Terms

Resources

A Dictionary of Modern American Usage is an excellent reference for both prescriptive and descriptive grammar, offering numerous examples about the rhetorical uses of concepts in the English language. 

The Oxford Companion to the English Language is a very useful source for securing knowledge about many concepts of the English language as well as a brief history about the developments of these concepts.

"A (Very) Brief History of the English Language" (http://www.wordorigins.org/histeng.htm) is a very informative Web site that traces the history of the English language from its inception in the Indo-European family of languages to its present state in the modern world. 
Updated: 04-20-01

Nouns

A noun is a word representing a person, place, or thing or idea.  A noun can be classified in various ways such as common or proper, concrete or abstract, and singular or plural.  A common noun refers to just an ordinary, non-specific person, place, thing, or idea while a proper noun refers to a specific person, place, thing, or idea.  A concrete noun is one that is easily detected by the senses as it has physicality.  An example of a concrete noun would be a chair, a building, or a person.  An abstract noun, on the other hand, is one that represents an idea or concept that is not readily detected by the senses, such as love, hate, and freedom.  A singular noun is one that represents a single entity while a plural noun represents more than one entity.

The history of the noun in the modern English is quite intriguing, as nouns in modern English are quite different from nouns in most other languages. Nouns in the Latin language and the Romance languages which stemmed from it could easily be identified by their endings, such as -a or -o.  However, as the modern English language developed, nouns, especially the monosyllabic nouns,  were not necessarily given these distinctive endings. This made it more difficult to identify a noun in the modern English language.  However, many pollysyllabic nouns could be identified by endings such as -ing, -er, -ation, -ity, -ness, -ism, and -ist. 

With the advent of the Industrial Revolution and the swift changes of society until the present, there was a need for new nouns to describe many of the new objects and concepts developed.  These new nouns, such as oxygen, protein, and vaccine were developed from Lain and Greek roots.  Once again, however, there were no distinct endings that would definitely identify a word as a noun.  Thus, the history of the noun in the modern English language is quite rare, as it does not follow the patterns present in many other languages of the world. 

After the spread of the British Empire in the 19th century, modern English acquired many new words, including nouns, from practically every other language in the world.  The noun tycoon was obtained from the Japanese, shampoo from the Finnish, and stampede from the Spanish.  Thus, it is easy to see that modern English nouns were developed from a vast mixture of languages, both modern and ancient.

In literature, nouns can be quite elaborate or rather simplistic, thereby affecting the impression one receives from a particular work.  Shakespeare used many elevated nouns in his work when a person of high society was speaking but would use fairly common nouns when one of low social status would speak.  In All's Well That Ends Well, the King uses such nouns as levity, courtier, soldiership, and contempt.  These are nouns not commonly used in everyday conversation and were employed by Shakespeare to suggest the nobility of the king.  The clown, however, uses very simple nouns such as devil, madam, papist, and puritan.  These are all nouns that were used quite frequently and understood by the common man of Shakespeare's time. 

When using nouns in written and oral communication, it is imperative that the communicator avoid the common pitfalls of misusing nouns.  One way in which nouns are misused is noun plague, an excessive use of nouns to modify another noun. An example of this would be: The National Aeronautics Space Administration space shuttle defense initiative program has yet to be approved by the federal government.  Here, eight successive nouns have been used in conjunction to describe one program.  One has to wade through several words before even being able to fully comprehend what is the actual subject of the sentence.  This sentence can be remedied as follows:  The defense initiative program developed by NASA for the protection of their space shuttles has yet to be approved by the federal government.  Here, several interesting things were done to avoid noun plague.  First, the acronym NASA was used for the organization, eliminating much of the clutter in the sentence.  Next, a verb (developed) follows defense initiative program to indicate that the program was developed by NASA.  Finally, a clause was used to show that the program was for the protection of NASA's space shuttles.  Thus, the revised sentence is a much clearer way to communicate. 

Another weakness in many writers is the tendency to use buried verbs.  Nouns ending in -ing and -ment are commonly used as verbs in many sentences.  An example of a sentence that uses a buried verb follows:  John's minimization of his budget led to the purchase of a older car.  Here, both minimization and purchase are buried verbs and it would be much more fluid to say:  After John minimized his budget, he purchased an older car.  By merely adding -ed to the two buried verbs, the sentence becomes less abstract and more concise - two qualities for which every writer should strive.  The revised sentence has a much more powerful rhetorical effect and demonstrates how avoiding nominalizations, or verbs that have been changed into nouns, can greatly enhance one's writing.

Another common writing practice is to use nouns as adjectives.  While this may be acceptable when using such phrases as problem child, math exam, and physics tutor, this practice can sometimes lend itself to ambiguity.  For example, does the phrase female doctor mean a doctor who is a woman or a doctor who treats females?  The word gynecologist would be much more appropriate to use if the writer is talking about a doctor who treats females. 

A writer or speaker should always avoid using nouns in a way that confuses his or her audience and should try to use the most specific and most concrete noun in every instance: a fence as opposed to a barrier, an earthquake as opposed to a disaster, a cardiologist  as opposed to a doctor, etc.  Using very specific nouns strengthens one's writing and impacts his audience in a far greater way.

Exercises

1.) John’s abandonment of traditional policies brought about his dismissal from the law firm at which he worked for twenty years.
2.) The National Security Commission’s domestic terrorist prosecution exemption policy was deemed unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court.
3.) The heart doctor’s prolongation of several of his patient’s lives won him a Nobel Prize in medicine.
4.) The very zealous, dogmatic, and adamant religious followers of Orthodox Judaism stormed the Temple Mount in hopes of destroying the Muslim mosque.
 5.)  The opponents of abortion flooded the streets of New York for a protest rally.
6.)  The United States Census Bureau conducted a detailed formal examination to ascertain the condition of the American people and to determine how to best distribute the tax payer’s dollars.
 7.)  The United Parcel Service informed Sarah that it would be about thirty days before her package arrived.
 8.)  Mary’s dog won the first-place prize in the Southern Louisiana District annual championship dog-breeding contest.
 9.)  According to Puritan theology, every man, woman, boy, girl, and baby has a predestination to either heaven or hell.
10.)  After George W. Bush’s recommendation of Ashcroft as Attorney General, upheaval engulfed the Senate and the House of Representatives.
11.)  Jim arrived at an approximation of nearly three thousand attendees at the teachers' rights rally.
12.)  Steve Johnson, a doctor of philosophy in psychological counseling, always taught his students to value experience over theory.