IV.54 The four MAJOR WORD-CLASSES constitute the core of the GRAMMAR, and most “grammars” recognise them as such. They seem most tidy, classifiable, and reliable. But, as we shall see, they cannot be properly handled in isolation. For example, it would be unproductive to treat the NOUN apart from the NOUN PHRASE, which of course can include several MINOR WORD-CLASSES. So the following sections will follow a broad “from inside to outside” view whilst situating each MAJOR WORD-CLASS in its characteristic environments.
IV.F.1 NOUNS
IV.55 As is traditional, I shall begin with NOUNS, though un-traditionally in doing so from three sides. By the generalizations proffered in IV.43-47, NOUNS are a large and open WORD-CLASS, and frequently self-centred and rich as well. Indeed, they may appear downright acquisitive in raiding other WORD-CLASSES.
IV.56 On the linguistic side, most NOUNS formally distinguish NUMBER: but very few still distinguish GENDER by form, and many of those that do in my data are either quite archaic, like “offendress”, “commandress”, “foundress”, “sempstress”, “alewife”, and “goodwife”; or else on the wane as disempowering names for poorly-paid “women’s jobs”, like “schoolmistress”, “laundress”, and “tailoress”. “Housewife” remains a touchy problem, as we saw (IV.28-32), because of its overload of social and historical baggage. Still entrenched are “waitress”, “stewardess”, and especially “actress”, all of whom attract the public eye with glitzy attire and ingratiating manners.
IV.57 Linguistically too, NOUNS can readily appear alone (IV.1), e.g., on public signs like “Entrance” and “Exit” or “Gentlemen” and “Ladies”, which mercifully keep us from getting belted with glass doors or busted for Trespass Upon Public Decency (in legal language, perhaps “invasio et arsemadspectio in looibus publicis”). NOUNS more often serve as the HEAD in a NOUN PHRASE, which will be described in more detail shortly, notably by following ARTICLES and MODIFIERS like ADJECTIVES [112-13].
[112] The energetic Yankee Statesman attacked the question (Darkest England)
[113] I looked up and met the eye of a pale, grave, elderly lady (Wildfell)
Within the CLAUSE, NOUNS are of course favoured choices for the SUBJECT [112] and the OBJECT [113].
IV.58 When NOUN and VERB can have identical written forms, the sound sometimes tells which is which, as when the VERB places the STRESS on the second SYLLABLE, whereas the NOUN places the STRESS on the first: “con·!vert” [114] versus “!con·vert” [115] or “per·!mit” [116] versus “!per·mit” [117].
[114] A golfer, a member of some obscure American religious sect which eschewed tobacco, alcohol, and premarital sex, tried to convert his caddie (Sudden Death)
[115] With violent agitations and distortions of body, the Camisars claimed the power to work miracles, prophesying that a convert of theirs should rise from the dead (Spectator)
[116] It is an offence to permit drunkenness on licensed premises [and] can lead to disqualification of the licensee. (Hotel Receptionist)
[117] Unlike Scotland, a Water Authority Rod Licence is required in England, prior to fishing, as well as a permit from the water chosen. (Tales of the Loch)
The clarity of the linguistic contrasts should be welcome in cognitive and social matters that may seem a tad bizarre -- for instance, if one “religious sect” stops people from getting drunk [114], which is, amazingly, illegal even in a “licensed” pub [116], whereas another jiggles people pretty well to death while promising resurrection [115]. Just to go fishing in England, one must “licence one’s rod” and then secure “a permit from the water” itself [117], signed and sealed I guess by the Lady of the Lake.
IV.59 The contrast between NOUNS and parallel VERBS suggests a distinction in cognitive stability. “Thinking”, “stopping”, “and “inquiring” can be done in a moment [118, 120, 122]. But if you “have a think”, you ponder matters slowly and carefully [119]. If you “make a stop”, you are likely to stay around, maybe to inspect a “museum” displaying “all the past and present characteristics of the region” [121]. And if you “make an inquiry”, the process can be expansive indeed, especially when a “Royal Commission” is eyeballing the “legal services” of an entire country [123].
[118] The coach went past me, and for a moment I thought it was not going to stop. But it did stop. (Ghost Stories)
[119] Give me a couple of weeks, I want to have a look at the figures and have a think about it and I’ll come back to you. (managers’ meeting)BNC
[120] As he neared the door, he suddenly stopped, staggered and sat down abruptly on a chair (Message to the Planet)
[121] Follow the road to Urnasch and make a stop here. There is an excellent museum which summarises all the characteristics of Appenzell’s past and present. (Off the Beaten Track: Switzerland)
[122] “Are you expecting some important letter, Rose?” her mother inquired anxiously. (Amongst Women)
[123] The Prime Minister announced the establishment of a Royal Commission to make a general inquiry into the provision of legal services in England (Sociology of the Professions)
The drift toward cognitive stability is clearer yet when quick actions as VERBS, like “notice” and “identify” [124-25], are contrasted with confirmed documents as NOUNS [126-27].
[124] There’s a short, familiar figure in the lift. It’s Bruce Dickinson out of Iron Maiden. I am about to introduce myself when I notice that he’s carrying an armful of eels. Eels? (NME)
[125] The Department of Transport awarded contracts for electronics that would identify cars passing over buried toll gates. (Independent)
[126] The management committee may place a notice on the noticeboard of an ethnic minority community centre (Citizens’ Advice Bureaux)BNC
[127] We know you are working in concert with a man carrying British Intelligence Identification. (White Darkness)
IV.60 The term PROPER NOUNS comes down to us from the times when “proper” meant “belonging to someone” as in “do justice on my proper son” (Henry IV). They best fit the jaded schoolroom definition of a “NOUN” being “the name of a person, place or thing”, which is more cognitive than linguistic in nature anyway. In English, the names of persons and places are capitalised and not expected to carry their own meanings. However, the tendency to ascribe meanings to names is commonplace enough.
[128] Aurora Corona Rest Home? Where did they get a name like that? I thought that was a Mexican beer. (Angel Hunt)
[129] My husband’s name is so difficult to pronounce; it sounds something like “Medikijediki Giriligoloyo” [it was “Milchizedek Gregory”]. It sounds to me like “give the people more vegetables, foxes make holes in the pathway”. (Song of Lawino)
[130] “Damian Flint”. Rachel frowned, [...] struck by the combination of those two names: the dark romanticism of “Damian” and the ruthlessness of “Flint”. A man with a name like that will be both tough and passionate (Ungoverned Passion)
Indeed, a long literary tradition has bequeathed us a host of intentionally meaningful names of persons: Abhorson, Doll Tearsheet, Lady Sneerwell, Squire Allworthy, Pitt Crawley, Farmer Oak, Mrs Lookaloft, Captain Brassbound, along with such thinly misspelled and colourful cameos as the mailcart-driving Lord Mutanhed and the notebook-scribbling Count Smorltork in the world of Mr Pickwick...seemingly effective, if hardly subtle.
IV.61 The name of places may originate with meanings which the passage of time has effaced. I wonder how many people who use them nowadays are aware that “England” came from the invading “Angles” with their funny language, and “London” from King “Lud’s Town”; or that the states of “Virginia”, the “Carolinas”, and “Georgia” were named to flatter British monarchs; or that the states of “Illinois”, “Minnesota”, and the “Dakotas” bear the names of their rightful indigenous inhabitants. And here too, literature sees its chances:
[131] There was something so gentle in her, so much needing protection on Mill Pond Bank, by Chinks’s Basin, and the Old Green Copper Rope-Walk (Great Expectations)
[132] In the great manufacturing cities, Buggingham-under-Smoke, or Gloomsbury-on-Ooze, night may be said to be perpetual. (Discovery of England)
“Nicknames” or “pet names” generally promote SOLIDARITY by rejecting formality:
[133] Much as I admire the French, nothing can compare with being back home in good old Blighty. [Note 6] (Invasion)
[134] Twitbread News informs me that Twitters have made a special award to Paul McCartney as “Scouse Personality of the Year”. Scouse? Surely this term should be used to describe someone who lives and works -- or draws the dole -- in Scouserpool? (What’s Brewing) [Liverpool]
[135] Wedgie then made what I found a very effective speech, pointing out that we had got to look at the problem in domestic as well as international terms. (Cabinet) [Tony Benn, formerly Anthony Neil Wedgwood Benn, Viscount Stansgate]
[136] Why make Gazza track back and defend, when we could have other players to do that? (John Barnes in Today) [Paul Gascoigne]
A curious countre-trend currently dominates the names of pop bands, which create small insider fan-groups. When Ned’s Atomic Dustbin advertised for local bands as support acts, among the 400 applicants were Firecharmers, Sludgebuster, Endless Drone, Tribute To Nothing, Pelican Retort, Trumpet Worm, Baboon Frenzee, Toxic Shock Syndrome, and Sideboard To Mars (reported in Melody Maker).
IV.62 In the complementary term COMMON NOUNS, “common” means “shared” rather than “frequent”. Of course, many are frequent too, such as designations of animals [137] or plants [138], whereas others are so rare that most people, including me, don’t know what they mean, e.g., in sound technology [139] or medicine [140] (cf. IV.25).
[137] The creature made a scuttling, circling movement as a cat will make a nest for itself before sleeping. Or a dog or a fox. Or a wolf. (Lost Prince)
[138] Proof of the mildness of this climate is deduced from the oranges, lemons, citrons, roses, narcissus’s, july-flowers, and jonquils (Through France and Italy)
[139] The T-bass has two humbucking pickups being controlled by rotaries: a pickup pan with a useful centre-detente at the “blend” point (Guitarist)
[140] Clodronate reduces the degree of hypercalcaemia and decreases pain in patients with multiple myeloma (Nursing Times)
IV.63 PROPER NOUNS insistently encroach on COMMON NOUNS in such areas as the discourses of marketing, which at times border on sarcasm toward a famously trollied monarch [141] or mockery toward finicky cat-coddlers [142] (cf. §).
[141] Hans Just markets King George IV Scotch Whisky. (United Distillers)
[142] The Good Cat Food Guide [has] awarded the Golden Whiskers Award for the best cat nosh to Safeways’ Sardines in Smoked Salmon Jelly. (Mirror)
In return, a PROPER NOUN can be made over as a COMMON NOUN, normally by placing an ARTICLE ahead of it, e.g., to invoke a person with similar significant traits:
[143] A mind of uncommon activity and power, a Locke, a Lavoisier, a Hutton, a Bentham, a Fourier, imposes its classification on other men (Emerson, Essay on History)
[144] “I’m going to make you the new Madonna”, Waterman promised his new prodigy. (Kylie Minogue)
But this move is not nearly so frequent as the reverse of COMMON to PROPER. Making a person over into an essence is no simple move, as Kylie will figure out if she tries to sing the tile role in Evita; Waterman might better have said “another Madonna fancy-dress clone”.
IV.64 More recent, though no less popular among grammarians, are the opposed terms COUNT NOUNS for what you can normally “count” item by item [145], and MASS NOUNS for what normally comes in a “mass” [146].
[145] Around them, plates, cups, spoons, came together among the shopping bags of Saturday morning. (Gentlemen and Ladies)
[146] And yet, amidst the dirt and grime, grew the occasional camomile (Shoemaker’s Daughter)
Predictably, the COUNT NOUNS more readily have PLURAL forms (“plates”) and are preceded by the INDEFINITE ARTICLE (“a plate”) or by the ENUMERATORS we shall take up shortly (“twelve spoons”, “many cups”) (cf. IV.124-32). MASS NOUNS more readily appear without an ARTICLE [147]; data shown here were hard to find with the INDEFINITE ARTICLE [148] or in the PLURAL [149].
[147] Old dirt is obstinate. (Home Design)
[148] I think it is a dirt on my sensor; taking some pictures, the dirt is not there (Canon Digital Photography Forums)WWW
[149] You are using detergents or chemical additives because some kinds of dirts like oil require chemical processed cleaner agents. (Oriental Rugs)WWW
IV.65 Still, the opposition is less secure than imagined by some grammar teachers I’ve known. Many MASS NOUNS can be used as COUNT NOUNS with PLURALS if the meaning is “several instances”, as in:
[150] The muds or clays form heavy sticky soils richer in chemicals. (Decisions in Geography)
[151] Some dermatologists argue that soap and water is too drying and recommend cleansing creams, milks and facial washes instead. (She)
Even so, these instances are rarely “counted” in ENUMERATORS in the sense of IV.122 and chiefly in technical uses:
[152] Is there any difference in the chemical or mineral analysis of these two clays? (Ultra Chemical)WWW
[153] Three milks were compared on groups of Continental calves over 12 weeks (Sanutrition)WWW
IV.66 GROUP NOUNS are mainly for persons who belong to some unit together, such as a “family” or a “government”. Despite some controversy among grammarians, authentic usage treats them as either SINGULAR or PLURAL.
[154] The Royal Family is showing itself to be just as vulnerable to social change as the rest of us. It has our sympathy. (Telegraph)
[155] The Royal Family are destroying themselves. [...] (MP Dennis Skinner in Today)
[156] The Government is committed to allowing solicitors and barristers to represent their clients in the higher courts, the Lord Chancellor said last night. (Independent)
[157] The Government are committed to pursuing a vigorous competition policy in the brewing industry. (Hansard)
However, PLURAL uses like [155] and [157] are more typical in Britain than elsewhere. Discourses of sportscasting like these would sound strange in the US:
[158] Croatia see red as Mexico win (BBB News Online of the 2002 World Cup)WWW
[159] Leeds are ready to put a snarl back on the face of football (Mirror)
IV.67 GROUP NOUNS are also available for some animals, though not within any coherent or comprehensive system: “pack of wolves”, “pride of lions”, “school of dolphins”, “flock of seagulls”, “gaggle of geese”, “covey of quail”, and so on. I find these treated as either SINGULAR or PLURAL:
[160] When a flock of sheep is scattered, the ewes bleat incessantly for their lambs (Emotions in Man and Animals)
[161] a flock of sheep were devoured by these rapacious wolves (Decline)
I also encountered a picturesque trend toward using animal NOUNS on people:
[162] There was the roaring and stamping of a herd of drunks at the other end of the corridor. (Crowd Is Not Company)
[163] a flock of shrieking paparazzi had tailed them all over London (Telegraph)
[164] There was a gaggle of rather obvious secret service agents loitering around the front stoop, glaring malevolently. (Stephenesque)WWW
IV.68 UNIT NOUNS accompany other NOUNS to indicate how things are usually handled, e.g. sold, bought, or consumed [165-67] -- or maybe just plain stolen [168]:
[165] Kiddibitz contains a pack of ten nappies, a large pack of baby wipes, and a large bag of cotton wool. (Parents)
[166] Several local people popped in to buy a chunk of freshly made cheese (BBC Good Food)
[167] On a visit to a Scottish university [Sterling], the Queen was greeted by the sight of a student emptying down his throat, at top speed, the contents of a bottle of alcohol. (Authors)
[Centre: Vice Chancellor of Sterling University]
[168] Detectives are hunting an armed gang of masked men that hijacked a truckload of beer in South Armagh yesterday. (Belfast Telegraph)
[Background: Church of Ireland Cathedral]
That Scot may have needed a quick pick-me-up, recalling the vile treatment of his homeland by the Sassanach monarchy since Edward Longshanks (“the Hammer of Scotland”) or William, Duke of Cumberland (“the Butcher of Culloden”) and his army of “leave-none-alive” Uruk-Hai.
Those Irish may have been seeking for beery oblivion of the memory of Oliver Cromwell (“the Butcher of Ireland”) and the presence of “British” soldiers along the border by South Amargh.
IV.69 CONCRETE NOUNS are most plainly suited for what can be readily taken in by our jolly old “five senses” (especially sight and touch), as in [169-70], whereas ABSTRACT NOUNS are better suited for what cannot, as in [171-172].
[169] The stone seats beside the fire would be replaced with benches, once Cameron brought the spare timber from the linen mill (King Cameron)
[170] She was busy handing around cups and saucers, damask napkins, silver knives and cake forks, setting out the cake-stand, circulating plates of cucumber sandwiches (American Princess)
[Princess Grace Kelly]
[171] Pupils at level 4 should learn [to] get rid of ambiguity, vagueness, incoherence, or irrelevance (National Curriculum English)
[172] True to the Romantic tradition from which this belief sprang, the imagination was valued more than the analytical intelligence (Exploding English)
The discourse of the “English profession” seems to revel in ABSTRACT NOUNS. (Why doesn’t that surprise me?)
IV.70 If we take into account the further cognitive and social sides of NOUNS, several other types would merit recognition. UTILITY NOUNS apply to useful persons or things in a society, and are mostly NEUTRAL, or else mildly AMELIORATIVE. The more distinctive ones are MULTI-PIECE WORDS, viz.:
[173] Unity Hall, as the agony aunt of the News of the World, [...] became, if hardly the guardian of people’s secrets, nonetheless a gushing fount of comforting advice. (Telegraph)
[174] A lollipop lady has been threatened with the sack because [she] halts traffic for pensioners and invalids, not just children, on her school crossing at Keighley. (Today)
[175] Parents and staff at first school and local residents are requesting that the Council install a pelican crossing on the site of the existing zebra crossing. (Bradford Metropolitan Council Meeting)BNC
[176] Last year, a panda car was taken off the road. [...] When the car was tested for forensics, investigators found evidence at least 10 people had been sexually active in it. (Sunday Mail)
Their origins may resonate with lighted-hearted undertones. The “agony aunt” runs a column telling ordinary people how to exorcise their “agonies”; perhaps “aunt” sounds less worrisome and meddlesome than “mother”. A “lollipop lady” halts traffic before a school with a round red signal on a stick, reminiscent of that treat for pint-sized sugar-addicts. A “zebra crossing” with its black and white stripes gives pedestrians the right of way; a “pelican crossing” is a glib paste-up from “pedestrian light-controlled crossing” and has the stripes anyway. A “panda car” for police resembles that shy and gentle animal only in being originally two-toned (black-and-white or blue-and-white), and small in size (way too cramped for “10 people” to be “sexually active” all at once -- passive, maybe?).
IV.71 EMPOWERING NOUNS can serve real or aspiring “power groups” by restricting communication to EMPOWERED insiders whilst impressing or numbing the DISEMPOWERED population. Presumably, cognitive stability is simply cut off from familiarity, as occurs in the discourses of bureaucracy [177], academia [178], and technology [179] (cf. IV.25, 44), viz.:
[177] Financial products supplied by a financial supply facilitator are not financial supplies. However, a supply of an interest facilitated by a financial supply facilitator is a financial supply by the financial supply provider if the supply of the interest is one to which regulation 40-13 applies. (Australian Treasurer on the Goods and Services Tax)
[178] Randomization defines the parameter of interest expressed as a function of multiple endogenous variables. It orthogonalizes the treatment variable simultaneously with respect to the other regressors in the model and the disturbance term for the conditional population. (Randomization)www
[179] CGMud is a free, softcoded system with a cached on-disk database and dynamic single inheritance, supporting graphical I/O via a custom client. (CGMud)www
In the service of POWER, these three data samples are masterpieces. The “Goods and Services Tax” to be foisted upon countries like Canada and Australia might be loathed even more poisonously if explained in plain language. “Randomization” is an impenetrable slight-of-hand trick whereby “research” in such fields as economics and sociology uses statistics to dump practically real but theoretically intractable variations among human groups or individuals. And computer hardware or software can be touted with such mysterious terms that purchasing takes on the air of an initiation ritual, for which no name could be more apt than “mud”.[Note 7]
IV.72 One well-publicised type of EMPOWERING NOUNS might be called STATUS NOUNS, viz.:
[180] the Tribeca Bar and Grill became the hottest meal ticket in town, [...] with a selection of celebs, wannabes, Wall Street suits and star gazers (The Face)
These typically lend new meanings to common expressions: “meal ticket” for a source of needed income becomes a privileged dining place; “suits” for matched formal outfits become well-paid persons wearing them at work; “star gazers” for astronomers become people gazing upon movie stars. Moreover, powerful insiders should know that “Tribeca” (abbreviation of "Triangle Below Canal Street") is a “vaguely arty district on Manhattan’s Lower West Side” (The Face); and that the builder and owner of the “Bar and Grill” is clapped-out (i.e., applauded to the max) mega-star Robert De Niro.
If “celebs” (celebrities) and “Wall Street suits” definitely have POWER, “wannabes” and “star gazers” definitely do not.
IV.73 Thanks mainly to mass media, the meaning of STATUS NOUNS, like social status itself, can be contested. “Major face time” can empower by appearing on television [181], in film [183], or just on “shelves” of elephantine “supermarkets” [183]; or again as the privilege of face-to-face meetings with a powerful person [184].
[181] Senator Lott appears to be as “dumb as a shoe” whenever he gets major face time on the national media shows. (Free Republic)WWW
[182] One guy was totally pissed because he was taken out of a scene which would have given him some major face time. (filming for The Time Machine)WWW
[183] UK supermarket chain Tesco have added a category for “best imported beer”, [...] a good opportunity for an expanding brewery to get some major face time on the shelves of the biggest player in the UK retail sector. (Tesco Brewing Awards)WWW
[184] I spent hours and hours of major face time with all the senior managers (Robert A. Eckert, CEO of Mattel Toys, in the Harvard Business Review)
[Eckert as Barbie Doll -- A strange change?]
IV.74 STATUS NOUNS as PROPER NOUNS drench the Internet. A “luxury timeshare” – for dupes who, to get the full value out, must “vacation” at the same time and place for 50 years or so – is called “Hiawatha Manor” in “Crossville, Tennessee”; “Wolf Run Manor” at “Treasure Lake, Pennsylvania”, or “Westwind Manor” at “Runaway Bay, Texas”; even the towns have names to conjure with. To salvage a time-ravaged mug, ladies can luxuriate in “SkinCeuticals Face Cream with Triple Anti-Oxidant”; “Exuviance Vespera Bionic Serum Anti-Aging Cream; and even “Dead Sea Mineral Complex Intensive Beauty Cream”, made from “clinically mineral-rich Dead Sea Mud” (for the restorative Dead Sea Scroll Facial Mask?).
The listings are endless, a gushing Exxon of pricey snake-oils.
IV.75 Conversely, DISEMPOWERING NOUNS are pejorative or at least sardonic in meaning, and rough in sound, yet all too readily understood in rich contexts, viz.:
[185] [They] asked 55 schoolchildren to list expressions meaning stupid person. At the top of this list is wally. […] Dickhead, prat, idiot, thicko, cabbage and square are all prominent. Not so predictable are flid, pranny, Rodney, remmy, dappy and Sydney. (Northern Echo)
[186] Frankie would buy a wonderful new suit and within a few minutes he’d look as though he’d slept in it. His shirt tails would come askew, his sleeves ride up. Basically, he was a scruff. (Mirror)
[187] The fellow had long hair, an earring, a beard and worn jeans torn at the knees, a real scuzzbag (Miss Earrings)WWW
[188] I’m a kind of glorified immigration officer really, […], keeping all the rotters out, the cads, the bounders, the bad-hats. (Sainsbury training session)BNC
[189] Every so often, [we] get a review guitar [...] with no high-falutin’ bumph claiming it to be a “sound revolution”, or some equally laughable piece of flannel. (Guitarist)
These are fairly mild, and to my mind wryly humorous; we can work off some resentment against the annoying things and persons we experience in ordinary life, without the hassle of risky confrontations.
IV.76 SOLIDARISING NOUNS promote SOLIDARITY over POWER by suggesting that the users belong on the same level; my term may sound unwonted because SOLIDARITY has been far less in the spotlight than POWER. “Mates” are close, dependable friends [190]; a “stag night” is a debauched ritual of good cheer before the groom’s wedding [191]; a “hen night” is the same for the bride [192]; and people from particular cities can have rough and ready pet names [193].
[190] I just hobbled round to me mates and stayed there for a few weeks. [...] Me mates just kept giving me gear until me ankle got better. (Living with Heroin)
[191] Two mornings ago David Gower and his stag night team-mates were groaning under their bedcovers [after an] epic booze-up on the Channel island of Alderney. (Mirror)
[192] “A quiet night with the girls” [...] transpires into a hilariously raucous hen night at the local striptease. (Women’s Art)
[193] As newly-formed TV AM said “Good Morning Britain”, those likely lads [Dick] Clement and [Ian] Le Frenais threw a disparate gang of regional archetype brickies [literally, bricklayers] together for working class comic-drama. A dumb Brummie [from Birmingham] , a tough-nut Geordie [from Newcastle], a light-fingered Scouser [from Liverpool]… (NME)
When these occur in the same discourse as EMPOWERING NOUNS, the latter are likely to be ironicised or “deconstructed”, viz.:
[194] Don’t worry, darling! I shall give her the once over and deliver my inestimable verdict. [...] I’ve also brought you some of that queenie hooch you live on. You know this smouldering paragon of desire? (Jay Loves Lucy)
Whoever offers a quick inspection as a “once over”, and pink champagne as “queenie hooch”, can hardly be solemn about his “inestimable verdict” or a “smouldering paragon”.
IV.F.2 NOMINALS
IV.76 Conceptually, NOMINALS made from other WORD-CLASSES are not always easy to distinguish from NOUNS. Many usages that may have been “nominalised” are now fully at home in their “noun-ishness”, e.g.:
[195] “Worthy and good-natured mediocrities” are dismissed, and Arnold is rebuked for his “petulant snobbishness”. (English – Englishness).
[196] A backdrop of meaningless shifts in national policy, from “escalation” to “deescalation” and back again, foregrounds the characters, who are subversives armed with sticks of dynamite. (Postmodernism)
Plausibly, we tend to register NOMINALS when they stand out as unusual or deliberate. In contrast to “man” and “woman” as basic and essential NOUNS, “mannishness” and “womaniser” are NOMINALS constructed for recognisable social motives. The one DISEMPOWERS women for not looking or acting the supposed role [197]; the other slyly EMPOWERS the man’s attractiveness behind a veil of disapproval [198]. I surfed out their rare apparent counterparts on the Internet: aside from dictionaries equating it with “effeminacy in men”, “womanishness” was regularly applied to women [199], whilst “maniser” was used facetiously [200].
[197] There she was, hair swept up as usual, mannishness accentuated by a tailored suit (Delia Sutherland)
[198] Dr. Robert Atkins, the late low-carb diet guru, [...] was a womaniser. [...] “He flirted with all of us, [to] talk one of us into going home with him for the night”, said Barbara Stinson, a former nurse. (Web India)
[Nurses couresty of National Health]
[199] Come tear up the rug with us as we celebrate our womanishness! Have we got a night of treats for you... (Official Ladyfest Kickoff Party)WWW
[200] Are you a maniser or far too fussy, an outrageous flirt or a gold-digger? Take one of our quizzes to uncover your dating personality (icircle)WWW
IV.77 We can also register NOMINALS made from another WORD-CLASS into a NOUN by the simple linguistic means of an ARTICLE or a PLURAL, or both (cf. IV.63). My data proffered NOMINALS from a VERB [201], ADJECTIVE [202], an ADVERB [203], a CONJUNCTION [204-05], a DEMONSTRATIVE [206], an ENUMERATOR [207], and an INTERJECTION [208], plus a whole PHRASE [208-10].
[201] Vintage romeo Ian McShane [...], as a reformed boozer and hellraiser, has experienced more than his share of knock-downs in the auction room of life. (Belfast Telegraph)
[202] a passionate preference for the wild, wonderful, and thrilling -- the strange, startling, and harrowing -- agitates divers souls that show a calm and sober surface. (Professor)
[203] What, without asking, hither hurried whence?
And, without asking, whither hurried hence! (Rubiyat)
[204] The ifs and whens that keep our leaders sleepless. Time trumps ambition, as politicians and pundits all know. (Peter Preston in the Guardian)
[205] This method of dealing with data is good because it removes the dependency of an earlier programme having to know about a later one. Two more becauses, while I think of them... (Matt Webb)WWW
[206] They are off on their yacht sucking down cool ones with thises and thats parading around (RB Racing Pro)WWW
[207] Sara had never seen so many squirrels, groups of twos and threes chased each other up and down the trunks of shady trees (Maljonic’s Dreams)WWW
[208] Be sure to write about me honest: do not prettify me: include all the hells and damns (Walt Whitman and the Civil War)WWW
[209] Well, the game-rooster went as if it was a go-as-you-please, and he didn’t care if it lasted a year. (On the Track)
[210] The toastmaster apologetically says with a sorry-but-it-must-be-done air, “We will now sing The Star Spangled Banner”; some diners are wrecked among the dizzy altitudes, others persevere through uncharted shoals, all make some noise (How to Sing the National Songs)
[foreground: Francis Scott Key; centre: Fort Mc Henry; background: British fleet]
However, as we move steadily away from the MAJOR WORD-CLASSES, some NOMINALS are like “framed” items for what somebody said or might say, as in [208] and [210].
IV.F.3 NOUN PHRASES
IV.78 The term PHRASE, which is glibly used in many “grammars” of all types without definite clarification, can perhaps be best defined for English as “two or more WORDS with a GRAMMATICAL relation between or among them”. Thus, the title of the Smith’s album [211] would count as two PHRASES, but the guitar outbursts of Iron Maiden and the atavistic ululations of Bruce Dickinson [212] would, I think, count as none.
[211] One month later, The Smiths completed the recording of their third album, “The Queen Is Dead”. (The Smiths)
[212] The guitars go “ibbly wibbly wibbly splang”. Bruce goes “Urg urg screeeeek!” (NME)
IV.79 As such, the PHRASE is essentially a form-function correlation that may be fairly complex but still appear simple to users of English who are so familiar with handling it. In reality, the so-called NOUN PHRASE, VERB PHRASE, PREPOSITIONAL PHRASE, and so on, are subtly divergent modes of correlation attending to the respective demands of the GRAMMAR.
IV.80 The NOUN PHRASE has been a thoroughly-studied PATTERN CLASS in English “grammars”, thanks to its seemingly reassuring order of WORD-CLASSES and their forms. Although potential “rules” are seldom successfully taught, the order seems fairly fixed:
[213] The two big German nitrate ships Preussen and Potosi. (Victoria State Library)WWW [hardly: ??The big two German nitrate ships; *The German big two nitrate ships; *The nitrate big two German ships etc.]
IV.81 Also, it is a staple as the SUBJECT of a CLAUSE and of a DECLARATIVE SENTENCE [214], and may optionally appear in an OBJECT of the VERB [215], or a MODIFIER [216].
[214] The bizarre figure of Laurence Sterne next claims our attention. (Glories of Ireland)
[215] I remarked Dr Johnson’s very respectful politeness. (Boswell)
[216] Cap Horn instruments appear easy to use, working on the one-function-per-button principle. (Yachting World)
A bit incongruously, the function of NOUN PHRASE as SUBJECT can be assumed just by a NOUN [217], or by a PRO-NOUN [218].
[217] Navigation was always a difficult art (Snark)
[218] She rushed forward, with a piercing scream (Boyhood in Norway)
And, like the NOUN, the NOUN PHRASE can appear alone on signs (IV.57):
[219] Mumbling obscenities under my breath, I watched at least 6 people turned away from a perfectly capable till. And the sign above the counter said “Customer Service”. (Simon Timperley)WWW
[220] Next to it was a bamboo out-building with a big sign saying: “The Restaurant at the End of the Universe” (Independent)
-
IV.82 When a NOUN PHRASE combines several WORD-CLASSES, it requires a HEAD NOUN, upon which the rest “depend” in various senses. It usually comes at the end of the NOUN PHRASE [221], but in a longer one, BALANCE suggests putting some items afterwards (cf. IV.134), as in a POST-MODIFIER [222], an APPOSITIVE [223], a NON-FINITE CLAUSE [224], or a RELATIVE CLAUSE [225]. These latter PATTERNS will be treated further along.
[221] The Beaver’s best course was, no doubt, to procure a second-hand dagger-proof coat (Snark)
[222] The Winnipeg jail, with all its defects and limitations, was a palace to some that he had known. (Tale of Saskatchewan)
[223] Gardiner’s Island, a famous rendezvous for pirates, is the only place known to have been used as a bank of deposit. (Kidd’s Treasure)
[224] The Catalina, being a small vessel of less than half our size, put out sweeps and got a boat ahead (Before the Mast)
[225] The two great champions, who now confronted each other, were equals in years (Decisive Battles)
The HEAD NOUN might remind one of a multiple electric socket to connect a various forms and functions.
IV.F.3.1 DETERMINERS in NOUN PHRASES
IV.83 A DETERMINER typically “determines” a NOUN by indicating whether it expresses something “definite” or “indefinite”; or points to something; or tells how many or how much is involved; and so on. In their forms, DETERMINERS are fairly predictable within their individual groups; but their functions can be subtle and flexible, and their meanings are often elusive to isolate and define. They nearly always precede the NOUN and any MODIFIERS such as ADJECTIVES that also precede the NOUN. Most belong to small, sparse, closed WORD-CLASSES in the sense of IV.43 and 47. Besides, choosing one DETERMINER often limits or excludes choices among the others (cf. IV.101).
IV.84 On the cognitive and social sides, DETERMINERS can suggest what is specified, decided, familiar; or stable; or, contrarily but less often, they can suggest what is unspecified, undecided, unfamiliar, or unstable. I am aware of no previous “grammar” that applies these terms to the description; but perhaps their usefulness will emerge.
IV.F.3.2 ARTICLES
IV.85 The smallest class of DETERMINERS has the DEFINITE ARTICLE, the INDEFINITE ARTICLE, and the ZERO ARTICLE, that is, none where one might be expected. The terms derive not from “article” in the everyday sense of “a particular or separate thing, especially one of a set” (Oxford Dictionary), but from a Latin word originally meaning a “little joint” and forming the VERB “articulate” meaning “divide into parts”, as its English descendant still can.
IV.86 In a casual perspective, ARTICLES might appear a knotty paradox. They are rarely taught as such to children, nor given much notice by adults, yet fluent native speakers seem to agree fairly well in their usages. Moreover, no other area of English GRAMMAR has so eluded a lucid description by “rules” that are (let alone must be) obeyed. We can at best seek to identify some common and effective strategies.
IV.87 In a longer-range historical perspective, ARTICLES may resemble an inspired afterthought. The old ancestors of the “Germanic” languages like ours, or of the “Romance” languages like French, apparently had none, nor did the refined version of Latin preserved in “classic” works. Yet the descendants uniformly developed them in functions that, despite some flavourful differences in usage, suggest similar motivations.
IV.88 Old English may have produced ARTICLES only gradually, and during its later stages. The DEFINITE ARTICLE presumably came either from generalising the MASCULINE SINGULAR form (“se”) or from appropriating the DEMONSTRATIVE PRO-NOUN (“thē”) which gave us “that” as well. The INDEFINITE ARTICLES came from the ENUMERATOR “one” (“ān”), which could indicate why English doesn’t use them with PLURALS (though Spanish and Portuguese do, to signify an indeterminate “some”).
IV.89 In Modern English, “the” shares the exceptional initial VOICED SOUND “th-” with a mere handful of WORDS (like “this, that, these, those, then, there, thus”). It is normally unstressed and officially pronounced like “thuh” before a CONSONANT and like “thee” before a VOWEL, as in the age-old Christmas carol of “thuh holly and thee ivy” (which baldly slighted the ivy, I recall). But on the social side of ATTITUDE, the stressed and emphatic use pronounced “thee” can be AMELIORATIVE for EMPOWERING [226] or (much less often) PEJORATIVE for DISEMPOWERING [227].
[226] “You aren’t George Bevan!” “I am!” “I’ve been dancing to your music for years!” [...] Miss Plummer leaned forward excitedly. “Did you know that Mr. Bevan was the Mr. Bevan?” (Damsel in Distress)
[227] The paddle which Katherine was stowing in the boat dropped from her hands with a clatter, and there was positive terror in her eyes as she gasped: “You are Mr. Selincourt, the Mr. Selincourt?” “I suppose so; I certainly don’t know any other” (Countess from Canada)
The unstressed INDEFINITE sounds like “uh” and “uhn” or “enn”, but more like “ay” in “say” in the emphatic, stressed version for exactly one of something:
[228] You have to repeat your question, mouthing the words like a goldfish: “No, not two, I said a return.” (So Very English)
[229] “I thought you might be interested in listening for a minute.” Talbot sat and clamped the earphones on. After about fifteen seconds he removed them. [...] “With respect, sir, when I said a minute, I meant just that. A minute. (Santorini)
IV.90 The choice between “a” and “an” officially depends on whether the next WORD begins with a CONSONANT (“a camel”) or with a VOWEL (“an anteater”).
But, as we might expect from the brief review in Part III, the ORTHOGRAPHY for spelling the initial sound of a word may not match the written letter:
[230] “An heiress”, “an honest man”, “an “hourly visit”, “a euphemism”, “a eulogy”, “a union”, etc., are not exceptions, the “h-” being silent in [some, and others having] the consonant sound of “y-”. (Slips of Speech)
Yet in older usage, I find “an” before words whose “h-” is not silent, and before words with “the consonant sound of ‘y‑’”:
[231] For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities (Philemon 4:1)
[232] And five of you shall chase an hundred, and an hundred of you shall put ten thousand to flight: and your enemies shall fall before you. (Leviticus 26:8)
[233] In his disunited and abased countrymen, Rizal’s writings aroused the spirit of nationality.[…] What matters it, then, if his historical references are not always exhaustive? A display of erudition alone does not make an historian (Life and Labors of José Rizal)
[234] Oh! speak, speak quickly, lest I encourage an hope whose disappointment will destroy me. (The Monk)
[235] God brought them out of Egypt; he hath as it were the strength of an unicorn. (Numbers 23:22)
[236] Resentment is an union of sorrow with malignity (Dr Johnson in The Rambler)
[237] And the captain of the guard [...] took also out of the city an eunuch, which had the charge of the men of war (Jeremiah 52:24-25)
[238] M. Krempe had now commenced an eulogy on himself, which happily turned the conversation from a subject that was so annoying to me. (Frankenstein)
The influence of the King James Bible may have encouraged such usages as a gesture toward tradition and refinement. Today, they tend to come across as HYPERCORRECTION: struggling so hard to be “right” that you turn out sounding wrong, i.e., not refined, but strained, awkward, or pedantic (cf. IV.158).
[239] Play solitaire as an history of debit cards arcade game (sailorsuns)WWW
[240] The abnormal sensation on one side of an hysterical patient's face did not conform to somatosensory neuroanatomy. (Mark Solms)WWW
[241] Some middle school students that come to Reach for Success are young people who have never been to an university campus before (University of Oregon)WWW
[242] Planning and design are critical first steps to any messaging an unified communication application implementation. (Avaya)WWW
IV.91 Contrarily, regional uses of “a” before a VOWEL abound, almost like a signal of SOLIDARITY, and tend to be marked off with a brief glottal stop afterward, similar to what one hears in the middle of “uh-uh”:
[243] “Mother Mayberry”, she exclaimed, as she sank breathless on the top step, “they is a awful thing happened!” (Road To Providence)
[244] “I been a misfortunate man, there’s no denyin”, continued the swagman; “but I never done a injury to nobody in my life, so fur as I’m aware about”. (Such Is Life)
[245] Old Henry and your Uncle Ben and me [...] all drove over to Uncle Aaron’s place to help him dig a big hole for a outhouse (Sometimes a Great Notion)
[246] As a African I was a woman in a man’s world, [...] a honest newscaster, [...] a Arawak, a unwanted baby (Benjamin Zephaniah)
IV.92 ACRONYMS, compressed sets of initials, can also be unstable. The INDEFINITE ARTICLE ought to follow the SOUND of the initial LETTER, but I also find residual variations where LETTERS win out:
[247] The next time you look into the skies for a UFO you won't have to fear your neighbours thinking you are a nut (Greatest Story Ever Denied)WWW
[248] An UFO flew over the skies on early morning of October 8, 2005, for an hour (UFO Emporium)WWW
[249] Fifty years ago, the Fire Service Training Centre in Marsh was an RAF base where airmen were trained how to fly Wellington bombers [...]. After a fly past by a RAF VC 10, divisional officers from fire brigades unveiled a plaque (TV news script)BNC
[250] Downing Street said the theft from a MI5 officer of a £2,000 laptop holding secret information was “opportunistic”. (BBC)
[251] Have you got what it takes to be an MI5 operative? Play the “Spooks Tasks and Missions” and find out. (BBC)
IV.93 Besides being the smallest WORD-CLASS in the GRAMMAR, ARTICLES are also the most limited in position, compelled to begin a NOUN PHRASE in anticipation of one or more HEAD NOUN. As we have seen in IV.63, ARTICLES can thus be used to make NOUNS from other WORD-CLASSES, e.g., to make a NOUN from a VERB [252] or an ADJECTIVE [253].
[252] Good job players are not breathalysed before a match, because all of us were completely smashed! We were eleven hangovers in search of a kick around. (Les Bence of Athletico Whaddon)
[253] This was a young man with a freckled, badly-shaven face which seemed undecided whether to be furtive or impudent. His costume was a blend of the flashy and the shabby. (Damsel in Distress)
Yet Internet data harbour strange surprises. I turned up millions of hits for occurrences of one ARTICLE before another, e.g.:
[254] It took me a long while to get into The The as my old girlfriend just played them to death (XTC Forum)WWW
[255] Oh Lordy! It’s The The Fat Slags DVDs -- best deal found! (PriceRunner)WWW
[256] Our client has a vacancy for the an Assistant Restaurant Manager (Caterer)WWW
[257] Reference was at first made to the chaplain for an an exposition of its contents. (Sharon White)WWW
I am baffled whether such huge frequencies can be simple errors or typos, since these could be easily edited out before posting. Perhaps the band chose “The The” as a publicity gimmick. Perhaps the “Fat Slags” in-yer-face sexist stewpot of political incorrectness wants the second ARTICLE to be EMPOWERING, as in [226]. But more plausibly, despite their complex functions, the ARTICLES are inconspicuous enough that users can repeat or change their minds without registering.
IV.94 In British English, the usages of ARTICLES with ADVERBIAL PREPOSITIONAL PHRASES of PLACE can make a distinction I have not heard in the US. If the PLACE is an institution, the absence of the ARTICLE can indicate deliberately being or going there for its stipulated purpose without specifying any one decided location [258-60]. By contrast, the presence of the ARTICLE can indicate coincidentally being at or going to one decided location [261-63].
[258] Sue says that changing her accent while at university was not easy for her parents to accept. (Best)
[259] A film cameraman was whisked to hospital after being trapped inside a volcano for two days. (Today)
[260] mothers bringing their babies to surgery attribute a bewildering variety of symptoms to teething (Daily Telegraph)
[261] The gunman roamed the engineering buildings at the university, spraying bullets (Guardian)
[262] It’s the diamond jubilee and the children will be invited to the hospital for that day that week (conversation)BNC
[263] When our marketing executive goes round to the surgery he or she will determine the number of booklets we're going to print. (business interview)BNC
This phenomenon is partly linguistic -- i.e., tapping the grammar and the lexicon -- but more crucially cognitive (knowing what the institutions are for) and social (knowing what motives people may have regarding communal places).
IV.95 And so we come back to our paradox in another guise: these small, barely noticed items doing so much useful work (cf. IV.2). In the simplest function, the first occurrence of a NOUN can be INDEFINITE because not yet known and thereafter DEFINITE (now known), as in [264-65].
[264] When Wash Williams was still a young man he married a woman at Dayton, Ohio. The woman was tall and slender and had blue eyes. (Winesburg, Ohio)
[265] In the lodge were two persons, a man and his wife. The man said to him, “You are welcome; sit there.” (Blackfeet Indian Stories)
This functional distinction should apply most aptly just before commonplace NOUNS that designate common entities, like “woman” or “man”. To my surprise, however, I found no INDEFINITES of these at the very start of a text in my English Prose Corpus, and only a few for news reports in the British National Corpus, e.g. [266-67].
[266] A woman in a provincial restaurant ate a steak and complained that it tasted of cardboard. She had eaten the packing, undoubtedly well-cooked. (New Scientist)
[267] A man who planned to flood Britain with cocaine was jailed for 15 years yesterday and his assets of £1.5 million were confiscated. (Guardian)
More often, INDEFINITE occurred for an already well-known “woman” or “man” about whom some unexpected comment is being made:
[268] Margaret watched the tall, lonely figure sweep up the hall to the lift. [...] A woman of indefinable rarity was going up heavenward (Howard’s End)
[269] He was one of the best talkers she had ever met; funny and fast. A man who could talk the hind legs back on to an injured donkey (Three Times Table)
Or again, it serves to shift into generalising from a known one to all of the kind:
[270] No word or look ever showed that [she] had been cut to the quick, by the one man she adored. [...] A woman has great aptness in concealing a mortal hurt (Filigree Ball)
[271] Lawrence blushed, and then smiled awkwardly. A man in love is a sorry spectacle. (Affair at Styles)
ZERO ARTICLE can generalise to the maximum:
[272] Woman supplied in adequate quantities is the great moraliser of Society (Darkest England)
[273] Man is a spiritual animal and will seek spiritual satisfaction elsewhere if Christianity does not provide it (Paganism and the Occult)
IV.96 The DEFINITE can familiarise even when the NOUN is undecided, such as “the woman” to “lecture on German Literature” [274]; or the “the man” to “bring evidence” [275].
[274] The president [...] wished to see me in regard to a vacancy at Wellesley College, [...] The woman she was looking for must be able to give lectures on German Literature in German (Story Of Wellesley)
[275] Frank’s case was all the more painful because he had no one to fix his jealousy upon. He could have thanked the man who would bring him evidence against his wife (O Pioneers)
Or, you can use a series of DEFINITES to familiarise a whole scene and then treat the details as predictable too:
[276] At the Las Palmeras Apartments, among the seclusion of the palm trees, you can relax with the partner of your dreams. Alternatively, nip down to the beach, or stroll down to the centre where the nightlife buzzes, and the cafés and bars stay open until the small hours (holiday brochure)
If you couldn’t bring “the partner of your dreams” along with your luggage, the text hints you can chat one up at “the beach” or in “the cafés and bars”, which “stay open” until the “hours” when singles are too trollied and fagged out to be choosy.
IV.97 In the King James Bible (handed down through languages without ARTICLES), the true God (upper case) is familiarised and stabilised by the ZERO ARTICLE [277] or (less often) in ceremonious phrases, the DEFINITE ARTICLE [278], a whereas a false “god” (lower case) is defamiliarised and destabilized by the INDEFINITE [278]. Still, an INDEFINITE in upper case can specify particular attributes of “God” [280].
[277] I would seek unto God, and unto God would I commit my cause: which doeth great things and unsearchable (Job 5:8-9)
[278] The God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob, the God of our fathers, hath glorified his Son Jesus. (John 3:13)
[279] Yea, he maketh a god, and worshippeth it; he maketh it a graven image, and falleth down thereto. (Isaiah 44:15)
[280] thou art not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness: neither shall evil dwell with thee (Job 5:8-9)
The jolly old “sun” so is familiar and stable (even in Blighty) that it is nearly always DEFINITE [281]; ZERO is for apostrophising it in the grand Shakespearean manner [282]. INDEFINITE is for uses that are figurative [283], or somehow defamiliarised, as if the “Englishwoman” in [284] did not expect “a sun” to “shine” merrily on an undeserving “America” back in 1856, destined to become the earth’s filthiest polluter of the “sky”.
[281] After the sun sank, a cold wind sprang up and moaned over the prairie. (My Antonia)
[282] Sun, burn the great sphere thou mov’st in! Darkling stand the varying shore o’ th’ world. (Antony and Cleopatra)
[283] For the Lord God is a sun and shield: the Lord will give grace and glory (Psalms 84:11)
[284] the blue waters flashed back the rays of a sun shining from an unclouded sky (Englishwoman in America)
IV.98 NOMINALS formed by means of an ARTICLE plus a MODIFIER [285], as already illustrated in IV.51, are naturally DEFINITE for stable groups of people. In present-day usage, they are often PEJORATIVE for disempowered ones, especially if formed from PAST PARTICIPLES [286].[Note 8]
[285] We frequently see the respectful attentions of the world more strongly directed towards the rich and the great, than towards the wise and the virtuous. (Adam Smith)
[286] The result would be a deterioration [in] the kind of facilities that are made available to the unemployed, the elderly, and the disabled. (Hansard)
IV.99 Putting an ARTICLE before a PROPER NOUN can make the latter into a COMMON NOUN, provided the person or place is familiar and stable enough, whether the result is DEFINITE or INDEFINITE [287-88]. The DEFINITE can indeed designate the original itself to specify some aspect [289].
[287] Camões is the Shakespeare of Portugal (Madeira)
[288] In a Napoleon he [Raskolnikov] cannot discover anybody to be; a Napoleon is a projected, dreamed-up, aimed-at type, a “general human”. (Dostoevsky)
[289] Have you, gentle Reader, ever seen London -- not the London of the waking day, coated with crawling life, but the London of the morning, freed from her rags, the patient city, clad in mists? (Idle Fellow)
Alternately, a PLURAL is formed, e.g., to defy one person as if there were several [290-91]; or to suggest a plurality within the identity of one place [292-93].
[290] “But Stark? He’s her father, she’s still under age.” “All the Starks in the world won’t get her away from me.” (The Barrier)
[291] If he were twenty Sir John Falstaffs, he shall not abuse Robert Shallow, esquire. (Merry Wives)
[292] Like [T.S.] Eliot, [Christopher] Dawson emphasized the “two Englands” created in the nineteenth century -- “the England of the fields and the England of the factories” (The Savage and the City)
[293] There are two New Yorks. One is a modern, well-policed city, through which one may walk from end to end without encountering adventure. The other is a city full of sinister intrigue, of whisperings and conspiracies, of battle, murder, and sudden death in dark by-ways (Psmith)
IV.100 As we can judge even from this modest sampling, the functions of ARTICLES are far too subtle and flexible to be fixed in “rules”, no matter how boisterously our non-native students may clamour for them. The terms “definite and “indefinite” are at most pointers on the face of a much wider and more detailed dial that tunes its operations to the linguistic, cognitive, and social indicators of the context.
IV.F.3.3 DEMONSTRATIVES
IV.101 The WORD-CLASS of DETERMINERS termed DEMONSTRATIVES is also very small: “this, that, these, those”, and, in regional usage, “them”. Being all technically definite, they have affinities in form and function with the DEFINITE ARTICLE, and are historically related too (IV.88), as well as sharing that rare initial voiced “th-” sound. So you won’t find both WORD-CLASSES determining the same NOUN, except in the kind of duplications we saw in IV.93, e.g.:
[294] The bathroom area is small and the lighting in the that area is not very good (TripAdvisor)WWW
[295] I can’t claim to give the this wine a fair hearing (GapingVoid)WWW
Yet both appear rarely when one is actually a PRO-NOMINAL DEMONSTRATIVE whilst only the ARTICLE directly determines the NOUN, e.g.:
[296] All these the sons of Jediael, by the heads of their fathers, mighty men of valour, were seventeen thousand and two hundred (Chronicles 7:11)
[297] Thank the Lord for all His mercies, and these the first-fruits of His hand! (Lorna Doone)
A distinct though superficially similar usage has the PRO-NOMINAL DEMONSTRATIVE as the OBJECT in a CLAUSE yet to follow.
[298] Reports like Early Leaving demonstrated the extent of academic waste, and this the country simply could not afford. (Generation of Schooling)
[299] The gratuities expected by officials were a part of normal life and these the pope could not control. (Innocent III)
IV.102 The historical survival of the old STEM shifts -- SHORT VOWELS in the SINGULAR and LONG VOWELS in the PLURAL -- is handy for sorting them out, especially in their emphatic stressed versions, as for a contrast:
[300] America is only a secondary object in the system of British politics, England consults the good of this country, no farther than it answers her own purpose. (Common Sense)
[301] “You claim --” “Perhaps”, said [British Foreign Minister Stratford] Canning, “a piece of the moon.” “No”, replied [American Secretary of State John Quincy] Adams, [...] “but there is not a spot on this habitable globe that I could affirm you do not claim.” (Jefferson and His Colleagues)
IV.103 Differing sounds also help mark off their linguistic, cognitive, and social functions in deciding and specifying. On the discourse time function, they can look back [302] or (rarely) forward [303] to something earlier or later within the same discourse, such as “suggestions”, which may be repeated [302.]
[302] Try out in a familiar, low-risk situation the suggestions that you find most challenging. [...] These suggestions are not to do with changing your personality, they are concerned with your behaviour. (Status)
[303] In analyzing complex sentences, these suggestions will be found helpful: (1) See that the sentence and all its parts are placed in the natural order [huh?]; [etc etc] (An English Grammar)
DEMONSTRATIVES in cinema titles are compelled to look forward to whatever you find out if you see the show:
[304] This Sporting Life (directed by Lindsay Anderson)
[305] That Hamilton Woman! (directed by Alexander Korda)
IV.104 On the TIME function, “this day” can suit the present [306], whereas “that day” can suit the past [307] and the future [308].
[306] This day will we fling off the Roman yoke and become the true and unconquered lords of Palmyra (Historic Girls)
[307] On July 10, 1913, the mercury rose to 134 degrees. That day marks the limit of temperature yet reached in this country according to official records. (Red Man’s Continent)
[308] When woman shall in earnest have resolved that her own welfare and that of the race will be promoted by her claiming a voice in the direction of civil government, then the day of her emancipation will be very near. That day, I will hope yet to see. (Horace Greeley)
IV.105 In the PLACE function, DEMONSTRATIVES can best make things specified and decided by actually “pointing” to something within the visual field, or indicating what could readily be seen as nearer or farther.
[309] She points to the newcomer and explains, “I met this woman at the council housing department and she said I could stay with her.” (Wigan Pier Revisited)
[310] When the king had given her all the information, she turned and pointed toward Pio, and said, “That man has stolen my other slipper.” (Filipino Popular Tales)
[311] “Dear me! I haven’t seen Grace and Eleanor for months.” These young ladies hailed her with every expression of delight as the carriages came to a stand-still together. (Early Days of Upper Canada)
[312] At the foot of those steps you will find an open door leading into three large halls. (Blue Fairy)
More generally, “this” and “these” indicate what is nearer, and “that” and “those” what is further away. Straightforward contrastive usages are attested, as when Gran Canaria was seen close up on a ship [313], but Barbados far away from the northern US [314].
[313] Light airs carried the fleet midway between the islands of Tenerife and the Grand Canaria, which latter was now very distinctly seen. This island wore the same mountainous appearance as its opposite neighbour Tenerife (English Colony in New South Wales)
[314] Hostility to emancipation prevailed in Barbados. That island has always been peculiarly attached to slavery. (Anti-Slavery Examiner)
To make the PLACE function more decided, regional usage offers “this here” [315], “these here” [316], “that there” [317], and “those there” [318], this last less favoured in my data than “them there” [319].
[315] That’s another o’ the ways o’ this here southern country! A big alligator tryin’ to pass itself off as an old dead log. Up in Kentucky, a good honest bear would be ashamed to look you in the face after playin’ sech a low-down trick. (Free Rangers)
[316] Ain’t nobody but a danged fool would go trailin’ up that there gulch this kinda day. (Heritage of the Sioux)
[317] Theer’s one thing furder, Mas’r Davy [...] “Theer’s these here banknotes [...] I wish to add to the money as she come away with.” (Copperfield)
[318] “Look here,” the sailor called out, “this won’t do, young shaver. I want those there shiners [coins] I see in your pus [purse]! Chuck ‘em along!” (Wouldbegoods)
[319] “That's the most underhand cow ever I seen!” said Tommy. “She runs into them there bamboos and pretends she's going to run right clean through to Queensland, and when I go in after her, she wheels round and hunts me for my life.” (Outback Marriage)
IV.106 Among the ATTITUDE functions, contrasts are attested between an AMELIORATIVE “this” versus a PEJORATIVE “that” [320-21], but just the reverse is occasionally attested too [322-23].
[320] The spirit of freedom, leading in itself to misrule and excess, is tempered with an awful gravity. This idea of a liberal descent inspires us with a sense of habitual native dignity (Edmund Burke)
[321] Mary loved another! That idea would rise uppermost in his mind, and had to be combated in all its forms of pain. (Mary Barton)
[322] It seemed to me that I was in prison, for I had undertaken an engagement not to leave the House of Molière for many years. This idea made me sad. (Sarah Bernhardt)
[323] He said that she was a strong terrible wind, and that he was a boat left on the shore [...] That idea pleased the boy and he sauntered along playing with it. (Winesburg)
Predominantly PEJORATIVE, however, is the EXCLAMATION with just DEMONSTRATIVE + NOUN, whether the NOUN by itself would be NEUTRAL [324-25] or PEJORATIVE [326-27].
[324] “I have not tempted this man on.” “This man! You speak as if you hated him.” (Dombey)
[325] “Oh, she called me a tart, a gold-digger”. He looked incredulous and then fiercely angry. “That woman!” he snarled (Garden of Desire)
[326] “I told him to push off and he hit me.” “That brute!” (Traffic)
[327] It was so unfair. Those devils! They hadn’t said anything to him (Walking on Glass)
Predominantly PEJORATIVE too is the PATTERN of DEMONSTRATIVE + NOUN + “of” + POSSESSIVE PRO-NOUN:
[328] “You command me to answer you. Openly. Bluntly. Very well then. [...] I find this scheme of yours repugnant”. Li Yuan shivered (Broken Wheel)
[329] “That brother of mine”, she said, “is an asshole. [...] If he was anyone else’s kid, he’d be in jail.” (The Edge)
[330] Between snatched breaths, she told him, “I can’t accept these conditions of yours. They’re totally unfair.” (Conspiracy of Love)
[331] “I certainly don’t have any rich friends.” [...] “Those guardians of yours, Harry -- the ones who filched your father’s legacy from you?” (Spinning Wheel)
IV.107 The social force for the DEMONSTRATIVE can be confirmed by noting the AMELIORATIVE tendency of parallel usages with the INDEFINITE ARTICLE instead:
[332] “We read a story of yours the other day, and enjoyed it very much”, observed the elder Miss Lamb, wishing to compliment the literary lady. (Little Women)
[333] A friend of mine, a dear friend, ran from one end of the back line to the other and had his picture twice on the same photograph (Bury the Dead)
To be PEJORATIVE, the INDEFINITE PATTERN can be made to depend on a corresponding DEMONSTRATIVE + NOUN:
[334] How’s that scallywag of a son of yours? (Yanto’s Summer)
[335] I sat in many a night, waiting for that piss artist of a father of yours to come home, knowing that he was spending desperately needed money (Dangerous Lady)
The social factor here may relate to DISEMPOWERING implications of pointing at people, which is rude in some cultures, and stigmatising if not dangerous in others.
IV.108 A familiarising function presumably motivates conversational usages for first mention of what only the speaker can know about:
[336] A couple of girls go past and they got this red sparkly stuff wrapped round their necks -- you know, a sort of silvery string they hang on Christmas trees. (Bayswater)
[337] I takes a walk back through the wood-lot, and they was one of these early harvest apple trees (Danny’s Own Story)
[338] You know those days when you’ve got it? When everyone looks at you expectantly and everything you do is significant? (Dirty Tricks)
Conversely, a distancing function may account for some COLLOCATIONS with “sort of”, “type of”, and “kind of” suggesting that all such are at least vaguely PEJORATIVE, even when the NOUN alone would not be:
[339] This sort of talk from Mary always bored me and made me impatient with her (Joe Wilson and His Mates)
[340] If you’re a hairdresser, a secretary or a cleaner -- the chances are, you’re probably also a woman. But what’s certain is that if you’re in that type of job you will be amongst the lowest paid workers in Scotland. (Scottish TV news)BNC
[341] these kinds of details begin to add up to something more than a fringe resentment of the police by a marginal “criminal element”: suspicion and hostility towards the law in working-class London (Hooliganism)
[342] Sometimes his patients possessed knowledge about sex, but could not admit that that they had those sorts of desires. (Feminist Perspectives in Philosophy)
Decidedly PEJORATIVE are emphatic, stressed usages where the DEMONSTRATIVE stands for unexpressed but contextually delimited content:
[343] I tend to be a little stand-offish, so forgive me if I am gun-shy. I just don't feel like being THAT girl. (Jenn Sterger)
[344] Since everyone is getting to know about us, you are constantly having to defend yourself against THOSE rumors like: “the cowgirl hooked up with so-and-so.” (same)
[Jenn Sterger, football fan at Florida State]
IV.109 These PATTERNS are not uniformly controlled for NUMBER. I find many uses of PLURAL DEMONSTRATIVE with SINGULAR NOUN, probably anticipating the other PLURAL just ahead [345-46]; the reverse occurs more rarely, but still too often to be lightly dismissed as mere “error” [347-48].
[345] An exporter may ask his bank to issue a Credit to his supplier. Banks usually have mixed feelings about these kind of arrangements as the exporter controls the security. (Guide to Exporting)
[346] we carried out a very comprehensive review of all the items of role equipment such as drop tanks, pylons, explosive release units and those type of things [...] to reduce and save some money in the programme (House of Commons Committee for Defence)BNC
[347] Aye, clubs yes, clubs. Mhm, and they played darts and whist and all that kinds of things. (Orkney Sound Archive)BNC
[348] This kinds of slow music is often found in jazz and classical music, many people listen to it when alone, at night (CountryMusic)WWW
More plausibly, such variations are signals of formal instability just because these distinctions are isolated within the GRAMMAR. They may be intuitively felt to be over-specified and so are given off-handed treatment.
IV.110 POSSESSIVES are essentially for indicating owning or belonging (cf. v.65-69); and its Sub-Class of PRO-NOUN POSSESSIVES help decide and specify what is whose. Derived from PRO-NOUNS themselves, they too show historical traces, preserving formal distinctions in NUMBER and, in the THIRD PERSON SINGULAR, in GENDER as well -- a feature shared with the “Germanic” and “Romance” cousins of English. They too constitute a small, closed WORD-CLASS: “my”, “your”, “his”, “her”, “its”, “our”, and “their”, plus the now strenuously archaic alternates one expects from ostentatious writers like Disraeli [349], Bulwer-Lytton [350], and William Morris [351]:
[349] “Ask him who told you I held assignations with Mr Egremont or with any one”. “Mine eyes -- mine own eyes -- were my informant”. (Sybil)
[350] But to thy task. There cometh by to-morrow’s starlight a vain maiden, seeking of thine art a love-charm (Pompeii)
[351] “On what errand?” “For no errand, lord, save to fare home to mine own land.” “Where is thine own land?” said the King. (Well at the End)
IV.111 Cognitively, despite the label, the most specified uses of the “POSSESSIVES”, namely for things one can literally own, proved not so dominant as I had expected. I scanned hundreds of hits in the BNC to glean this handful of safe examples:
[352] And the boy who ran off with my hat. Why didn’t he try for my wallet? (Truth of Stone)
[353] A handsome acacia wood salt cellar [is] equally at home in your kitchen, dining room or breakfast tray. (advert)
[354] Our typical inhabitant is a peasant living in European Russia. She has slept in her clothes as usual, so she reaches at once for her birch-bark pail (One Step Backwards)
[355] Our usual game in the woods behind our house was Germans vs. British. The trouble was that, naturally, no one wanted to be a German. (Roads That Move)
Most uses suggested a more general and less specified relation of associating or belonging, as in:
[356] He overruled my objections about getting engaged so soon after meeting; soothed my worries about parting from my family (Stranger’s Trust)
[357] Earn your freedom by behaving well and keeping in with your owner. (horoscope in Dogs Today)
[358] A fatal heart attack happens in Britain every three minutes. Heart disease is now our biggest killer. (health leaflet)BNC
Admittedly, if horoscopes are published for dogs to, erm, read, I’d hesitate to say just who “owns” whom.
IV.112 Socially, however, the PRO-NOUN POSSESSIVES loom large in matters of decidable ownership:
[359] “I felt awful letting him walk all that way to the station last night”, she added accusingly, “but you had the car”. “It’s my car”, Wexford almost shouted. (Best Man to Die)
[360] Jasper was waiting for her. “Where did you get that money?” “It’s not your money, so shut up”,” she said. “You are making us all sick”, he said. (Good Terrorist)
[361] He knew of a little cottage we could buy not far from his boat yard -- his boat yard,” she said disparagingly with a little snort of disgust. “He was a hired hand”. (Stranger’s Trust)
IV.113 I did not find PRO-NOUN POSSESSIVES occurring together with ARTICLES, but, in fairly old usage, occasionally with DEMONSTRATIVES:
[362] Forgive me this my virtue; for in the fatness of these pursy times, virtue itself of vice must pardon beg. (Hamlet)
[363] His stubborn buckles, with these your white enchanting fingers touch’d, shall more obey than to the edge of steel (Troilus)
[364] “Heavy newes indeed, my Lord, pray pardon us.” “Unload those your heavy newes, I beseech ye.” (Sir Gyles Goosecappe)
IV.114 NOUN POSSESSIVES [Note 9] can determine and specify other NOUNS in the various relations similar to PRO-NOUN POSSESSIVES. With an INDEFINITE ARTICLE in [365-66] they can exert the generalising functions we saw in [270-71] (IV.95). Curiously, the DEFINITE can do much the same, e.g., if “the man” is generalised in some role [365], such as the women’s counterpart in “courtship” [366] or the member of a “family” he had deserted [367].
[365] A man’s sexuality is an incredibly fragile thing. (Celia Haddon in The Limits of Sex)
[366] A woman, unlike a man, is prepared by Nature, to play a skilful part in the art of love. The man’s part in courtship [...] is in a straight line (Havelock Ellis in The Psychology of Sex)
[367] The man’s return to the family is often the critical point at which there is need of skilful and sympathetic friendship. (Family Desertion)
IV.115 After scanning thousands of occurrences in my two corpora, I am moved to conclude that COMMON-NOUN POSSESSIVES with the DEFINITE ARTICLE do not expand much beyond three WORDS. Those with four WORDS are uncommon [368-69], and should be distinguished from formulas as are typical of stories for the very young [370], or from PATTERNS where one POSSESSIVE depends on another [371].
[368] Oliver began to feel more at his ease than he had yet done in the fierce old gentleman’s presence (Oliver Twist)
[369] “I thought so from his looks”, answered the beguiled young Doctor’s wily mother. (Road To Providence)
[370] So the little brown Mouse was the little Red Man’s servant, and every day he made the little Red Man’s bed and swept the little Red Man’s room (Stories to Tell Children)
[371] Mrs Crump's talk of the girl's father's immense wealth, which surely she had inherited, had abolished all that fruitless toying with marriage to the innkeeper's daughter (Maid of Buttermere)
The even rarer PATTERN of five WORDS seems to me linguistically and cognitively out of BALANCE, since the relation between NOUN and ARTICLE may be obscured, as compared, say, to “the brother of the master of the family” [372]. The same might be said of long PATTERNS with an INDEFINITE ARTICLE [373].
[372] an ancient woman came in to take charge of the goods for the master of the family’s brother (Plague Year)
[373] although most of the workers were Asians, the union branch had an overwhelmingly white shop steward’s committee (Asian Women in Britain)
IV.116 PROPER-NOUN POSSESSIVES, however, can adjust their length as required:
[374] That stone is now part of a brooch which was this afternoon returned to my cousin’s, the Earl of Eiran’s, hunting-lodge (Certain Hour)
[375] Prizes will be awarded for the best carnations and bonsai at the Royal Horticultural Society’s show in Greycoat Street, London SW1 (Independent)
[376] The Duchess of Kent [...] attended the South Manchester Health Authority’s Annual Nurse Prize Giving at the Armitage Centre, Fallowfield (Independent)
Drawn-out events may merit drawn-out labels.
IV.117 DEMONSTRATIVES with POSSESSIVES sometimes associate with PEJORATIVE ATTITUDES such as we have seen before (cf. IV.106f) [377-78]; and again, MODIFIERS can assist [379-80].
[377] She flung back the bedclothes and released a breath of pent-up fury, shaking her head in disbelief at that man’s ill-temper. (Garden of Desire)
[378] “It hurts me to think of her, helpless in that woman’s power.” Did he mean Hepzibah was a witch, then? (Carrie’s War)
[379] And then there was this obnoxious man’s involvement with Chester’s to think of. (Love by Design)
[380] The Marshal stood up. If that wretched woman’s husband wasn’t there today, he would search the city until he found him. (Death in Springtime)
Like DEMONSTRATIVES, POSSESSIVES will be seen again as PRO-NOUNS (cf. IV.153).
IV.F.3.5 INTERROGATIVES and EXCLAMATORIES
IV.118 Yet another small and closed WORD-CLASS of DETERMINERS for NOUNS is drawn from the INTERROGATIVES. Like “interrogation” (but without the sinister social implications), they request that something be decided or stabilized which has not been. The format of questions inclines to suggest the answers. Just plain INTERROGATIVE + COMMON NOUN serves well when a quick reply is wanted [381-82]. In more elaborated forms, an AFFIRMATIVE can suggest a NEGATIVE answer, and vice-versa, though no answer may be expected or given -- the traditional case of the “rhetorical” question [383-84].
[381] The phone rang again. “It’s that man.” “What man?” “The solicitor.” (Passing On)
[382] “Have you been in contact with the woman?” “Which woman?” “Ward’s widow” (Heathen)
[383] What woman of any initiative would have spent her entire adult life living in discord with a difficult mother? (Passing On) [answer: none would]
[384] What woman having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one piece, doth not light a candle, and sweep the house, and seek diligently till she find it? (Luke 15:8) [answer: anyone would]
Uses with INDEFINITE ARTICLE before the COMMON NOUN are rare, even in older data:
[385] What a portion is assigned to you? (Wieland)
[386] What an inhuman, merciless creature have I set my heart upon? Thou wert born amongst rocks, suckled by whales, cradled in a tempest, and whistled to by winds (Love for Love)
Uses with PROPER NOUNS may suggest that the person is simply unknown [387] or has more than one character [388].
[387] “It would be rather a popular move if we gave this Harrowcluff person a knighthood or something of the sort”, said the Minister reflectively. “Which Harrowcluff?” asked his secretary. (Super-Beasts)
[388] “Melisande, I want beauty -- your beauty.” “Which Melisande do you want? The one who talked to you this morning in the wood, or the one who does all the housekeeping for her mother?” (Romantic Age)
Also rare are uses with PRO-NOUNS, which do call for an answer:
[389] “I don’t care for poetry but she does.” “She! -- What she?” asked Uncle Josie, with lively curiosity, but very little tact. “Mrs. Wyllys” (Elinor Wyllys)
[390] “Did he send you?” “He? Which he? Of course, the presumably-still-alive Rainer Schickert.” (Major Maxim)
[391] “Which me do you know?” “The kindest, goodest, best me in the world”, answered Diamond. (Back of the North Wind)
IV.119 EXCLAMATORIES from the opposing CLOSED WORD-CLASS of DETERMINERS for NOUNS are forcefully decisive and stabilizing. Here, an INDEFINITE ARTICLE is just as common as it was rare in with INTERROGATIVES like [385-86].
[392] Oons! What a vexation is here! I know not what to do or say! (Love for Love)
[393] What an absolute brute you are! I never can believe a word you say! (Windermere)
Why such forms as “what” consistently overlap in INTERROGATIVE and EXCLAMATORY is a curious puzzle. Perhaps they are in some unfathomed sense mirror images of each other, at opposite ends of the scales of stability and decidedness (VI.50).
IV.120 Their uses with PROPER NOUNS are exceedingly infrequent. The person addressed may invoked as some other being than appears [394]; but more often, a well-known person is made an epithet [395-97].
[394] O Hero! what a Hero hadst thou been if half thy outward graces had been plac’d about thy thoughts and counsels of thy heart! (Much Ado)
[395] what a Judas: This person is supposed to be one of Michael’s closest and most trusted friends, and he publishes articles slamming him (Belief Net)WWW
[396] I hear Clinton made us invade Iraq without a plan, expand government, curtail civil liberties, spend the surplus, wrecked the economy and lost three million jobs. What a Napoleon of crime that Clinton is! (Vast Left Wing Conspiracy)WWW
[397] What a Herod of Jewry is this! [...] What an unweighed behaviour hath this Flemish drunkard pick’d (Merry Wives)
Whether these are sincere [390], ironic [396], or humorous [397], they certainly don’t EMPOWER.
IV.121 Indeed, the social side is more prominent for EXCLAMATORIES than for other DETERMINERS. The frequent PEJORATIVES stabilize some trait whilst destabilizing the person’s repute.
[398] what an arrant, rascally, beggarly, lousy knave it is! (Henry V)
[399] What a wretched and peevish fellow is this King of England, to mope with his fat-brain’d followers so far out of his knowledge! (same)
My data also turned up “eternal blockhead”, “impudent blunderer”, “arrogant rascal”, “unnatural rogue”, “infernal villain”, “wicked old despot”, “insufferable pig” -- on and on. The occasional AMELIORATIVES seem to stabilize the repute but may stretch credulity [400-01] or drift toward irony [402-03].
[400] I received Victorien Sardou to hear him read Fédora. What a great artiste! What an admirable actor! What a marvellous author! (Sarah Bernhardt)
[401] He finds two counties groping to bring coal, or flour, or fish, and he hits on a railroad. What an economy of power! and what a compensation for the shortness of life! (Representative Men)
[402] “How often, when you were a girl, have you said to me, with one of your saucy looks, “Mr. Knightley, I am going to do so-and-so; papa says I may, or I have Miss Taylor’s leave” -- something which, you knew, I did not approve.” “What an amiable creature I was!” (Emma)
[403] You find yourself saying, perhaps, “What a very clever fellow the author is! What an ingenious creation this character is!” [But] when we reflect we see how immeasurably inferior (Charles Dudley Warner)
Perhaps human spleen inclines to exclaim more upon the failings of others than on their virtues; or perhaps the act of exclaiming is itself felt to be PEJORATIVE. Assuredly, it is rare in so-called “formal” or “scholarly” discourse; English teachers frown on it in pupils’ essays; and it excites a louder or higher voice than may well become (whatever’s left of) “British reserve”. The data seem clear enough; these motivations are (again) merely plausible (cf. I.12).
IV.F.3.6 QUANTIFIERS and ENUMERATORS
IV.122 In general, the small and fuzzy WORD-CLASS of QUANTIFIERS indicate amounts without specifically deciding them, whereas the large and precise WORD-CLASSES of ENUMERATORS specify and decide as well. Linguistically, the former prefer MASS NOUNS [404], and the latter prefer COUNT NOUNS [405] (cf. IV.64); but in fact the QUANTIFIERS can apply to either [406].
[404] Much time and thought have been given to suggesting good books for boys and girls. (Library Work with Children)
[405] Five summers have I spent in farthest Greece (Comedy of Errors)
[406] Much blood has been let in these long years by drunken husbands and fathers. Many fortunes have been built up by the traffic [in] liquor. (Carrie Nation)
Cognitively, the QUANTIFIERS often designate unstable quantities or exaggerate them:
[407] Mrs Malins was, after many manoeuvres, hoisted into the cab. (The Dead)
[408] Some song in all hearts hath existence (Adam Lindsay Gordon)
[409] Every proverb, every book, every byword that belongs to thee for aid or comfort, shall surely come home through open or winding passages (Emerson)
[410] Any “surplus” wild life is a public nuisance, and should promptly be shot to pieces. (Vanishing Wild Life)
Among its other functions, “such” can be a QUANTIFIER for “so much”, either AMELIORATIVE [411] or PEJORATIVE [412].
[411] She had such colour, such brightness, that sometimes she reminded me of the whirling mosaics (Clothes in the Wardrobe)
[412] “Poor Nahum is dead.” The news caused such pain Sarah had to shut her eyes (Rich Pass By)
IV.123 Intuitively, I expected only “all” among the QUANTIFIERS to appear with a DEMONSTRATIVE [413], but found a scatter of others, notably in more old-fashioned texts [414-15].
[413] All those witty war-time pin-up girls catching beachballs or bathing beneath parasols hold the clues (Telegraph)
[414] The writers of the creation text had no idea of the nature of the physical properties they were describing; but Nature is certainly of such order that we can observe with some understanding many those physical properties. (Biblical Theology)WWW
[415] For the true performance of all and every these covenants and agreements the said Margaret Perry and the said John Vanloo do bind themselves (Indentures of Apprentices, 1723)
Such were also my findings of occurrences with POSSESSIVES:
[416] In all my travels, I have not managed to fall off the edge of the world. (Stephen Hawking)
[417] The following is a selection of some my publications on consciousness with a very brief description attached (Prof. Max Velmans of
[418] I give and devise all and every my Messuages [dwelling-houses with buildings and land attached], Cottages, Closes, Lands, Tenements and Hereditaments unto my beloved Wife (Wills of Captain Cook’s Crew, 1804)
[419] It is a custome amongest all the Irish, that presently after the death of any their chiefe Lords or Captaines, they do presently assemble them selves to chose an other (A Veue of the Present State of Ireland, 1596)
I find the usage “all and every” in so many wills like [418] that I would count it among the usual gratuitous legalese; no doubt some barristers of the period had had the cheek to argue that “all” does not include “every”.
IV.124 The ENUMERATORS as DETERMINERS in NOUN PHRASES subsume three distinct but well-specified and decided WORD-CLASSES. The CARDINAL ENUMERATORS tell how many and seem most at home in discourses of trade and business:
[420] According to former notice, will be sold before the Court House door, in this city, three yoke of prime oxen, and four carts; seven horses; two of celebrated breed; twenty-two mules [etc] (Slaveholder’s Daughter)
[421] [At] the Swedish firm Electrolux, [Carlo] Verri succeeded in settling two years’ disruption and announced a 5.9 trillion lire investment (Guardian)
But as we move higher and higher in the cardinal numbers, the decided uses shade over into the theoretical [422-23] or the astronomical [424-27].
[422] Most good chess players would probably agree that [one needs to] look ahead at least five moves [...] To do this systematically would require a computer to examine a quadrillion possibilities. (New Scientist)
[423] There is only one correct answer and 43 quintillion wrong ones (Enro Rubik)WWW
[424] Astronomers announced today that there are 70 sextillion stars in the visible universe. The count is almost surely wrong. (Space)WWW
[425] Commander had had septillion homesteads, but I alone was left; [...] And there were septillion undersetters to the eighty-five admirers of eight bases (Nano)WWW
[426] The sun has a mass of 2.2 octillion tons. It has a volume of 50 octillion cubic feet. (Solar System)WWW
[427] It is equal to the mass of the Sun, about two nonillion kilograms (Solar Mass)
At unknown heights, the social side comes into free-play with fantasy ENUMERATORS, deconstructing all precision or specificity.
[428] I’d rate this book nine decillion stars out of ten (Creative Writing)WWW
[429] A Zillion Names to Name Your Dog (Bike Insurance)WWW
[430] If you had a gazillion dollars, what would you do? (Guestbooks Pathfinder)WWW
[431] This is the era of the megazillion-dollar deal (TIME)
[432] It’s not as if there aren’t already seventy gabillion pairs of shoes with really cute buckles in the bloody huge box under the bed (Loquacious)WWW
[433] I have a jillion questions if anyone has chicken experience (Garden Banter)WWW
[434] A spammer kindly decided to give Joe a little free advertising by sending out a few million emails on his “behalf”. Joe got a bijillion complaints, bounced spams etc. (Fruitless Labour)WWW
Perhaps these fantasy creations are defences of SOLIDARITY in societies where discourses of POWER surfeit and numb us with the skyrocketing escalations of Bush deficits, Pentagon budgets and cost overruns, stock market losses, and, all in all, the now innumerable, much less countable, ravages of greed and waste.
IV.124a At the opposite end of the scale, some lower CARDINAL ENUMERATORS show EMPOWERING and DISEMPOWERING uses for emphasis:
[434a] Michel Landon Is one fine looking man!!! (Frankie Kessler)www
[434b] Did anyone ever see Valentine -- something that should have gone straight to video? Good god, that was one AWFUL movie! (Whedonesque)www
[434c] Those were two great letters! I too, hope more people share the wonders of their hometowns. (Port Angeles)www
[434d] Those were two wretched hours that Lucien spent in the Garden of the Tuileries. (Distinguished Provincial at Paris)
Plausibly, the ENUMERATORS suggest that what is being determined stands out as a firmly limited and certified instance or set of instances.
IV.125 The interactions of CARDINAL ENUMERATORS with QUANTIFIERS yield mixed results. “All” is decided and specific [435], whereas “no”, “any” and “some”, and even “every” hardly are [436-38].
[435] For dedicated Trekkies, this Sunday sees an unmissable event: the screening of all five Star Trek films (Independent)
[436] There is no one book, not even any two or three books, that can be pointed to as constituting the corpus or the canon of Pound’s criticism. (Ezra Pound)
[437] The Hon. Peter Horbury appeared to be some ten or twelve years younger than the earl. (Classic English Crime)
[438] Police in Salvador noted that in their city, on average, there has been a mob lynching every three days for the last three years. (Economist)
IV.126 The ORDINAL ENUMERATORS tell in what order, and are fairly well-decided, thus preferring the support of a DEFINITE ARTICLE [439], a DEMONSTRATIVE [440-41], or a PRO-NOUN POSSESSIVE [442-43]. In compensation, an INDEFINITE ARTICLE [444-45] and a QUANTIFIER like “some” [446] or “any” [447], being less decided, are not so common.
[439] The first floor, the second floor, and the third floor, had each a bell of its own. (Nickelby)
[440] At the end of this fourth volume of Shaw, I am still not certain whether I have been reading about a great man (Telegraph)
[441] When she came up to me after that third seminar I was so shocked and embarrassed that I could barely speak. (My Idea of Fun)
[442] She was nursing her fifth cup of awful coffee. (Negotiator)
[443] France’s answer to Disneyland -- a £69m Astérix theme park in Picardy -- received its millionth visitor within months of opening last spring. (Independent)
[444] It won’t mean money -- at least, I don’t think it will. A first book never does. But it will mean a future. (Dawn O’Hara)
[445] A second effect of the Thirty Years’ War was the practical dissolution of the empire. (American Nation)
[446] Any check, far from dismaying him, seemed immediately to prompt some second hypothesis. (Jewel That Was Ours)
[447] A central issue in discussing any third way is whether those who create money and control credit today will use them in ways that exclude most people from participation in ownership and profits. (The Just Third Way)WWW
IV.127 Even so, generalising each item determined by an ORDINAL normally holds a unique place in some series. There can be “two firsts” as long as they are mutually distinct:
[448] The Almighty Father [...] beheld our two first Parents, yet the onely two of mankind, in the happie Garden plac’t (Paradise Lost)
[449] The Daughter of King Archelaus [of Egypt], after the Death of her two first Husbands (being married to a third, who was Brother to her first), [...] had a very odd kind of Dream. She fancied that she saw her first Husband coming towards her (Spectator)
If the inept phrasing “two first husbands” instead of “first two husbands” hints at bigamy, the continuation removes our doubt. But one may well have doubts about an astonishing event [450], despite being passed down by the consummately erudite Edward Gibbon:
[450] Jerome saw at Rome a triumphant husband bury his twenty-first wife, who had interred twenty-two of his less sturdy predecessors (Decline)
At least, mere lack of “sturdiness” can hardly have caused such a plague of (un)timely demises.
IV.128 The fantasy ORDINALS mostly express impatience or resentment:
[451] After watching these scenes for the gabillionth time in six or so years a few things began to grate on me. (La Bricket)WWW
[452] I don’t have a cell phone for like the bijillionth time cuz once again I did something stupid in the jacuzzi. (Xanga)WWW
[453] “I don’t want to be a star, just want my Chevy and an old guitar”, croons Kravitz on his gazillionth album, but the singer clearly wants to be Prince (Keep Media)WWW
Being more limited in functions, they are far less used than the CARDINALS.
IV.129 FRACTAL ENUMERATORS tell what part or portion and combine the forms of CARDINALS with ORDINALS. They rarely determine a NOUN directly [454], but prefer an intermediary “of” [455] and often a UNIT NOUN (in the sense of IV.68) telling the measure of the division [456].
[454] General Wade Hampton [...] mingled one-fourth cotton seed with three-fourths corn, on which his slaves on seemed to thrive tolerably well (Anti-Slavery Examiner)
[455] About a third of the fugitive crusaders [...] escaped to the Thracian mountains. (Decline)
[456] The daily ration of food [...] in the Buxton House of Correction [is] one and a half pints of soup, four-fifths of a pound of potatoes, and two-sevenths of an ounce of beef. (Anti-Slavery Examiner)
Though FRACTALS are supposedly specific and decided, they soon become unwieldy. I gravely question whether the hapless prisoners in [456] ever got a fair measure of “beef”, cynically stingy as it was.
IV.130 For cognitive and social reasons, the three ENUMERATORS reviewed here present a declining slope in both range and frequency. The CARDINALS are legion, and extend up higher than most people can grasp, so computers take over. Modern culture is obsessed with sticking numbers on everything imaginable or unimaginable; one reflex is the tacit defeat of the “rule” that all up to “hundred” be written out in letters rather than digits. Some discourse domains admit only texts that bristle like numerical hedgehogs; what matter if percentages of statistics are glass bead games if they’re the only games in town? Governments conjure with “average” benefits by mixing oil billionaires with loo attendants. And so the paradox: we believe to be making our knowledge stable by quantifying and measuring; but we often have to “factor out” what makes it humanly interesting.
IV.131 ORDINALS serve the social fashion of keeping focused on the top people and things in our fabulous “democracies” : “the First Lady”, “the second largest shareholder”, “the third Marquis of Salisbury”, “the fourth Trident submarine” and so on (all BNC) -- and not, say, “the Ninety-First Lady” or “the eleventh crookedest shareholder”. Aside from a few bulges like “nineteenth” and “twenty-fifth”, the frequencies decline; if “tenth” still has 1,126 occurrences in the BNC, “twenty-eighth” has a only 18, and “thirty-eighth” only 2.
IV.132 FRACTALS show this decline far more strongly. With or without the hyphen, “three-fifths” weighs in at 46 uses, but “three sevenths” at only 6, of which 5 come from a single tutorial. Indeed, the higher-numbered FRACTALS in the BNC occur almost entirely in the tedious and patronising discourses of maths tutorials, which abound in such desiccated inanities as teaching “twelfths” by analogy to “pigs” [457]. (A tutor who asked a butcher for “two twelfths of a pig, my good man” would be belted with offal.)
[457] “If we had two pigs and another pig how many pigs would we have?” “Three.” “If we had two twelfths and another twelfth how many twelfths would we have altogether?”
Although every Joe Bloggs can get the use of a pocket calculator these days, maths and fractions are still dinned into schoolchildren as a black-and-white Golgotha of “correct” and “incorrect” that “traditional grammar” has doggedly but vainly sought.
Notes to Part IV, Number Two
6. “Blighty” is an affectionate, wistful, or rueful nickname for Britain, common among soldiers abroad. It surfaced in the late 19th century among soldiers stationed in India, plausibly cribbed from Hindi “bilayati” (“country”).
7. According to the Web, “MUD” is an anagram for “Multi-User Dimension”, “Dialogue”, “Domain” or even “Dungeon”. Which this product might be I cannot discern from its outburst of bafflegab.
8. This instance of ATTITUDE was first brought to my attention by John Sinclair in Hong Kong.
9. Some contemporary grammarians (as in CGEL) use the terms “genitives” or the “genitive case” imported from Latin grammar to distinguish them from the English PRO-NOUN POSSESSIVES.
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