We’ve not yet
dealt with important features of nouns and associated functions and structures,
including some you may already know. Here we discuss several of them.
THE COMMON AND
THE PROPER
You may already
know about common and proper nouns. Common
nouns are words like man, woman, child, city, state. They name general, nonspecific persons
or things. Proper nouns name
particular persons or things, and they’re capitalized: Henry, Annie, Herbert, St.
Louis, Missouri. (There are no
improper nouns, and if there are, being very proper ourselves, we refuse to
discuss them.)
Usually, it’s easy
to know when to capitalize a noun, but there can be uncertainly about words
that may—or may not—be official titles:
I spoke with Doctor Smith yesterday.
I spoke with the doctor of obstetrics
yesterday.
The president of the club lives in that white
house.
The President lives in the White House.
Context often has
a great deal to do with this. (When Dr. Smith has his business cards printed,
the words Doctor of Obstetrics are
capitalized.) To make these decisions, notice what is being done in contexts
similar to yours.
Dictionaries can
help us make these distinctions, but it’s also helpful to notice what other
writers do in similar situations.
PLURAL NOUNS
As you know, we
make most nouns plural by simply adding –s
to the end.
If a word ends
with s, x, z, sh, or ch, we add –es: basses, boxes, dishes, churches, and many others.
But there are
quite a few exceptions—called irregular
plurals—and for these, all of us may
need to refer to a dictionary at
times. The easiest irregular plurals are those that don’t change from singular
to plural: Sheep, deer, and moose don’t change.
Still other
familiar irregulars change a vowel within the word (mice, men, teeth, and more) or add –en: oxen, children.
With a noun that
ends with a consonant and o, we
usually use –es for the plural: heroes, zeroes, potatoes.
But there are
other nouns that end with a consonant and o
that take only -s. Some of these are
musical terms from Italian: pianos, cellos, solos.
A noun that ends
with a vowel followed by o also takes
only –s for the plural: patios, radios, rodeos, zoos.
With some nouns
that end with f or fe, follow the familiar rule: Change the
f to v and add –es: calves, halves, knives, wives. But other
plurals that end with f or fe take only –s: roofs, proofs, handkerchiefs, beliefs.
You probably
recall that in nouns that end with a consonant and y, we change y to i and add –es: armies, ladies, rallies.
But when a vowel precedes y, we add
only –s: bays, boys, alleys, valleys.
And then there are
a number of words from Latin or Greek that retain their original plural forms
or something similar. To us, these plurals seem quite irregular:
alumnae phenomena
alumni radii
criteria stimuli
media theses
nebulae vertebrae
We’ll
remind you again that a dictionary always helps with words like these. Most
writers will use few of these Latin and Greek plurals, but we all need to
remember some, including (probably) these:
medium (the singular) and media, as
in the medium of television
criterion and
criteria
phenomenon and phenomena
crisis and
crises
Almost every
profession and academic subject has its special terms that include certain
irregular plurals, and it’s a good idea to learn them as soon as possible for
your professional writing.
It’s also helpful
to know that almost no one uses memorandum
and memoranda anymore; we simply
write memo or memos. And for most purposes today, data is accepted as both singular and plural.
GREAT INDECISIONS: POSSESSION AND APOSTROPHES
It’s usually easy
to indicate possession in English nouns; with singular nouns, we add an
apostrophe and –s: man’s, woman’s, child’s, Oliver’s, Stanley’s.
With plurals, we add a lone apostrophe after
the final –s:
friends’, students’, teachers’.
But the English language
sometimes makes things a bit trickier. When a plural does not end in –s, we make the possessive form with the
apostrophe first, then –s, like the
regular singular possessive: men’s, women’s,
children’s.
Now comes the
frustrating part: Suppose a singular noun ends in –s, like boss or Ross, Charles or Bess? For the possessive, do we add only an apostrophe? (Ross’, Charles’, or Bess’ ?) Or do we add an apostrophe and –s? (Ross’s, Charles’s,
or Bess’s?)
The sad truth is
that American English has no universally accepted way of marking possession in
these cases. Some authorities insist on one way, some on another.
In your
professional writing, you must find out which way your organization prefers and
stick to it. If your organization has no standard way, persuade your leaders to
adopt one of the standard style guides (like the Associated Press Stylebook) to answer such questions.
In this book, we
create possessives with –’s after
singulars ending in s, like this:
The boss’s desk
Ross’s desk
Bess’s desk
APPOSITIVES
An appositive is a noun or pronoun that
usually appears im-mediately after another noun to rename the first noun and
provide additional information about it. The appositive is usually enclosed in
a pair of commas, although we may sometimes use dashes or pa-rentheses
depending on our desired style, tone, or emphasis.
More than one
appositive is possible, and sometimes the ap-positive has modifiers of its own:
My boss, Mr. Smith, was talking to my
parents.
Mr. Smith, my wonderful boss, was
talking to my parents.
My boss—that
bore, that ogre, that man whom I hate more than any other person living,
with the possible exception of my English teacher—was telling my parents
that I have a bad attitude.
In the sentences above,
the appositives all rename the subject (My
boss or Mr. Smith), and for that
reason they are considered part of the subject.
In the third
example, the dashes are helpful to mark the beginning and end of the long,
complicated appositive phrase because the phrase itself contains three commas.
Nominal clauses can be appositives:
The physicist’s idea, that multiple universes exist, baffles me.
My question—who killed Colonel Mustard in
the library?— remains unanswered.
His topic, why climate change is happening, was timely.
When pronouns are
used as appositives, their case (nomina-tive, objective, or possessive) should
match the function of the nouns they rename. In the example below, the
appositives rename the object (judges)
of a preposition, so the pronoun is in the ob-jective case:
The photos were given to the judges, Eric
and me.
In the next
example, the appositives rename the subject (judges), so the pronoun is in the nominative case:
The judges, Eric and I, will study the photos.
Sometimes
structures look like appositives but are not. For instance, a compound noun
phrase, joined with or, can be used
to indicate a synonym:
The common dog, or Canis lupus familiaris, belongs
to the Canidae family.
Mergenthaler’s typesetting
machine (or Linotype)
was completed in 1884.
The noun after or is not an appositive, despite the
punctuation. But remove the conjunction or
and the same sentences now contain appositives that are, again, synonyms of the
preceding noun phrase:
The common dog, Canis lupus familiaris, belongs
to the Canidae family.
Mergenthaler’s typesetting
machine, the Linotype,
was completed in 1884.
Don’t confuse the appositive
with adjectives that appear after the noun they modify:
The children, noisy and
enthusiastic, dashed through the living room.
THE EXPLETIVE THERE
An expletive, as the term is used in grammar, is a word inserted into a sentence that adds nothing to the meaning but alters word order in ways that are sometimes useful. As we use the term here, expletives are not swear words, although the term sometimes has that meaning, too: “Where are my [expletive deleted] glasses?”
The most commonly
used expletive is there, which can be
added to a sentence to temporarily take the place of the subject.
This expletive
postpones the appearance of the subject, which may be a noun or a pronoun,
until after the first word of the verb (that is, after the first auxiliary or
after the main verb when there is no auxiliary). The expletive is never the
actual subject.
Compare these
pairs of sentences, in which the complete subject is underlined:
A painting by Degas is hanging in the museum.
There is a
painting by Degas hanging in the
museum.
Two men were looking for you.
There were two
men looking for you.
The expletive there has no grammatical function in the
second sentence. It has only a stylistic function, to stand in for the true
subject, postponing the subject until later in the sentence, as shown above.
In English,
expletive constructions are the usual way to say certain things:
There will now be a short intermission.
We don’t say, A short intermission will now be (though
we can say We’ll now have a short
intermission.)
Somewhere there
is a place for us.
We can’t say, Somewhere a place for us is or A place for us is somewhere.
In both of the
cases above, the expletive there
postpones the subject to the end of the sentence, where the subject (a short intermission; a place for us) receives special emphasis.
Don’t confuse the
expletive there with the adverb of
place there. Here’s a useful test:
Can you replace there with here and retain the original general sense of the sentence? If yes, then there is an adverb.
ADVERB: Your keys are over there.
(Compare: Your
keys are over here.)
ADVERB: There are your keys.
(Compare: Here
are your keys.)
EXPLETIVE: There are keys all over the place.
(We wouldn’t usually say, Here are keys all over the place.)
Here are a few
more examples of subjects postponed by the expletive there:
A dog is growling in the yard There is a dog growling
in the yard.
A boy is building something on our porch.
There is a
boy building something on the
porch.
NOUNS OF DIRECT
ADDRESS
In written
dialogue and letters, as in daily conversation, we sometimes use the names of
the people we’re addressing. These names are called nouns of direct address:
Mr. Smith, I’d like to speak with you, please.
I don’t like to be disappointed, and you, Renfru,
disappoint me.
Sometimes nouns of
direct address are common nouns that apply to one person or an entire audience:
My friend, I hope you will take my advice.
This news, my friends, should comfort
us all.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our forty-first
annual vase juggling competition.
The noun of direct
address is always enclosed by a pair of commas, and it has no grammatical function in the sentence.
That is, it’s not considered part of the subject or the predicate. It has a social function: to get the attention of
the person addressed, or to clarify who is being addressed.
Sometimes, if the
context doesn’t resolve ambiguities, readers may confuse nouns of address and
appositives:
Your supervisor, Mr. Watley, told you
to finish that project.
If Mr. Watley is
the supervisor, then the words Mr. Watley
are an appositive. If Mr. Watley is the person being addressed, then Mr. Watley is a noun of direct address.
We can usually depend on the larger
context to clarify this.
POINTS FOR
WRITERS
1. Restrictive
and non-restrictive appositives.
Here comes a distinction that
is seldom understood and often ignored.
Sometimes the pair
of commas is not used with the appositive, depending on the larger context. In
the first example below, the writer has more than one daughter; in the second,
he has only one:
My daughter Mary plays the tuba.
My daughter, Mary, plays the tuba.
In the first
example, Mary is a restrictive appositive: it re-stricts
(or limits) the meaning of daughter.
In the second example, the non-restrictive appositive Mary simply provides supplemen-tary information. (And in this case
the commas contribute nothing to understanding the sentence.)
Here are more
examples of restrictive appositives, followed by non-restrictive examples:
RESTRICTIVE: My cousin Bob plays the
harmonica.
NON-RESTRICTIVE: My cousin, Bob, plays
the harmonica.
RESTRICTIVE: Our custodian Mr. Halley
does good work.
NON-RESTRICTIVE:
Our custodian, Mr. Halley, does good work.
In both cases the
restrictive appositive, without the commas, is used to identify a specific
cousin or custodian out of many.
When in doubt, add
the commas. Few (if any) readers will object, or even notice, if you’re wrong,
and the commas seldom if ever alter the meaning of the sentence significantly.
But if you add the first comma, don’t forget the second.
EXERCISES
1. What’s
the difference in writing between regular plural nouns, possessive nouns, and plural
possessive nouns? Write an example that illustrates each category, using words
that have regular plurals.
For example: cats, cat’s, and cats’.
2. Write
plural, singular possessive, and plural possessive forms of the following nouns: woman,
ox, church, tomato, piano, medi-um (e.g., the medium of TV), boss, and octopus. Use a dictionary when you need to.
3. In
the following sentences, identify the sentences that con-tain nouns of address,
appositives, and expletives, and underline those structures. In sentences with
expletives, identify the com-plete subject of the sentence. A sentence may
contain more than one of these structures. In some cases, the function of the
phrase may not be clear within the limited context.
Examples:
My brother Ed has left. [Appositive]
Dwight, see if his brother has left.
[Noun of address] There are no printer cartridges in the supply closet.
[There
is an expletive, and no printer
cartridges is the subject.]
Dr. Kildare, you can speak with my assistant.
June, speak with my physician, Dr. Kildare.
Your brother, Alice, is remarkable.
There is rain forecast for tomorrow.
It is clear that Ed is a menace.
