the noun classes introduced so far. The difference between column 1 (with only one possibility) and column oncrete : hun. pig, toy, . 2 3 (with all possibilities) indicates the degree of variation between the count + abstract: dificilty, remark.. noun classes. Nouns that behave like Sid in column 1 (Confucius, Paris, Sierra common Leone, etc) are PROPER NOUNS, which will be further discussed in 5.60ff huner,gold. The nouns in the other columns are COMMON NOUNS, but there are nouns noncount important differences between them. Those which, like book in column 2 (bottle, chair, forest, idea, etc), must be seen as denoting individual countable \proper: John. Paris, . entities and not as an undifferentiated mass, are called COUNT nouns. Nouns which, like furniture, conform to the pattern of column 3 (as do bread, grass, Fig 5.3 The most important noun classes warmth, music, etc), must by contrast be seen as denoting an undifferentiated mass or continuum. These are called NONCOUNT nouns. Finally we have nouns in column 2 + 3 which can be either count or Nouns with dual class membership noncount nouns (eg: brick, cake,paper, stone), in that we can view a noun like 5.4 The division of nouns according to countability into count nouns and brick either as the noncount material [l], or as constituting the countable noncount nouns is basic in English. Yet the language makes it possible to object [2]: look upon some objects from the point of view of both count and noncount, as in the case of cake: The house is built of brick. He used bricks to build the house. A: Would you like a cake? B: No, I don't like cake. The type headed 2 + 3 may be classified grammatically in two ways: (a) Such nouns may be said to have dual class membership. In other cases, eg: either as a lexical class of noun which combines the characteristics of count paper, there is no readily perceptible parallelism but a notable difference in nouns and noncount nouns, or (b) as two separate items, one count and the meaning between the two nouns: other noncourit. The former mode of analysis is convenient for nouns like I want an evening paper. ['newspaper'] [l] brick and cakelwith little difference in rheaning between count and noncount Wrap the parcel up in brown paper. ['wrapping paper'] []a] uses. Therefore such nouns will be said to have 'dual class membership' (cf 5.4). Note also the variation of quantifiers (eg: rnuch/many) in some of the Although in sentences such as I like music, I like Sid, the two nouns look following examples of count and noncount nouns: superficially alike in terms of article usage, we will say that music has ZERO She was a beauty in her youth. [COUNT] L21 ARTICLEbut tqat Sid has NO ARTICLE.
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