Week 4 - Nouns and Pronouns

Form and Function of Nouns

This week we are going to talk about nouns and pronouns, and help you to avoid the problems caused by not understanding how they function in writing.

A noun is a word that names something: a person, a place, a thing, a quality, an act, or an idea.

Nouns can be either singular or plural

For most nouns, the plural is formed by adding s or es to the singular: book becomes books and boss becomes bosses.

If there is a vowel before the y at the end of a noun, simply add s. if there is a consonant before the y at the end of a noun, replace the y with an i and add es.

Some nouns have irregular plurals: child/children, mouse/mice other nouns have no singular: auspices, clothes, cattle. and then there are those nouns that have no plural: training, furniture, milk. often in english we’ll come across a noun that has kept its latin-based plural, like criterion/criteria, phenomenon/phenomena. and sometimes we’ll find nouns that have both english and latin plurals (so index in plural can become either indexes or indices).

It’s always wise to check your context when deciding which to use. you’ll discover that some nouns are plural in form, but singular in meaning and therefore take a singular verb. it would good to note that a word like ‘statistics’ can also be plural as in the statistics are convincing, but statistics is difficult to master. again, we rely on context to convey meaning. when it comes to measurements and figures forty percent of eligible voters are expected to turn out. but forty percent is considered a good turnout. some nouns are count nouns—nine items or fewer or seven little australians. and just as there are count nouns, there are noncount nouns as well, that is, nouns that cannot be counted—wisdom, underwear, atmosphere. and then there are those tricky nouns that can be both count and noncount.

Take the example of ‘room’—we may use it to say there is ‘no room at the table’ and also that there are ‘no rooms at the inn’. collective nouns are used for references to gatherings of entities (people, animals, plants and so on). they can be singular or plural, depending on your intended meaning, for example ‘the group were divided on that issue’ but ‘the group was unanimous on that issue’. the word ‘number’ is a collective noun that can be singular or plural—a number of students are already here (plural).

The number of students who are here is impressive (singular). Nouns can be concrete or abstract. Concrete nouns can be seen, touched, smelt, or tasted because they refer to tangible items such as books, chairs, or food. Abstract nouns cannot be detected by the senses because they name ideas, concepts, generalities, qualities, notions and trends—eg. pleasure, beauty, wisdom, justice.

Nouns can also be either common or proper. A common noun is a non-specific item such as house, book or violin, but a proper noun names a specific thing such as a person, a location, a building, an event, et cetera.

Proper nouns always take a capital letter. ‘Captain Pugwash is a fearless captain’ shows ‘captain’ as both a common and proper noun. now let’s move on to noun cases. the case is the form of a noun (or pronoun) that shows the reader how the noun (or pronoun) functions in a sentence. nouns can function as a subject, an object, a complement, and an appositive. the appositive is usually a noun that renames another noun nearby. take this example: sherlock holmes, the detective, tapped his pipe. he felt a sense of foreboding. in this instance, ‘sherlock holmes’ is the subject of our sentence (and is a proper noun). ‘the detective’ is in apposition as it is close by and renames ‘sherlock holmes’. ‘pipe’ is the object. in the next sentence, ‘sense’ is the complement as it arrives after a linking verb, and ‘foreboding’ is the object after the preposition ‘of’.

The cases of nouns only ever change when they are in the possessive: the book’s cover or the books’ authors. there are two common problems to watch out for in noun usage: noun strings and nominalisations (or heavy nouns). a noun string occurs when too many nouns are bunched together, making it hard for the reader to discern their meaning in the sentence. the best remedy is to un-string the nouns to make it easier for the reader to process them. so, instead of saying ‘an uncertainty management system’, you would rephrase it to read ‘a system for managing uncertainty’. similarly, a ‘disaster victim identification specialist’ would be better phrased as ‘an identification specialist for disaster victims’. a nominalisation is a noun derived from a verb or an adjective. these ‘heavy nouns’ are sometimes called ‘shun’ words because they commonly end in ‘tion’. shun. there are several other endings to be wary of such as ‘age’, ‘al’, ‘ance’, ‘ence’, and many more. more often than not, the ‘heavy’ noun can be replaced by a verb. others require a bit more lexical dexterity to avoid awkward nominalisations. do you remember the sentence that exemplified of-ness at the end of week 2?

Our lack of knowledge about local conditions precluded determination of committee action effectiveness in fund allocation to those areas in greatest need of assistance.

It is riddled with nominalisations. see whether you can replace some of the italicised words. But, take note, not all words ending in ‘tion’ are nominalisations that you need to delete. here’s a sample of some nominalisations with suggested replacements. where you can, it is best to avoid using words in the ‘noun’ column, as it is usually more appropriate to use the verb. that’s it for nouns. let’s move onto pronouns with amber.

Form and Function of Pronouns

We now move on to the small, but mighty, pronoun. First, what is a pronoun?

The word pronoun is made up of ‘pro’, meaning ‘on behalf of’, and ‘noun’, which comes from the Latin word ‘nomen’; to name. So, a pronoun stands in place of a noun, a noun phrase, or a name. A pronoun is a noun substitute, a word that works on behalf of a noun. This table shows English pronouns in both singular and plural forms. Pronouns can vary according to number, person, and case.

The person—first person, second person, or third person—depends on whether the person is speaking, ‘I’ or ‘we’, whether the person is being spoken to, ‘you’, or whether the person is being spoken of, ‘he’, ‘she’, ‘it’, or ‘they’. The concept of person applies to things as well. ‘It’, for example, is a third person pronoun.

There are various kinds of pronouns in English, from demonstrative through to distributive. Demonstrative pronouns ‘point to’. They include ‘this’, ‘that’, ‘these’, ‘those’, and ‘such’. They can fulfil subject, object, and complement roles in a sentence.

Interrogative pronouns pose questions: ‘Who’ and ‘whom’ for persons; ‘which’, ‘what’, ‘whose’, and ‘where’ for other things.

Relative pronouns relate to an antecedent—what has come before—and join that antecedent to a modifying clause. These are ‘who’, ‘whoever’, ‘whom’, and ‘whomever’—for persons and animals who have names; ‘whose’—for the possessive of people, animals, and things; ‘which’ and ‘that’—for animals and inanimate objects; and ‘what’—an indefinite relative pronoun that stands for an undefined or unidentified antecedent. For example, ‘I don’t know what they want’.

One pronoun problem that you might like to take note of is something we call ‘that-creep’. That is, using ‘that’ instead of ‘who’. For example, ‘she’s the girl that arrived first’, or ‘he’s the one that received the prize’. The remedy is simple: Change ‘that’ to ‘who’.

Indefinite pronouns refer to no one in particular. Take a moment to read through this extensive list. Remember to use a singular or plural verb, as appropriate. And also note that ‘none’ often means ‘not any’. For example: ‘Of all the films to have won Oscars in the last 50 years, none speaks to me as much as “Annie Hall”’.

Reflexive pronouns are used when the subject of the verb is also its object. Reflexive pronouns include ‘myself’, ‘yourself’, ‘himself’, ‘herself’, ‘itself’, ‘ourselves’, ‘yourselves’, and ‘themselves’.

People often use these wrongly, as a kind of genteelism, thinking that they are being polite. Here’s a quote from a Colin Dexter novel, where reflexive pronouns do some heavy lifting: ‘If he’d (Morse) made something of himself, he’d made something of himself himself, as he’d once put things’. Intensive, or emphatic, pronouns are—you guessed it—used for emphasis. Again, these include ‘myself’, ‘yourself’, ‘himself’, ‘herself’, ‘itself’, ‘ourselves’, ‘yourselves’, and ‘themselves’. For example, ‘I, myself, witnessed the meltdown.’

Distributive pronouns refer to persons or things one at a time—‘each’, ‘either’, ‘neither’. They always take a singular verb. For example: ‘Each of the students studies hard.’ And, finally, the expletive pronouns: ‘It’ and ‘there’. In grammar, the word expletive does not mean an oath or a swear word. It actually comes from the Latin, ‘expletivus’, which means ‘to fill out’. Expletives typically ‘fill out’ subject spaces in sentences and delay the meatier, more meaningful parts.

Avoid the expletive in a sentence such as ‘it is their intention to go to the concert’, because this postpones the message. It would be much more direct to write: ‘They intend to go to the concert.’ `` Sometimes, you need to use an expletive construction. For example: ‘It’s raining cats and dogs!’ or ‘It’s no use crying over spilt milk.’

This is called the existential expletive. But, deploy it with care, especially in academic and technical writing. Ask yourself whether the expletive is serving a purpose in the flow or meaning of a sentence, or whether it is, in fact, just filling out space. You’ll often find that pronoun problems like this have a ‘knock-on’ effect, resulting in other sentence problems. In the sentence, ‘it is their intention to go to the concert,’ we also then encounter a heavy noun or ‘shun’ word: ‘Intention.’

We looked at heavy nouns in the first lecture this week, so you might want to go back and check that section. The next lecture covers problems with pronouns.

Pronoun problems

In this lecture, we’ll cover problems with pronouns. Pronouns can be tricky.

Some errors with pronouns are quite common, and this lecture will clarify some of the more concerning aspects.

When it comes to ‘me’, ‘myself’, and ‘I’, the correct word to use depends on whether you’re the subject or the object of a sentence.

Let’s look at the parts of a sentence.

The subject of a sentence tells the reader who or what the sentence is about. The verb conveys what the action or state of the subject is, and the object of the sentence tells the reader who or what is affected by the subject’s action. In the sentence ‘she gave the plans to the builder’, ‘she’ is the subject, ‘gave’ is the verb, ‘the plans’ are the direct object, and ‘the builder’ is the indirect object.

Use ‘I’ when you are the subject of the sentence, even if you are referring to someone else as well as yourself.

‘I drank the milk’. ‘Ben and I ate breakfast’. Use ‘me’ when you are the direct or indirect object of your sentence. ‘The girl saw me’. ‘He made a sandwich for me’.

Here’s a simple test to figure out whether you are the object to the sentence, and to use ‘me’, or the subject, and to use ‘I’:

‘The supervisor congratulated Josie and me’ is correct, because you could just as easily say ‘the supervisor congratulated me’; not ‘I’.

You should use ‘myself’ only emphatically or reflexively. ‘I myself knew the answer’. This sentence would have the same meaning without ‘myself’. The word ‘myself’ adds emphasis. ‘I told myself that this would be the last time’. In this sentence I am both the subject and the object. I am doing the telling, and being told. ‘Myself’ is the correct word to use. The pronoun must agree in person, number, and gender with the noun that it substitutes for and refers to. The link needs to be close, clear, explicit, specific, and unmistakable. A pronoun must unambiguously connect with its antecedent. Let’s look at this sentence: ‘The chef and her daughter were pleased with her progress’. Is it clear whether we are referring to the progress of the chef, or her daughter? Can you see why it’s important for a pronoun to agree with its antecedent? Finally, we come to the question of ‘who’ or ‘whom’.

Many writers believe that ‘whom’ is on its way out because it can sound very pompous.

Some even believe it’s circling the drain. However, it is still used in expressions like ‘to whom it may concern’. In the sentence ‘the girl whom you’ve been dancing with is on her way to the top’, most writers would use ‘who’ rather than ‘whom’, and it’s fine to do that.