CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1

BASIC CONCEPTS IN MORPHOLOGICAL ANALYSIS

1.1 Preliminary remarks 10

1.2 The lexeme 10
1.3 Word structure and morphological operations 12
1.3.1 Derivational morphology 12
1.3.2 Inflectional morphology 16
1.4 The morpheme 18
1.4.1 Item-and-arrangement morphology
and agglutinating morphology 20
1.4.2 Deviations from agglutination 21
1.4.2.1 One morph, two meanings 22
1.4.2.2 Null morphemes 22
1.4.2.3 Intermorphs and cranberry morphemes 23
1.5 The structure of the lexeme and paradigms 25
1.5.1 Grammatical words and syncretism 25
1.5.2 Paradigms 27
1.5.3 The derivation of lexemes 29
1.5.4 Lexical relatedness 31
1.5.5 Mixed categories 32
1.5.6 Complex predicates 33
1.6 Morphology and the lexicon 33
1.7 On the borderland between morphology and syntax: clitics 36
1.8 The interface between morphology and phonology 37
1.8 .1Allomorphs 38
1.8.1.1 Predictable allomorphy 38
1.8.1.2 Unpredictable or partially predictable allomorphy 42
1. 8. 2 Lexical strata 45
1.9 Conclusions 49
1.10 Practice 50

5
 CHAPTER 2

NUMBER

2.1 Preliminary remarks 53

2.2 The conceptual basis of the count/mass distinction 54
2.2.1 Count vs. mass nouns 54
2.2.2 Conceptual basis 57
2.2.3 Variable construal 59
2.2.4 The sortal/non-sortal distinction 60
2.3 Sortals (i.e. count nouns) 61
2.3.1 The semantic and morphosyntactic properties of sortals
(i.e. count nouns) 61
2.3.2 The plural morpheme 62
2.3.2.1 The pronunciation of the plural allomorph –s 65
2.3.2.2 The spelling of the plural allomorph –s 66
2.3.3. Classes of sortals (i.e. count nouns) 69
2.3.3.1 Plural by voicing 69
2.3.3.2 Plural by ablaut 71
2.3.3.3 –En plural 73
2.3.3.4 Zero plural 73
2.3.3.5. Foreign plurals 82
2.3.3.6 Collective nouns 85
2.4 Quasi-count nouns 91
2.5 Non-sortals (i.e.mass nouns) 93
2.5.1 The semantic and morphosyntactic properties of non-sortals
(i.e. mass nouns) 93
2.5.2 Co-occurrence of mass nouns with quantifiers 95
2.6 Recategorization 99
2.6.1 Recategorization of mass nouns as count nouns 99
2.6.2 Singular mass term – Plural mass term shift 107
2.6.3 Recategorization of count nouns as mass nouns 108
2.6.4 Count nouns with no corresponding mass occurrences 109
2.6.5 Recategorization of proper names as count nouns 111
2.7 Pluralia tantum nouns 111
2.7.1 Pluralia tantum nouns with mass noun properties 112
2.7.2 Pluralia tantum nouns with count noun properties 116

6
2.8 Number with compound nouns 120
2. 8.1 Plural in the first element 121
2.8.2 Plural in the last element 122
2.8.3 Plural in both the first and the last element 124
2.9 Conclusions 124
2.10 Practice 125

CHAPTER 3

DETERMINERS

3.1 Preliminary remarks 137

3.2 Co-occurrence of determiners 139
3.2.1 Central determiners: the, a, null determiner 139
3.2.2 Predeterminers 141
3.2.3 Postdeterminers 145
3.3 The definite article and definite descriptions 146
3.4 The deictic function of definite descriptions 147
3.4.1 The deictic gestural function 148
3.4.2 The deictic symbolic function 150
3.5 Discourse functions of definite descriptions 151
3.5.1 The anaphoric function 151
3.5.2 The cataphoric function 152
3.6 Null determiner with definite meaning 152
3.7 The generic reference of definite descriptions 156
3.8 The non-referential (attributive) use of the definite article 157
3.9 Proper names in definite descriptions 158
3.10 Proper names without article 159
3.11 Bare Plural NPs 160
3.12 Generic sentences 163
3.12.1 The generic reference of indefinite descriptions 164
3.13 Practice 168
CHAPTER 4

GENDER

4.1 Preliminary remarks 184

4. 2 Gender in Present-day English 186
7
4.2.1 The structuralist approach 189
4.2.2 English gender revisited 200
4.3 Pronominal substitutes with dual gender 203
4.3.1 Androcentric generics 203
4.3.2 Coordinated masculine and feminine pronominal forms 203
4.3.3 Plural pronominal forms used as singular forms 204
4.4 The socio-pragmatic approach 205
4.4.1 Personification of inanimate entities 208
4.4.2 Animal referents 213
4.4.3 Non-referential she 218
4.5 Gender in American English 219
4.5.1 The sociological view 219
4.5.2 The vernacular view 224
4.6 Gender in Canadian English 228
4.6.1 Animal denotata 228
4.6.2 Inanimate denotata 229
4.7 Conclusions 231
4.8 Practice 232

CHAPTER 5

CASE

5.1 Preliminary remarks 236

5.2 Nominative 237
5.3. Accusative 238
5.4 Dative 238
5.5 Genitive 241
5.5.1 Categorization of genitive meanings 242
5.5.2 The choice between the inflected genitive and
the prepositional genitive 244
5.5.3 The group genitive 251
5.5.4 The elliptic genitive 251
5.5.5 The local genitive 252
5.5.6 The implicit genitive 252
5.5.7 The double genitive 253
5.5.8 The appositive genitive 253
5.5.9 A quantitative analysis of the English genitive 254
5.5.9.1 A quantitative analysis of the inflected genitive
8
in BrE and AmE 255
5.5.9.2 A quantitative analysis of the prepositional genitive
in BrE and AmE 256
5.6 Abstract case: structural case 258
5.7 Case as a conceptual notion: case grammar 262
5.7.1 General remarks on semantic roles 262
5.7.2 Fillmore’s Case Grammar 264
5.8 Hierarchies 274
5.8.1 Grammatical relations 274
5.8.2 Case 275
5.8.3. Marking 276
5.8.4 Semantic roles 277
5.9 Practice 280

Appendix I 288
Appendix II 294
Appendix III 297
Glossary 300
Bibliography 315

9
 CHAPTER 1

Basic concepts in morphological analysis

1.1 Preliminary remarks

The etymology of the term morphology is Greek: morph- means

‘shape, form’. Thus, morphology is the study of form or forms. The
term ‘morphology’ has been taken over from biology where it is used
to denote the study of the form and structure of plants and animals. In
geology it refers to the study of the configuration and evolution of land
forms. It was first used for linguistic purposes in 1859 by the German
linguist August Schleicher, to refer to the study of the form of words
(Körner 1983). In present‐day linguistics, the term ‘morphology’ refers
to the study of the internal structure of words, and how they are
formed.
Morphological rules account for the formation of new words
and word forms and specify how these newly formed words function
with respect to existing complex words in the lexicon (Booij 2007).
Morphology is therefore crucial for the description of languages and
the theory of grammar.
This chapter is meant to introduce some basic concepts of
morphology to students with a minimal background in linguistics. It
will examine the various structures exhibited by words and the
morphological relationships they bear to each other. The chapter will
also address the nature of the morpheme. It presupposes basic
knowledge of phonetics, phonology, syntax and semantics which is
provided in any introductory course in linguistics. Since morphology is
about the structure of words, the first focus of attention in Section 1.2
is the definition of the concept of ‘word’ itself.

1.2 The lexeme

To begin with, let us consider the example in (1):

(1) {dog, dogs}

10
A question such as “How many words are listed in (1)?” can be given
at least two answers. In one sense there are obviously two words. Yet,
in another sense there is only one word, DOG, for which only one entry
will be found in a dictionary. The plural, dogs, is formed from the
singular form dog by means of a general rule that applies to the vast
majority of English count nouns and there is no need to record the
plural from separately. Moreover, dog can be described as “the singular
form of the word DOG”, and dogs as “the plural form of the word
DOG”. This provides another interpretation for the term “word” that
becomes clear if we consider the word “sheep”. Here the singular form
of the word SHEEP has exactly the same shape as the plural form, even
though these are distinct linguistic entities. Given the peculiarities of
English orthography, this identity of shape can apply to the spoken
form, the written form, or both (as with sheep). Thus, the written shape
of the base form of the verb read is identical to that of the preterite
read, though the two forms differ in terms of pronunciation ([ri:d] vs.
[red]), while the horses, the horse’s (‘of the horse’) and the horses’ (‘of
the horses’) differ solely in spelling.
It is rather useful to have different terms for these different
senses of the word ‘word’. Thus there is a lexeme DOG which has two
word forms, dog and dogs. The names of lexemes are conventionally
written in small capitals. The grammatical description “the singular /
plural of DOG” is a grammatical word. Thus, sheep is one word form
corresponding to one lexeme, but it is two grammatical words (the
singular and the plural of SHEEP).
A lexeme can be thought of as a complex representation linking
a (single) meaning with a set of grammatical words, which are
associated with corresponding word forms. From the point of view of
the dictionary, this is a lexical entry.
If several forms correspond to one meaning we deal with
synonymy: e.g. {boat, boats}, {ship, ships}. If a single form
corresponds to more than one completely unrelated meaning, we deal
with homophony: e.g. {write, right, rite}, or {bank, bank}. The
homophones are then treated as distinct lexemes which just happen to
share the same shape (written and/or spoken). In some cases these
meanings are felt to be related to each other and therefore we deal with
a case of polysemy. For instance, the word head means ‘a body part’,
‘the person in charge of an organization’, a technical term in linguistics
(‘a constituent of an endocentric construction which, if standing alone,
could perform the syntactic function of the whole construction and may
11
govern agreement of grammatical categories, such as person and
number, or occurrence of other constituents’), and these meanings are
associated by some kind of metaphorical extension.
In linguistics a form-meaning pair is a sign and the lexeme is a
prototypical example of sign. Traditionally, the morpheme has been
defined as the smallest meaningful component of a word. This entails
that morphemes can be conceived as signs.

1.3 Word structure and morphological operations

The complexity of word-structure is therefore due to two

morphological operations: inflection and derivation. Both add extra
elements (i.e. affixes) to the root or the stem of a word. Inflection is
generally defined in traditional grammatical theory as a change in the
form of a word, typically by means of an affix that expresses a
grammatical contrast which is obligatory for the stem’s word class in
some given syntactical environment. Inflection thus encompasses the
grammatical markers for number, gender, case, person, determination,
tense, aspect, etc. However, as we shall see later, the issue is more
problematic.
This section briefly addresses three important notions which
will figure later: inflection, whereby word forms are created of lexemes
(such us plural, preterite or possessive construction), derivation, in
which new lexemes are created from old lexemes, and compounding,
whereby a single word is formed by combining two or more distinct
words. The first morphological operation (i.e. inflection) is the province
of inflectional morphology, whereas derivation and compounding
belong to derivational morphology.

1.3.1 Derivational morphology

The main purpose of derivational morphology is to create new words

from old ones. This is achieved through such derivational operations
as prefixation, suffixation and compounding. The input to a derivational
process is called the base and the output the derivate. In an ideal case
the relationship between the base and the derivate is transparent, that is
to say the semantic relationship is compositional. This means that the
meaning of the new word (i.e. the derivative) is derived from the
meaning of its component parts.

12
 However, lexemes tend to shift their meanings over time. This
process is known as lexical drift and it is likely to apply to any lexeme,
whether basic or derived. Compounding provides a simple example.
The most straightforward type of compound consists of two
words concatenated together: morphology + book = morphology book;
house + boat = houseboat. The right-hand element is the head of the
compound, determining the syntactic category and meaning of the
whole phrase: a morphology book is “a type of book”, namely a book
that has something to do with morphology, a houseboat is “a kind of
boat” as opposed to a boathouse which is “a type of house”. The left-
hand element is the modifier. In transparent cases such as morphology
book the meaning is compositional. The term textbook, on the other
hand, is more than just a book which has some relation with a text (or
texts, or text in general), rather it has acquired a more conventionalized
meaning in addition to the meaning that can be deduced from its
components (i.e. ‘book that contains information about a subject that
people study, especially at school or college’). This is the result of the
lexicalization of a compound which at one point could presumably
have been interpreted compositionally. On the other hand, a compound
such as morphology book has not undergone lexicalization. No
conventionalized meaning has been superimposed on the meaning that
can be understood from the meanings of morphology and book.
Consequently, textbook is a lexeme in its own right, whereas
morphology book is not a single separate lexeme, but a compound
resulting from the combination of two lexemes.
In many languages there is an important distinction between
compounds and phrases. If we compare blackbird to black bird, the
former is a compound while, the latter is a phrase. The compound has
stress on black, while the phrase is stressed on bird (in neutral contexts
at least). Moreover, a black bird is necessarily black, whereas a
blackbird is a species of bird not necessarily black (if male birds are
black, female birds are brown). Thus, the semantics of this compound
is non-compositional, i.e. the meaning of the whole cannot be
determined from the components. The semantics of phrases (apart from
idioms) is compositional.

13
(2) (3)

NP N

AP N

A N
A

black bird

black bird

The difference can be illustrated syntactically as in (2) and (3).

Moreover, there is no way of determining the syntactic category of the
modifier in blackbird, because it is fixed as part of the compound and
cannot undergo any morphological and syntactic manipulations that
adjectives can. Compare (4) and (5):

(4) a. a very black bird

b. a blacker bird
c. a bird, black as coal, flew overhead

(5) a. *a very blackbird

b. *a blackerbird
c. *a black-as-coal-bird

Black doesn’t mean “black” in blackbird, since a blackbird doesn’t

actually have to be black, it can be brown as well. Thus, the modifier
black has neither category nor meaning; it is just a bare morphological
shape. Therefore, (3) should be rewritten as (6). The compound
blackbird is a lexicalized compound whose internal structure is only of
historical significance, unlike a non-lexicalized compound such as
morphology book. In time, due to changes in pronunciation the
historical structure may become opaque.

14
(6)

black bird

Husband, for instance, is derived etymologically from house and bond,

its structure as a compound is anything but obvious. Morphological
peculiarities are often retained by defunct compounds even after they
have ceased to be perceived and analyzed as genuine compounds. For
instance, the noun woman was historically a compound (< wife + man)
and its irregular plural 1 represents the last vestiges of this.
Nevertheless, it is no longer treated as a compound in present-day
English.
Noun + noun compounding, however, is a productive process
in present-day English. A derivational process is productive if, in
principle, it applies freely to all the lexemes in a given language,
allowing thus new forms to be created at will. Such processes have to
be semantically regular, without any lexicalized idiosyncrasy of
meaning, or else there would be no way of knowing what a new
coining is supposed to mean (Aronoff and Anshen 1998). The meaning
of such compounds is vague: a morphology book is a book which is
connected to morphology. On the other hand, adjective + noun
compounds are not productive and there are precious few verb + noun
compounds (e.g. swearword, drawbridge).
Moving on to derivation, nouns such as writer, painter, walker
are clearly related to the verbs write, paint and walk respectively,
meaning roughly ‘someone who writes, paints, walks’; these nouns
which are called subject nominals are obtained by attaching the suffix –
er to the verbs write, paint and walk respectively. Thus, derivational
suffixation can change the word class. It is customary to treat write and

1
The plural form women resembles the plural form men more in spelling than in
pronunciation, though.

15
writer as distinct lexemes related by derivation (namely –er
suffixation). The morphological operations whereby derivation is
achieved (e.g. –er affixation) may or may not be regular and
productive. For instance, the verb apply has the subject nominal applic-
ant, with the irregular suffix –ant added to an irregular form of the root,
applic-.

1.3.2 Inflectional morphology

As a verb lexeme, WRITE has its set of grammatical words expressed

by the forms write, writes, writing, wrote, written. Similarly, as a noun
lexeme, WRITER has its own set of grammatical words: writer, writers.
These grammatical words are the inflected forms of the lexeme and the
process of constructing inflected forms is known as inflection, being
the province of inflectional morphology. Inflectional operations are
changes in the word that indicate number, case, gender, person, tense,
aspect, mood, comparison, etc. Inflectional operations do not trigger a
shift in the word class/lexical category of the words to which they are
attached. The meanings of inflected forms are usually predictable (e.g.
plural of nouns, the preterite of verbs, etc.), while the shape of inflected
forms is generally achieved through the affixation of a lexeme to the
stem form. The stem consists of the root and any derivational affixes.
Irregularity, either in the stem or the affix, is not uncommon. Thus, life
has the irregular stem form live- in the plural (lives), while ox has the
irregular plural suffix –en (oxen), whereas child has both irregular stem
form and plural suffix childr-en. Irregularity of form can be complete
as in total suppletion2, when one inflected form is in no way related to
the rest of the paradigm (e.g. went as the preterite of GO). Where there
is still some overlap we deal with partial suppletion (e.g. brought ~
bring, where the first two consonants are identical).
Inflections express grammatical or functional categories.
Inflectional morphology organizes the forms of words systematically in
paradigms. Inflections essentially serve two types of function. As
already mentioned above, inflections signal an aspect of meaning
which is grammaticalized, such as number or tense. Thus, the words
of a given class obligatorily signal the corresponding grammatical

2
Suppletion is defined as a relationship between forms of a word wherein one form
cannot be phonologically or morphologically derived from the other: am – was; go –
went; good – better; bad – worse.

16
distinction. For instance, all English verbs exhibit paradigmatic sets
encompassing grammatical markers for tense and aspect. Tense refers
to anchoring in time, as with wrote (preterite) as opposed to write (non-
preterite – present or future reference). Some languages may
distinguish a number of different tenses (such as recent vs. remote
past), while others may exhibit no system of tenses at all. In English all
verbs have to have a preterite form, even though with some verbs these
are not distinct forms, as is the case of verbs such as cut or put. This
state of affairs is referred to as inherent inflection (Booij 2004). A
very common aspectual distinction is that between completed
(perfective) and non-completed (imperfective) events.
Other types of verb inflection include mood (whether a
statement is presented as fact, possibility, hypothetical situation, etc.)
such the subjunctive mood of Romance languages, the optative
expressing a wish (e.g. Ancient Greek or some Romance languages
such as Romanian), imperative for issuing commands, etc. Some
language groups signal polarity (negation) inflectionally (e.g. Bantu,
Turkic, Athapaskan, etc.). Moreover, a given inflectional morpheme
may signal a complex mixture of grammatical/functional categories,
such as tense, aspect, mood, and polarity (Spencer 1981).
Some functional categories can be signalled not only
morphologically, by inflections, but also syntactically by word order
or function words such as the English aspectual auxiliaries (has been
writing). One purely morphological type of inherent inflection is
inflectional class: declensions for nouns and adjectives and
conjugations for verbs. Which noun or verb goes in which class is
generally arbitrary. Declension and conjugation class is a purely
morphological property which the syntax has no direct access to.
Aronoff (1994) points out that the existence of arbitrary inflectional
classes is one the prime motivations for treating morphology as an
autonomous area of linguistic investigation.
The other role of inflection is to realize the syntactic functions
of agreement and government. This is referred to as contextual
inflection because it is determined by the syntactic context in which the
lexeme is used (Booij 1994). In many languages a verb must agree
with its subject and/or object, by cross-referencing several of their
properties. This occurs only marginally in English for third person non-
past verb forms and more consistently for the verb be: Mary writes vs.
the girls write. Similarly, adjectives often agree with the nouns they
modify. Again, this is extremely marginal in English, only applying to
17
this and that (this/that dog vs, these/those dogs). In other languages,
however, an adjective agrees with its noun in number and gender, and
even in case. On the other hand, in many languages a direct object is in
the accusative. This is an instance of government: a transitive verb
governs the accusative. Likewise, prepositions may govern specific
cases. Again, it is an arbitrary matter which preposition governs which
case.
One of the perennial theoretical problems in morphology is
whether a clear-cut distinction can be drawn between inflection and
derivation. Inflection is often thought to be of relevance to syntax,
which is clearly true of contextual inflection, but less obvious to
inherent inflection. However, it should not be understood that plurals
and past tenses are derivational and therefore create new lexemes.
Booij’s (1994) distinction between contextual and inherent is
designed to ameliorate this problem, though it gives rise to another
problematic issue: the distinction between inherent inflection and
derivation.

1.4 The morpheme

A major way in which morphologists investigate the internal structure

of words and how they are formed is through the identification and
study of morphemes. A morpheme is generally defined as the smallest
linguistic piece with a grammatical function3. A morpheme may consist
of a word, such as dog, or a meaningful piece of a word, such as –ed in
looked, which cannot be defined in smaller meaningful parts. If we
consider the word writers we can easily segment it into its component
parts or morphemes writ-er-s. Moreover, it is clear that each part has its
own meaning which it contributes to the meaning of the whole word:
write means, let’s say, ‘to produce a book, article, poem etc’, -er means
‘a person who performs a specific action’ and –s means ‘plural’. It is
generally claimed that the meaning of the whole word is derived by
adding together the meanings of the component parts, in other words
the meaning is compositional. Perhaps addition is not the best metaphor
for this operation and the notation used for combining meanings is
more similar to multiplication than addition, as shown in (7) below:

3
The term morph is sometimes used to refer to the shape or the phonological
realization of a morpheme.
18
(7)

[[WRITE] PERSON WHO] PLURAL]

write er s

The important thing here is that the three components, writ-, –er, and –s
cannot be broken down further into smaller meaningful units. The three
components we have isolated can be thought of as the indivisible
building blocks of the word. Each of them makes up a pairing of a
pronunciation (or shape, i.e. morph) and a meaning. Thus, they are
signs. A morpheme is generally defined as ‘the smallest indivisible
meaningful unit of a word’.
Let us consider another example: the word reconsideration. It
can be broken into three morphemes: re- , -consider- and –ation.
Consider is called the stem. A stem is a base morpheme to which
another morphological element is attached. The stem can be simple, if
it is made up of only one element, or complex, if it contains more than
one element. Here it is more appropriate to treat consider as a simple
stem. Although it consists historically of more than one element, most
present-day speakers would treat it as an unanalyzable form.
Because in present-day English, speakers view consider as an
unanalyzable form, we can also call consider a root. A root is the core
of the word to which other pieces are attached, namely derivational
elements. A root is the portion of a word that is common to a set of
derived or inflected forms, if any, when all affixes are removed. A root
is not further analyzable into meaningful elements, being
morphologically simple and carries the principle portion of meaning of
the words in which it functions. For example, disagree is the stem of
disagreement, because it is the base to which –ment attaches, but agree
is the root. Taking disagree now, agree is both the stem to which dis-
attaches and the root of the entire word.
Returning now to reconsideration, re- and –ation are both
affixes, which means that they are attached to the stem or the root. An
affix is a bound morpheme that is joined before, after, or within a root
or a stem. The morphological operations whereby an affix is joined to a
root or a stem are derivation and inflection. There are several types of
affixes according to their position in relation to the root or stem.
Affixes like re- are prefixes, since they are joined before a root or
19
stem. Affixes like –ation are suffixes because they are attached to the
end of a root or stem4.
Affixes can be derivational or inflectional. A derivational
affix is an affix by means of which one word is formed (i.e. derived)
from another. The derived word is often of a different word class from
the original. An inflectional affix expresses a grammatical contrast that
is obligatory for its stem’s word class in some given grammatical
context. Unlike a derivational affix, an inflectional affix does not
change the word class of its stem and produces a predictable change of
meaning. An inflectional affix is located farther from its root than a
derivational affix. For instance, the derivational suffixes –er /-or, and –
ation turn verbs into nouns. Additionally, -er / -or create nouns with the
meaning of an agent or instrument (writer, freezer), whereas –ation
creates abstract nouns (animation, consideration) (Baciu 2004a).
Inflectional suffixes, on the other hand, do not trigger a change in
lexical category. Instead, they function as formal markers that delimit
the lexical category of the word. For instance, the inflectional suffix -ed
is attached to the end of the stem walk to form the preterite verb
walked. A stem is the root of a word, together with any derivational
affixes, to which inflectional affixes are added.

1.4.1 Item-and-arrangement morphology and agglutinating

morphology

The traditional account of morphology treats the plural suffix as a type

of sign with its own phonology and semantics, as shown in (8):

(8) - s = </z/, [plural]>

This type of analysis leads us to the conclusion that words have a

hierarchical structure which can be represented as a tree diagram. A
possible structure for writers is given in (9). As the tree diagram in (9)
shows, the grammatical property [plural] is said to percolate from the
suffix to the top of the tree, ensuring that the entire word is interpreted
as a plural.

4
An affix which is inserted within a root or a stem is called an infix (e.g. ‘bloomin’ in
abso-bloomin-lutely).

20
(9)

N [plural]

V N [plural]

write er s

The set of assumptions underlying representations such as (9)

derive from what is called the item-and-arrangement theory (IA for
short), a name coined by the American structuralist linguist, Charles
Hockett. The item-and-arrangement theory assumes that all words
consist of strings of morphemes which are arranged in a particular way
(i.e. morphotactics) and each of these morphemes contributes only one
meaning to the overall meaning of the word. In an ideal morphological
system each morpheme contributes one meaning and each meaning is
associated with only one morpheme (one form – one function) and
thus the meaning of the whole word is obtained from the meanings of
its component morphemes. This process of ‘gluing’ morphemes
together to form a string is known as agglutination and languages
where this type of morphology predominates are called agglutinating
languages (Spencer 2001). For some morphologists, agglutination is a
morphological ideal and the goal is to show that all morphology can be
reduced at some level to the simple process of agglutination. As we
shall see in the next subsection, there are numerous deviations from the
perfectly agglutinating model.

1.4.2 Deviations from agglutination

There are several ways in which morphological systems deviate from

the agglutinating ideal of one form – one function. The first of these is
caused by the fact that a given morpheme may have more than one
shape. This phenomenon is called allomorphy. For instance, the
regular preterite ending has three different phonological realizations
21
depending on the final sound of the verb stem: walk-ed (/t/), call-ed
(/d/), trot-ed (/əd/, where /ə/ is the schwa or reduced vowel). This
variation is called allomorphy and /t, d, əd/ are the three allomorphs of
the preterite morpheme in English. In this case the allomorphy depends
solely on the phonology of the stem: /əd/ after /t, d/, /t/ after a voiceless
consonant other than /t/, /d/ elsewhere. Other cases of allomorphy may
be irregular. For instance, while mend and pen have regular preterite
forms, mended and penned, observing thus the rules for regular
allomorphy previously mentioned, the verb bend takes an unexpected
/t/ inflection which is added to an irregular form of the stem lacking the
final –d: ben-t. Thus, both stem and suffix show irregular allomorphy.
Other operations cannot be easily analyzed as the addition of a
meaningful element but rather take the form of a phonological process.
For instance, certain irregular verbs in English form their preterite by
changing the vowel of the root. Sing, run, drive, read, write turn into
sang, ran, drove, read and wrote in the preterite. This process is called
ablaut or apophony. It is very difficult to represent this in terms of the
addition of an affix to root or stem. The same is applicable to some
English nouns that form their plural by changing their medial vowel:
man – men, woman – women, tooth – teeth, etc.

1.4.2.1 One morph, two meanings

This section examines the deviations from the idealization that one
form corresponds to one meaning. One morph may have more than one
meaning/function as with –s in cat-s (noun) and steal-s (verb). In the
former –s signals PLURAL, while in the latter it signals 3RD PERSON
SINGULAR.

1.4.2.2 Null morphemes

Notice that there is no inflection in the plural of such English nouns as

sheep, deer, salmon, trout, species, series, works, gallows, etc. These
plural forms are identical with their singular counterparts (i.e. sheep,
deer, salmon, trout, species, series, works, gallows, etc). In a
morpheme-based theory this property is signalled by a null or zero
morpheme: sheep (sg.) ~ sheep-Ø (pl.). Similarly, in derivation there
are cases of conversion in which a word belonging basically to one
word class (such as the noun chair or the verbs walk) is used in another

22
class (the verb to chair, the noun a walk). Given agglutination, this
would have to be handled by assuming a null morpheme.

1.4.2.3 Intermorphs and cranberry morphemes

Morphologists have identified two types of meaningless morphs in

English. One type includes the –o- element in ‘neo-classical’
compounds such as electr-o-lyte, cyt-o-plasm, physic-o-logy, erithr-o-
cyte, etc. This meaningless –o- element is often referred to as an
intermorph. The other type includes the so-called cranberry morph5.
Words such as blueberry, blackberry, cloudberry, cranberry are
compounds of berry and designate types of berry, but what does “cran”
mean? More subtly, we have seen that “black” in blackbird does not
designate the colour black, and, strictly speaking, does not have any
meaning, since some of the birds referred to as blackbirds are not
black. Aronoff (1976:10) argues that there are cranberry morphs in
English which have morphological properties (for instance, they evince
allomorphy) and therefore these cranberry morphs have to be regarded
as morphemes. Thus, a verb such as understand is derived
morphologically from the prefix under- (as in underwrite, undertake,
undermine, etc.) and stand (as in withstand). This is obvious because
they show the same irregularity in the preterite as the base verb
(understood, withstood). However, neither the prefix nor the base
preserves its meaning, or any meaning.
Cranberries are the most often cited examples of meaningless
morphs. However, as Aronoff (1976) points out, this phenomenon is
actually more widespread and subtle. The adjectives listed in (10)
illustrate a case in which a morpheme can be said to be meaningful
only if we use “meaning” in quite loose sense.

5
Some morphologists argue that it is a contradiction in terms to speak of a morpheme
without a meaning since by definition a morpheme is a pairing of a pronunciation (or
shape, i.e. morph) and a meaning. Thus, such linguists talk of cranberry morphs, but
not of cranberry morphemes. However, from the point of view of word structure there
is nothing wrong with the idea of a morph(eme) with no semantic or grammatical
contribution to make but whose only role is to help glue the rest of the word together,
or to help distinguish one word from another.

23
(10)

Noun Adjective

morphology morphological morphological theory

phonology phonological phonological theory
navy naval naval uniform
poetry poetic poetic licence
nerve nervous nervous system

The adjectives in (10) differ from ordinary adjectives ending in the

same suffix such as topical, sympathetic, or adventurous, to the extent
to which they do not express qualities or properties and therefore they
cannot be modified by intensifiers such as very, for instance.

(11)

(i) a very topical article

a very unsympathetic remark
a highly adventurous project

(ii) *a very morphological theory

*a very naval uniform
*a highly nervous system

The reason is that the adjectives in (10) behave very much like the
basic nouns but are used in contexts where an adjective is needed, i.e.
to modify a noun. Indeed, in a number of cases such phrases can be
replaced with compounds: morphology theory, navy uniform, or more
technically nerve system. Thus, the morphological operation of
derivation which creates such adjectives changes the form class (i.e. the
part of speech) of the word but does not add any element of meaning to
the base. Thus, strictly speaking the derivational morphemes in (10)
can be viewed as cranberry suffixes. This type of category-shifting
morphology is also referred to as transposition.

24
1.5 The structure of the lexeme and paradigms

1.5.1 Grammatical words and syncretism

Section 1.2 introduced the notion of lexeme. It has been argues that a
lexeme is an abstract element indicating (i) the pronunciation, (ii)
syntactic properties and (iii) the meaning of a word, as shown in (12):

(12)

Phonology /kæt/
Syntax Noun
Semantics CAT

In the simplest cases, a lexeme has a single root, with a single

phonological and morphological form, it belongs to a single class (for
instance, it is either a noun, or a verb, or an adjective, etc) and it has a
single meaning. In that case the lexeme is also a morpheme in the
classical sense and is generally called a monomorphemic lexeme. On
the other hand, a lexeme may be derived from another lexeme by some
morphological operation such as affixation. For instance, re-read is
identical with read with respect to its phonological and morphological
idiosyncrasies, but with an additional component of meaning provided
by the prefix re- ‘again’. Re-read is an example of a polymorphemic,
complex or derived lexeme (Spencer 2003).
The aim of this section is to highlight the peculiarities that arise
when inflections are considered. We have already seen that one can
distinguish word forms of lexemes, so that walks is a form of the
lexeme WALK. However, there is a finer distinction that can be made.
Walks can be regarded either as the 3nd person singular form of the
verb WALK, or the plural of the noun WALK, as shown in (13):

(13) a. John walks to school every day.

b. The local tourist office organises a number of guided walks

Whether or not the noun and the verb are different lexemes, the
example illustrates a situation in which a single word form can be given
two distinct grammatical descriptions. In other words, the form walks
represents two distinct words, consisting of a form plus its appropriate
lexical and grammatical description, as in (14)
25
(14) walks {3sg, [VWALK]}, {PL, [NWALK]

A more subtle example is illustrated in (15):

(15) a. Tom climbed the hill

b. Tom has climbed the hill
c. The hill has been climbed by Tom

The verb climbed in example (15a) is a preterite form, climbed in (15b)

is a past participle form, whereas climbed in (15c) is a passive
participle form. These are homophonous for regular verbs like CLIMB.
However, other verbs distinguish the (b/c) forms from the (a) forms.
Consider the corresponding forms of the lexeme SWIM:

(16) a. Tom swam the Channel

b. Tom has swum the Channel
c. The Channel has been swum by Tom

Similarly, (a) forms can be distinguished from (b/c) forms, as shown in

(17):

(17) a. He showed his ticket to the woman at the entrance

b. He has shown his ticket to the woman at the entrance
c. His ticket has been shown to the woman at the entrance

For an important class of verbs the preterite and participle forms are
distinct. For the majority of verbs, however, these forms are identical.
This means that the form climbed in (15) can be regarded as
systematically ambiguous as shown in (18):

(18) climbed {preterite, [VCLIMB]}, {past/passive participle,

[VCLIMB]}

Thus climbed represents two distinct grammatical words. Systematic

homophony of this kind is called syncretism.

26
1.5.2 Paradigms

In the previous subsection inflections have been discussed in a rather

concrete fashion by considering examples of grammatical words of
specific lexemes. However, the whole point of inflectional morphology
is that the same patterns of inflections are found with whole sets of
lexemes. Thus, there are thousands of verbs like climb, all taking the
same set of inflections. On the other hand, not all English verbs behave
in exactly the same way. Compare the forms of these two verbs given
in (19). Notice that the preterite and past/passive participle forms are
identical, i.e. syncretic, for CLIMB. The two sets of inflections given in
(19) illustrate two distinct, but overlapping paradigms. The paradigm
for the lexeme CLIMB is valid for all regular verbs, that for SWIM is
found with a handful of verbs, such as drink, run, sing. It turns out that
the present participle and 3rd person singular forms have the same
ending for all lexical verbs, no matter how irregular they might be
(provided we allow that such forms as is and has have an ending -s).

(19)

Base form climb swim

Present participle climb-ing swimm-ing
3rd person singular climb-s swim-s
Preterite climb-ed swam
Past/passive participle climb-ed swum

Ignoring the differences for the moment we can group these two
paradigms so as to make a single paradigm for verbs, but with variation
in some parts of the paradigm for various classes of verbs. Verbs like
climb are referred to as regular, while verbs such as swim are said to
belong in the ‘swim’-class. A paradigm for an English verb can be
viewed as a set of slots each having a grammatical description, as given
in the table in (19). Given any regular verb, we automatically know
what forms will fill all five slots in (19) and we also know that the last
two slots will be filled in by identical forms, i.e. that preterite and
past/passive participle forms are syncretic. For irregular verbs the
forms for first three forms can be predicted, but not the last two.
However, not all irregular English verbs belong in the ‘swim’-
class. The table in (20) lists a few more examples of the two hundred or
so English irregular verbs. Thus, neither the climb paradigm nor the
27
swim paradigm will provide us with the right answer if we want to form
preterite and past/passive participle forms of these verbs. There are two
solutions to this problem One is to group the irregular verbs into
distinct subclasses of verbs, each subclasses with its own paradigm.
The other solution relies on the notion of lexical entry6. A lexical entry
for a lexeme excludes all the information that is predictable. Thus, the
lexical entry for a regular verb such as CLIMB has to indicate the shape
of the base form.

(20)

Base form buy drive cut

Present buying driving cutting
participle
3rd person buys drives cuts
singular

Preterite bought drove cut

Past/passive bought driven cut

participle

On the other hand, because we cannot predict the preterite and

past/passive participle forms for an irregular verb such as SWIM, these
forms have to be recorded in the lexical entry. An additional,
morphological level to the lexeme will have to supply such
information. The entry for SWIM will therefore look as in (21). The
lexical entry in (21) incorporates the part of the paradigm which cannot
be predicted from general principles.

6
In a good dictionary a lexical entry consists of a word in its basic form together with
an indication of the pronunciation, information regarding its word class (whether it a
noun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, etc.) and its meaning. It is usual to omit
any information which the user already knows. For instance, in an English dictionary
users are not told that the plural form of dog is dogs, because the noun is perfectly
regular and knowing the plural of a regular noun is part of knowing the grammar of
the language.

28
(21) SWIM

Phonology /swim/
Syntax intransitive verb
Semantics SWIM
Morphology preterite swam
Past/passive participle swum

The concept of paradigm allows us to approach the structure of

the lexeme from a different perspective. Rather than saying that
climbed consists of two meaningful elements (i.e. morphemes) which
are combined, it can be argued that climbed means ‘preterite/past
participle of CLIMB’ as a result of occupying specific slots in the
paradigm of the verb. Thus, the rules of English inflection can be
thought of as providing the paradigm template for verbs, as shown in
(22):

(22)

Base form V
Present participle V-ing
3rd person singular V-s
Preterite V-ed
Past/passive participle V-ed

On this view, -ed is not a lexical entry in its own right, with its own
semantics and phonology, but it is simply the way a particular slot in a
paradigm is realized (Spencer 2001).

1.5.3 The derivation of lexemes

Section 1.2 has shown how derivational morphology gives rise to

varying degrees of semantic transparency. To a certain extent the same
can be argued of another derivational operation, namely suffixation.
The examples in (23) illustrate instances of fully transparent
compositional derivation:

(23) cat-like
elephant-like
lion-like
29
ape-like

These all mean roughly “like a typical X” where X = {cat, elephant,

lion, ape, ....}. Such forms are called similitudinal adjectives. This
derivation is highly productive, in that X can be anything: speakers can
understand and use a coinage like iguana-like without ever having
heard it before. This type of suffixation is so transparent that it
resembles compounding.
Now consider the examples in (24) and contrast them with those
in (23):

(24)

a. cat catty cat + y

b. elephant elephantine elephant + ine
c. lion lionize lion + ize
d. ape to ape
The examples in (24) illustrate the least transparent type of derivations.
The suffix in (24a-c) simply fulfils the function of indicating the word
class but little else. Moreover, the base hardly makes any semantic
contribution, apart from some kind of metaphorical extension based on
observations or on some prejudices about the various animals.
Similarly, although the adjectives in (24a-b) can also be viewed as
similitudinal adjectives, they are not compositionally derived from their
bases. The base has lost its meaning and functions like the cranberry
morpheme stand in understand.
Most of derivational morphology is similar to that of (23).
Consider some more examples in (25):

(25)

hope hopeless
drive driver

In (25) there is an obvious transparent relationship between the base

and the derivate, since hopeless means ‘without hope’ and driver means
‘one who drives’. Thus, the meaning of the base plays an important role
in the meaning of the derivate.
However, on closer examination we encounter instances of less
transparent derivational morphology very similar to that of (24). For
30
instance, the meaning ‘without hope’ is not true for all uses of the
adjective hopeless. In a sentence such as I wouldn’t pick him for the
job, he’s hopeless, hopeless is equivalent to ‘bad’ or ‘unsuitable’. He
himself is not necessarily without hope in the literal sense. Similarly,
the word driver is subject to lexical drift. A driver is a type of golf club
with a wooden head, or a piece of software that makes a computer work
with another piece of equipment such as a printer or a mouse. Such
cases are very frequent and it turns out that there is a cline of
transparency running from compositionally derived forms such as cat-
like to hopeless to catty to cranberry morphemes such under in
understand.

1.5.4 Lexical relatedness

Transparent derivational morphology defines a network of relatedness

among lexemes in which morphological relatedness goes hand in hand
with semantic relatedness. Another type of relatedness is mediated
solely through semantics, without any morphological relatedness. For
instance, there are similitudinal adjectives which mean “like X” (where
X is a noun) but which are not morphologically derived from the
corresponding noun: e.g. infantile (= “like an infant”), or puerile (=
“like a child”). In section 1.3 writer was mentioned as an example of a
subject nominalization. Although this is a very productive formation,
not all verbs permit it. The subject nominal corresponding to the verb
fly, as in “fly a plane (professionally)” is an entirely different word,
pilot. Although the word exists for other uses of the verb fly, one
wouldn’t say for instance *John was the flier of that Boeing 747. This
state of affairs is referred to as derivational suppletion.
Another type of relatedness is illustrated by systematic
polysemy, i.e. two different lexemes having the same form, as in (26):

(26) a. John rang the bell.

b. The bell rang.

The alternation shown in (26) is referred to variously as inchoative,

causative or anti-causative. Most linguists would probably say that
there are two distinct, though related, RING lexemes here. In some
languages such usages are conveyed morphologically by what is
generally considered derivational morphology. It should be noticed that
the verb retains all its morphological properties in both usages, so there
31
is no conversion or affixless derivation in the normal sense. Rather we
are dealing with two closely related lexemes that share the same word
form.
One may wish to mention the case of denominal verbs formed
by conversion (though deverbal nouns, such as a bite, a break, a
broadcast are cases in point as well). Verbs such as to saddle a horse,
to shelve books, to skin a rabbit, to paper a wall are clearly derived
from nouns, but without any overt morphology. This creates new
lexemes and thus constitutes a derivational relation. However, it is not
clear whether such forms can be regarded as illustrating a type of
derivation which happens not to involve morphology or a subtype of
systematic polysemy.
Finally, as I have pointed out in section 1.3 both the prefix and
the base of understand are cranberries. This is the fifth type of
derivation in which there is clear morphological relatedness but no
semantic connection. This phenomenon is referred to as asemantic
relatedness.
To sum up, lexemes can be related to each other by (i)
morphology which induces a compositional meaning change; (ii)
systematic meaning relation which is not matched by any formal
relatedness (suppletive derivation); (iii) systematic meaning relation
between different meanings associated with the same form (systematic
polysemy); and (iv) purely in terms of shape, asemantic relatedness. It
should be pointed out, however, that the extremes define a space within
which word relatedness can vary. Thus, catty can be interpreted as an
instance of derivation with respect to the suffix, or as an instance of
asemantic relatedness with respect to the base.

1.5.5 Mixed categories

This section focuses on a set of cases which assume a borderline

position. Participles illustrate a very common form of verb-to-adjective
transposition. They are adjectival forms associated with verb lexemes,
often marked for tense, aspect or voice, but not adding any lexical
meaning and therefore considered inflectional forms. Examples in
English include present and past/passive participles such as running
water or a snatched/stolen kiss. In many languages it is particularly
obvious that participles behave as adjectives since they not only modify
nouns but also agree with them in number, gender and case. On the
other hand, participles take the same set of complements as their base
32
verb. Such forms displaying this Janus-like behaviour are often referred
to as mixed categories. Deverbal nominalizations provide further
instances. Thus, in Tom’s writing the letter (would be surprising) the
nominal writing expresses an object in the manner of a verb (cf. Tom
wrote the letter) but expresses its subject in the manner of a noun (cf.
Tom’s letter). This type of morphology altering only half of the
category raises a variety of theoretical questions and deverbal
nominalizations have been the subject of study by both morphologists
and syntacticians.

1.5.6 Complex predicates

In recent years, considerable research has been conducted to investigate

the mismatch between the number of lexemes and the number of
syntactically realized word forms. Such constructions are often referred
to as complex predicates. This term broadly applies to two types of
phenomenon: (1) one phonological, syntactic word form corresponds to
two lexemes and (2) two phonological, syntactic word forms
correspond to one lexeme. In what follows, the second type of complex
predicate will briefly discussed and illustrated, since English does not
provide examples illustrating the first type.
Common examples of type (2) complex predicates are provided
by English phrasal verbs such as turn off. In John turned the light off,
turn off make up a single lexeme with the meaning “extinguish”
although the two components can be separated by the direct object of
the verb. Generally, the meaning of a phrasal verb is not compositional,
i.e. it cannot be predicted from the meaning of its components (e.g.
Low temperatures will slow the process up/down).

1.6 Morphology and the lexicon

The set of lexemes of a language includes two subsets: simplex

lexemes and complex lexemes. The lexicon lists only those lexemes
which are established, conventionalized units. For example a complex
lexeme like ELEVENISH, although it is a well-formed lexeme of
English, is not listed in the lexicon since no conventionalization is
involved.
For each word the lexicon specifies its phonological form, its
morphological and syntactic properties, and its meaning. The basic

33
structure of lexical entries for the lexemes write and writer is given in
(27):

(27) /raɪt / /ˈraɪtər/

[x]V [[x]V er]N

WRITE ACTIVITY PERSON PERFORMING WRITEACTIVITY

The first line in these lexical entries specifies the phonological form of
these lexemes, while the second line specifies categorial information,
and internal morphological structure of the words. On the third line, the
meaning of the lexeme is specified. The subscript ACTIVITY specifies
the type of event expressed by this verb. Thus, a lexical entry expresses
“a correspondence between phonological, syntactic, and semantic
pieces of information, just like morphological rules or templates, which
do the same at a more abstract level, in a generalized fashion, with
variables taking the place of the individual properties of lexemes”
(Booij 2007:17).
In general, complex words are derived by one of the available
word‐formation processes of a language. Once a complex word has
been formed, it may get established as a word of the language if it is
used by more than one speaker, in various contexts and if speakers
recognize it as a word they have previously come across. In all
European languages, the number of established complex words is much
higher than the number of simplex words. Thus, one of the basic
functions of morphology is to expand the set of available words.
The established words of a language function as the lexical
norm or lexical convention of that language. Consequently,
established words may have a blocking effect on the creation of new
words. For instance, cash dispenser in BrE and its AmE counterpart,
automatic teller machine (ATM) function as a lexical norm in the
respective variety and block the compound money machine for the
device used for drawing money from one’s bank account. It does not
mean that money machine is an ill‐formed word, only that its use might
not be appropriate.
When a possible word has become an established word, it is
lexicalized. An important effect of lexicalization of complex words is
that if one of its constituent words may get lost, the complex word still
survives.

34
 The term ‘lexicalization’ is also used when established words
evince idiosyncratic, unpredictable, properties. The meaning
of honeymoon is a case in point. This compound is listed in the lexicon
since its meaning is not predictable on the basis of the meanings of its
constituent lexemes honey and moon. However, the reverse is not
necessarily true. A complex word with fully predictable properties may
be listed in the lexicon only because it belongs to the lexical norm.
The ‘lexicon’ can be defined as the repository of all information
concerning the established words and other established expressions of a
language. It is an abstract linguistic entity, distinct from the
notion dictionary, the latter referring to practical sources of lexical
information. A dictionary will never provide a full coverage of the
lexicon due to practical limitations of size and requirements of
user‐friendliness, and because the lexicon is expanding and changing
daily.
Morphological derivational patterns that are systematically
applied are called productive. The derivation of nouns ending in
‐er from verbs is a productive pattern in English, whereas the
derivation of nouns in ‐th from adjectives is not: it is hard to expand the
set of words of this type such as depth, health, length, strength,
and wealth. The productive pattern for coining a new English noun on
the basis of an adjective implies the use of the suffixes ‐ness or ‐ity.
In addition to the morphological system of a language, other
sources for expanding the set of complex words include borrowing,
phrases becoming words, and word creation.
Like other European, English has borrowed many words from
Greek and Latin, often with French as the intermediary language. The
Latin origin is easily recognizable in verbs such as deduce, produce,
reduce or reproduce. Their counterparts in other European languages
have led to a pan‐European lexicon.
A second non‐morphological source of complex words is
the univerbation (“becoming a word”) of phrases. Phrases may
lexicalize into words, and thus lead to complex words. Examples from
English include nouns such as forget‐me‐not, jack‐in‐the‐box or
adjectives such as dyed‐in‐the‐wool, down‐at‐heel, over‐the‐top.
Language users may also make new words by means of word
creation (or word manufacturing). The following types of word
creation can be distinguished:

35
- blends: combinations of the first part of a word with the second part
of another - e.g. brunch < breakfast + lunch; stagflation < stagnation +
inflation;
- acronyms: combinations of the first letters of the name of an entity
such as an organization – NATO < North Atlantic Treaty Organization
- alphabetisms: combination of the first letters of words, pronounced
with the phonetic value of these letters in the alphabet – e.g.
English CD “compact disc”, SMS “Short Message Service”;
- clippings: one or more syllables of a word – e.g. mike < microphone,
demo < demonstration;
- echo‐word‐formation: a kind of reduplication, as in English zigzag,
chitchat

A characteristic feature of word creation is that it makes use of

reduction for the creation of new words. Consequently, the meaning of
the new word lacks semantic transparency since it cannot be derived
from its form straightforwardly. To take the example of blending, for
instance, the meaning of stagflation cannot be fully recoverable from
the constituent parts (stag‐ and ‐flation) when the word is heard or read
for the first time.
Word creation, thus, differs from word‐formation in the strictly
morphological sense. In word-formation the meaning of the newly
created word is recoverable from that of its constituents. However, at a
more abstract level, one can detect some similarities between word-
formation and word-creation to the extent to which both are based on
patterns of paradigmatic relationships between sets of words.

1.7 On the borderland between morphology and syntax: clitics

This section focuses on cases that inhabit a sort of borderland between

morphology and syntax and, for that reason, it is difficult to determine
what belongs to morphology and what belongs to syntax. One of these
borderland phenomena is something that linguists call a clitic.
Clitics are of interest both to syntacticians and to morphologists
precisely because they have characteristics both of bound morphemes
and of syntactic units. Like bound morphemes, they cannot stand on
their own. However, they also differ from affixes. Unlike morphemes,
they are typically unselective of their hosts and have their own
independent functions in syntactic phrases.

36
 In terms of their phonology, they do not bear stress, and they
form a single phonological word with a neighboring word, which we
will call the host of the clitic. One characteristic feature of clitics is that
they are not as closely bound to their host as inflectional affixes are.
More often than not, they are not very selective about the category of
their hosts. Those clitics that come before their hosts are called
proclitics, those that come after their hosts enclitics. Linguists
generally distinguish between simple clitics and special clitics.
Anderson (2005: 10) defines simple clitics as “unaccented variants of
free morphemes, which may be phonologically reduced and
subordinated to a neighboring word. In terms of their syntax, though,
they appear in the same position as one that can be occupied by the
corresponding free word.”
In English, forms like -ll or -d, as in the sentences in (28), are
simple clitics:

(28) a. I’ll take the cheesecake, please.

b. I’d like the cheesecake, please.
In the sentences in (28), -ll and -d are contracted forms of the
auxiliaries will and would, and they occur just where the independent
words would occur – following the subject I and before the main verb.
Like affixes, they are pronounced as part of the preceding word. Unlike
affixes, they do not select a specific category of base and change its
category or add grammatical information to it. Contracted forms like -ll
or -d in English will attach to any sort of word that precedes them,
regardless of category:
(29) a. The kid over there’ll take a cheesecake.
b. No one I know’d want a cheesecake.
In (29a) -ll is cliticized to the adverb there, and in (29b) -d is cliticized
to the verb know.

1.8 The interface between morphology and phonology

Phonology is a branch of linguistics concerned with the systematic
organization of sounds in languages: what sounds exist in a language,
how those sounds combine with each other into syllables and words,

37
and how the prosody (stress, accent, tone, and so on) of a language
works.
Phonology interacts with morphology in a number of ways:
morphemes may have two or more different phonological forms whose
appearance may be completely or at least partly predictable. Some
phonological rules apply when two or more morphemes are joined
together. In some languages morphemes display different phonological
behavior depending on whether they are native to the language or
borrowed into it from some other language.
This section explores two phenomena at the intersection
between morphology and phonology: (i) the allomorphs that some
morphemes exhibit; (ii) the analysis of phonologically predictable and
unpredictable allomorphy. The analysis will focus on the interface
between phonology and morphology in English. However, a few
examples from other languages will also be considered to illustrate
issues that English does not exhibit.

1.8 .1 Allomorphs
Allomorphs are phonologically distinct variants of the same
morpheme. By phonologically distinct, it is meant that they have
similar but not identical sounds. Their status as variants of the same
morpheme means that these slightly different-sounding sets of forms
share the same meaning or function. For example, the negative prefix
in- in English is often pronounced [in] (as in intolerable), but it is also
sometimes realized as im- or il- (as in impossible, illegal). Since all of
these forms still mean ‘negative’, and they all attach to adjectives in the
same way, they are analyzed as the allomorphs of the negative prefix.
Another example is the preterite of regular verbs in English. Although
the preterite suffix in English is always spelled -ed, it is sometimes
pronounced [t] (packed), sometimes [d] (bagged), sometimes [əd]
(waited)7. Still all three phonological variants still designate the past
tense.
As it will be shown below, in many cases, the allomorph is
phonologically predictable; sometimes, however, which allomorph
appears with a particular base is unpredictable. For example, it is
usually possible to predict the form of the regular allomorphs of the

7
Or [id] in some dialects.

38
English preterite morpheme, but there are quite a few verbs whose
preterite past tenses is irregular (for example, sang, flew, bought).

1.8.1.1 Predictable allomorphy

The allomorphs of the English negative prefix in- clearly illustrate
cases of predictable allomorphy. As the examples in (30a) show, it
frequently has the form in-. However, sometimes it is realized as im-,
il-, or ir-, as the examples in (30b) and (30c) show. And if you think
about sound rather than spelling, it can also be pronounced [ɪŋ-], as the
examples in (30d) show:
(30) a. inalienable
intolerable
indecent

b. impossible
c. illegal
irregular

d. incongruous [ɪŋkaŋgɹuəs]
incoherent [ɪŋkohiɹənt]

The various allomorphs of the negative prefix in- in English are quite
regular, in the sense that we can predict exactly where each variant will
occur.Which allomorph occurs depends on the initial sound of the base
word. For vowel-initial words, like alienable, the [ɪn-] variant appears.
It appears as well on words that begin with the alveolar consonants [t,
d, s, z, n]. On words that begin with a labial consonant like [p], the
variant [ɪm-] appears. Words that begin with [l] or [r] are prefixed with
the [ɪl-] or [ɪr-] allomorphs respectively, and words that begin with a
velar consonant [k], are prefixed with the [ɪŋ-] variant. It should be
pointed out, however, that the predictability of these allomorphs makes
perfect sense phonetically. The nasal consonant of the prefix matches at
least the point of articulation of the consonant beginning its base, and if
that consonant is a liquid [l,r] it matches that consonant exactly. This
allomorphy is the result of a process called assimilation8.

8
Generally speaking, assimilation occurs when sounds come to be more like each
other in terms of some aspect of their pronunciation.

39
 Phonologists assume that native speakers of a language have a
single basic mental representation for each morpheme. Regular
allomorphs are derived from the underlying representation using
phonological rules. For example, since the English negative prefix in-
is pronounded [ɪn] both before alveolar-initial bases (tolerable, decent)
and before vowel-initial bases (alienable), whereas the other
allomoprhs are only pronounced before specific consonant-initial bases,
phonologists assume that our mental representation of in- is [ɪn] rather
than [ɪr], [ɪl], or [ɪŋ]; often (but not always, as we will see below) the
underlying form of a morpheme is the form that has the widest surface
distribution.
Another example of a predictable form of allomorphy is the
formation of the preterite of the so-called regular verbs in English. In
section 1.5.2 the English preterite was considered in the context of
figuring out what the mental lexicon looks like. In what follows, its
formation will be considered in somewhat more detail. The data in (31)
show two of the three allomorphs of the regular past tense:

(31) a. Verbs whose preterite is pronounced [t]

slap, laugh, unearth, kiss, wish, watch, walk
b. Verbs whose preterite is pronounced [d]
rub, weave, bathe, buzz, judge, snag, frame, can, bang, lasso, shimmy
The preterite of regula verbs in English illustrates a different sort of
assimilation, called voicing assimilation where sounds become voiced
or voiceless depending on the voicing of neighboring sounds. The verbs
that take the past tense allomorph [t] all end in voiceless consonants: [p,
f, θ, s, ʃ, ʧ, k]. Those that take the [d] allomorph, all end either in a
voiced consonant [b, v, ð, z, ʤ, g, m, n, ŋ] or in a vowel (and all vowels
are voiced, of course). Why just this distribution? Clearly, the preterite
morpheme has come to match the voicing of the final segment of the
verb base: verbs whose last segment is voiceless take the voiceless
variant. There is one allomorph of the preterite that has not been
covered yet. Consider what happens if the verb base ends in either [t] or
[d]:

40
(32) Verbs whose preterite is pronounced [əd]
defeat, bond
The example in (32) illustrates the process of dissimilation.
Dissimilation is a phonological process which makes sounds less like
each other. A schwa separates the [t] or [d] of the preterite from the
matching consonant at the end of the verb. Again, this makes perfect
sense phonetically; if the [t] or [d] allomorph were used, it would be
indistinguishable from the final consonant of the verb root.
What is the underlying form of the preterite morpheme in
English? It is generally assumed that the allomorph with the widest
distribution is the underlying form. However, there is another criterion
that should be considered as well. Phonologists typically assume that
the underlying form of a morpheme is the form from which all of the
other allomorphs can be derived using the simplest possible set of rules.
In this case, the allomorph [d] has the widest distribution, because it
occurs with all voiced consonants except [d], and with all vowel-final
verb stems. Thus, if [d] is assumed to be the underlying form of the
preterite of regular verbs, the following two rules are needed to derive
the other allomorphs:

(33) The Preterite Rule

a. If the verb stem ends in [t] or [d] (the alveolar stops), insert [ə]
before the past tense morpheme (e.g. defeated [dəfit + d] →
[dəfit + əd]).
b. Assimilate [d] to the voicing of an immediately preceding consonant
(e.g., licked [lɪk + d] → [lɪk + t]).
A third example of regular and predictable allomorphy comes
from Turkish. In Turkish, virtually every morpheme, derivational and
inflectional alike, has more than one allomorph. For example, the plural
morpheme has the allomorphs -ler and -lar, and the genitive suffix has
the allomorphs -in, -un, -ɩn, and -ün. The reason for this is that Turkish
displays a process of vowel harmony whereby all non-high vowels in a
word have to agree in backness, and all high vowels in both backness
and roundness. When suffixes are added to a base, they must agree in
41
the relevant vowel characteristics with the preceding vowels of the
base:

(34)
‘hand’ ‘measure’ ‘evening’ ‘fear’
Abs. pl. el-ler ölçü-ler akşam-lar korku-lar
Gen. sg. el-in ölçü-n-ün akşam-ɩn korku-n-un
Lewis (1967: 29ff)
Since the roots of the nouns el ‘hand’ and ölçü ‘measure’ have front
vowels, the plural suffix must agree with them in frontness, so the -ler
allomorph appears. On the other hand, akşam ‘evening’ and korku
‘fear’ have back vowels, and the -lar allomorph appears. Since the
genitive ending has a high vowel, the vowel harmony is more
complicated. If the noun root consists of vowels that are front and non-
round, we find the genitive allomorph with a front, non-round vowel,
that is, -in. Similarly, if the root contains front, round vowels, so does
the suffix; so ölçü gets the front round allomorph -ün. Roots with back
non-round vowels like akşam take the -ɩn allomorph, and roots with
back round vowels like korku take the –un allomorph.
Part of the rule of vowel harmony in Turkish might then predict
that a non-high vowel in a suffix comes to match the backness of the
vowels in a root that precedes it Lewis (1967).

1.8.1.2 Unpredictable or partially predictable allomorphy

As it has been shown in the previous section, some allomorphy is
regular enough to be captured by phonological rules. But not all
allomorphy is regular and therefore predictable. A case in point is the
preterite of the so-called irregular verbs in English. Every native
speaker or student of English knows that there are also quite a few
verbs that do not form the preterite by adding the suffix -ed. Consider
Table 1.1, which gives a selection of examples.

42
 Infinitive Preterite of Pattern
irregular verbs
1 burn burnt devoicing of suffix
2 keep kept vowel shortening
3 hit hit no change
4 feel felt vowel shortening with devoicing
of suffix
5 bleed bled vowel shortening and no suffix
6 leave left devoicing of stem consonant
7 sing sang vowel ablaut (ɪ ~ æ)
8 win won vowel ablaut (ɪ ~ ʌ)
9 fight fought vowel ablaut (ai ~ ɔ)
10 come came vowel ablaut (ʌ ~ e)

Table 1.1 Allomorphy of the preterite of irregular verbs in English

(based on Huddleston and Pullum 2002)
It has been suggested that irregular preterite allomorphs are simply
stored in the mental lexicon, and not derived by rules. So speakers of
English have a lexical entry for the verb root sing, and along with it an
associated entry for the preterite sang. However, things may be so
clear-cut. In an experiment a number of native speakers of English
were asked to form the preterite of the hypothetical verb gling. A
significant number of them offered either glang or glung. Since this is
not a real verb, clearly they do not have a preterite form stored for it.
Rather, they must have been relying on some sort of pattern to create
these forms. In English there happen to be quite a few verbs whose
present and preterite forms show the same ɪ ~ æ alternation as sing or
the ɪ ~ ʌ alternation of win. There appears to be an abstract pattern that
speakers are tapping into here that relates a present tense with [ɪ] to a
past tense with [æ] or [ʌ] if the verb ends in a nasal or a nasal plus
some other consonant (for example, like swim, ring, sting, win, stink).
The example of unpredictable allomorphy we have considered so far
concerns English inflection. Unpredictable allomorphy also applies to
derivation. Consider the forms in (35):

(35)
a. designate [dɛzɪgneɪt] designation [dɛzɪgne ʃ + ʌn]
b. unionize [junjənaɪz] unionization [junjənaɪz + eɪʃʌn]
43
c. prosecute [pɹɑsəkjut] prosecution [pɹɑsəkjuʃ + ʌn]
d. resolve [ɹəzɑlv] resolution [ɹɛzəl + u ʃʌn]
e. expedite [ɛkspədaɪt] expedition [ɛkspəd ɪ + ʃʌn]
f. define [dəfɑɪn] definition [dɛfən + ɪʃʌn]
g. absorb [əbzɔrb] absorption [æbz rp + ʃʌn]
h. circumcise [səɹkʌmsaɪz] circumcision [səɹkəms ʒ + ʌn]
i. decide [dəsaɪd] decision [dəsɪʒ + ʌn]
All of the verbs in the left-hand column have noun forms with the
suffix -tion. But if the transcriptions of the verbs and nouns are
compared, one can notice that both the verb bases and the derivational
affix have various allomorphs. For example, the suffix seems to be -ʌn
in (35a and c) but -eɪʃʌn in (35b). It looks like -uʃʌn in (35d), but -ɪʃʌn
in (35f), and -ʃʌn in (35g). In (35a, c, and e) the [t] at the end of
designate, prosecute, and expedite seem to have changed to [ʃ], the [v]
at the end of resolve seems to have disappeared, and the [b] at the end
of absorb has changed to [p]. Additionally, the stress pattern on the
derived noun is different from that of its verb base (the stressed syllable
is shown in boldface). Thus, pattern of allomorphy associated with this
suffix is less than obvious. The question that arises is whether it is
predictable. To a certain extent it is. For example, if a verb ends in [v]
and has a derived noun with the -tion suffix, it will always lose its [v]
and the suffix will be pronounced -ution (think about the derived nouns
for dissolve, absolve, revolve, etc.). Similarly, if a verb ends in [t] and
takes the -ion suffix, the [t] will become [ʃ]. And if a verb ends in [z] or
[d] and takes the -tion suffix, those consonants will become [ʒ]. Since
the sounds [ʃ] and [ʒ] are palatal sounds, this process is called
palatalization.
However, the choice of allomorphs is not entirely predictable.
For example, it is not clear if we can predict when we will get -ation,
say, as opposed to -ion on a particular verb base: we find -ation on the
verbs unionize and refute, but not in circumcise and prosecute; those
take the -ion allomorph. The derived noun form from combust is
combustion, but that of infest is infestation. Why not combustation and
infestion instead? The verb base propose yields proposition, but accuse
yields accusation. Why not proposation, or accusition?
44
1.8.2 Lexical strata

Building complex words is frequently accompanied by phonological

effects such as assimilation or vowel harmony. In this section we will
see that in some languages such phonological effects do not apply
uniformly across the entire lexicon of the language, but instead are
confined to a subset of the lexicon. This section focuses on instances
when two or more different layers to the lexicons behave differently in
terms of phonological effects.
As it has been shown in section 1.8.1.1, the suffix -tion is
associated with complex and partially unpredictable allomorphy that
applies to both the suffix itself and the bases it attaches to. It turns out
that it is not the only suffix in English that acts that way. Consider the
examples in Table 1.2.

Affi Rule Stem Stress Attaches Attaches to Attache Attaches

x change change to bound words s to to native
bases non- bases
native
bases
-al N→A sacrificia architectur minimal architectura yes (tidal)
l al l
-ian N→N, Christian contrarian pedestrian Bostonian yes (earthian)
A
-ic N→A dialogic Germanic geographi problematic yes no
c
-ive V→A allusive alternative nutritive impressive yes (talkative)
-ity A→ N historicit historicity atrocity similarity yes (oddity)
y
-ory V→A delusory excretory perfunctor contradictor yes no
y y
-tion V→N decision revelation perception restoration yes (starvatio
n)

Table 1.2 Some non-native suffixes in English

All seven of the suffixes in Table 1.2 are non-native to English. They
were borrowed from Latin either directly or by way of French. All of
them are like -tion in showing complex patterns of allomorphy. When
they are added to bases, the final consonants of those bases sometimes
change:

(36)
sacrifice [s] sacrific-ial [ʃ]
45
Christ [t] Christ-ian [ʧ]
dialogue [g] dialog-ic [ʤ]
allude [d] allus-ive [s]
historic [k] historic-ity [s]
delude [d] delus-ory [s]
decide [d] decis-ion [ʒ]
The stress pattern on the base may also change:

(37)
architecture architectural
contrary contrarian
German Germanic
alternate alternative
historic historicity
excrete excretory9

It should be pointed out that all of these suffixes can attach either to
bound bases or to full words. And all of them prefer to attach to bases
that are themselves non-native to English. The items in the last column
in the table are given in parentheses because they are among the few
native bases (sometimes the only one) on which these affixes can be
found.
If we consider suffixes that are native to English (i.e. suffixes
that were present in Old English, rather than borrowed from some other
language), a quite different pattern can be identified. The pattern is
given in Table 1.3.

9
The stressing in the last pair in (37) is American English. Speakers of other dialects
of English might stress these words differently.

46
Affix Rule Stem Stress Attaches to Attaches to Attaches Attaches
change change bound words to non- to native
bases native bases
bases
-dom N→N none none no kingdom yes yes
-er V→N none none no writer yes yes
-ful N→A none none (vengeful?) sorrowful yes yes
- N→N none none no knighthood yes yes
hood
-ish N,A→A none none no mulish yes yes
-less N→A none none no shoeless yes yes
-ness A→N none none no happiness yes yes

Table 1.3 Suffixes native to English

When these suffixes attach to bases, they change neither the sounds of
those bases nor their stress pattern:

(38)
poodle poodledom
systematize systematizer
sorrow sorrowful
neighbor neighborhood
hermit hermitish
bottom bottomless
happy happiness
Typically they attach freely to either native or non-native bases, but
they do not attach to bound bases; the word vengeful is given in
parentheses because it seems to be the only example where one of these
suffixes might be said to be attached to a bound base, but it is a
questionable example, since venge, according to the OED, is an
obsolete word in English.
The examples considered so far show that English derivational
morphology exhibits two different lexical strata, layers of lexeme
formation that display different phonological behavior. The examples
in (39) allow us to make one more interesting observation regarding the
lexical strata of English.
47
(39)
a. Two non-native suffixes:
-al + -ity sequentiality
-ian + -ity Christianity
-tion + -al organizational
-ive + -ity productivity
b. Two native suffixes
: -ful + -ness sorrowfulness
-less +-ness hopelessness
-er + -hood riderhood
-er + -less printerless
c. Native outside non-native
-al + -ness sequentialness
-ian + -ness Christianness
-tion + -less organizationless
-ive + -ness productiveness
d. Non-native outside native
-hood + -al *knighthoodal
-ish + -ity *mulishity
-less + -ity *shoelessity
-ness + -ic *happinessic

48
The examples in (39) show that sometimes we can get complex words
with two or more layers of suffixes. As (39) shows, we can often affix a
non-native suffix to a base that already has a non-native suffix, and
similarly put a native suffix on a base that already has a native suffix. A
non-native suffix can be affixed to a base that already has a non-native
suffix. Similarly a native suffix can be affixed to on a base that already
has a native suffix.
To conclude, it should be pointed out that native and non-native
affixes behave differently and this difference supports the view that
English derivational morphology displays two different lexical strata.
While the outlines of the two strata are quite clear, there is some
blurring between them. Firstly, not all suffixes in English, however, can
be as easily classified as the ones considered in this section. Secondly,
while the great majority of affixes that are native to English behave, to
a great extent, as those discussed here, this is not the case with all non-
native affixes. Some affixes that are borrowed, and therefore should be
part of the non-native stratum of English, behave more like native
affixes. Consequently they have no phonological effects on their bases
and attach indiscriminately to both native and non-native bases (Lieber
2004).

1.9 Conclusions

The term “word” covers several distinct linguistic concepts: lexeme,

word form, grammatical word. Some properties of words cannot be
accounted for in terms of syntax or phonology. The existence in many
languages of arbitrary inflectional classes supports the assumption that
morphology is an autonomous component of grammar.
Derivational morphology falls into two major types. In lexeme
formation proper, the derivational morphology adds a systematic
component of meaning to the meaning of the base (e.g. hopeless,
writer, etc). In transpositions, the morphology serves to shift the word
class of the lexeme, with minimal change in the semantics of the word.
Catty, fishy, ape illustrate such lexicalization of meaning that cannot be
thought of as the result of derivational morphology. Rather, we deal
with two lexemes which can be related to each other formally, but
which in synchronic English, at least, are not semantically related.
This chapter also surveyed derivational relatedness, showing
that words can be related to each other in four main ways: (i) in terms
of their semantics only, with no morphological relationship, (ii) purely
49
in terms of their morphology, with no semantic relationship, (iii) in
terms of polysemy, in which case there is a semantic relationship but
the word forms remain the same, and (iv) the standard case, when the
semantic relationship is mediated by morphology. The chapter also
addressed cases of mismatch between form and function, namely mixed
categories and complex predicates. Another focus of attention was the
phenomena at the interface between morphology and syntax, i.e. clitics
and those at the interface between morphology and phonology, i.e.
allomorph.

1.10 Practice

Activity 1
Analyze the following English words into their constituent
morphemes and state the meanings of each morpheme in general
terms. Comparing the term with other words sharing the same
affix or stem might be useful.
1.unexcitable; 2. nominalization; 3. redesigning; 4. uselessness; 5.
craziness; 6. unfailingly; 7.affordability; 8. instrumentality; 9.
reconciliation; 10. appendicitis; 11.houseboat; 12. doghouse; 13.
anglophile (francophile, slavophile, grecophile); 14. telephone
(television, telescope); 15. psychopathological; 16. uncritical; 17.
recordings; 18. facilitator’s; 19. restitution; 20. condescension; 21.
liberated; 22. psychopathological; 23. antidisestablishmentarianism.

Activity 2

Specify the number of morphemes in each word. Underline the

bound morphemes.

1. alligator; 2. calmly; 3. running; 4. blindness; 5. stapler; 6. bargain; 7.

regrouping; 8. undeniable; 9. assertion; 10. certainly; 11. corner; 12.
prepay; 13. tighten; 14. staying; 15. dislocation; 16. smarten; 17.
ladylike; 18. suddenly; 19. purposeful; 20. dislocate.

50
Activity 3

With what you know about free morphemes (words) and bound
morphemes (affixes), you should be able to look at English words
and then break them up into their morphemes.

1. prefix; 2. dogs; 3 trusted; 4. replacements; 5. crying; 6.

governmental; 7. grandmothers; 8. milder; 9. bicycle; 10.
environmentally; 11.contemplation; 12. linguistic
Activity 4

Do the words in the following pairs belong to the same lexeme or to

different lexemes?

a. revolve revolution
b. revolution revolutions
c. revolve dissolve
d. go went
e. wash rewash

Activity 5

Segment the possible morphemes in these examples.

1. The dog sits on a mat.

2. The cats sit on a mat.
3. The dogs sit on a mat.
4. The cat sat on a mat.
5. The dog sat on a mat

Activity 6

What words belong to the same word family or lexeme as sing?

Activity 7

Form the plurals of the following words in English, and transcribe

them in the IPA:
lip lathe
51
pot kiss
tack buzz
club church
thud garage
thug judge
cliff arena
path hero
stove

a. How many allomorphs are there for the plural morpheme in English?
b. Which of the allomorphs makes the best candidate for the underlying
form of the plural morpheme?
c. Formulate a phonological rule that derives the various allomorphs of
the plural morpheme from the underlying form.
Activity 8

On the basis of the pattern you discovered in activity 7, consider

the plurals of the following words and explain how these differ
from the plurals you discussed above.
wolf
calf
house
mouth
elf
knife

52
 CHAPTER 2

Number
2.1 Preliminary remarks

Morphologically, nouns make up an open class. At the formal level,

they are characterized by the functional categories of number, gender
and case. The category of number is reflected in the singular-plural
opposition. Both in the singular and plural there is a contrast between
definite and indefinite forms (a book vs. the book; books vs. the
books).
Number is a grammatical category which encodes
quantification over entities or events denoted by nouns or nominal
elements. It derives from the ability to perceive something as a token,
an instance of a class of referents, and the ability to differentiate
between one and more than one instance of the referent (i.e. the
plurality of instances). Since number can refer to both entities and
events, it has been suggested that a linguistic system evinces both
nominal number and verbal number, the latter phenomenon also
being referred to as pluractionality. However, since pluractionality can
be regarded as an expression of situation type, it is more readily related
to the category of aspect rather than number. This chapter will focus on
nominal number.
Traditional approaches to the English number deal with two
oppositions:

(a) the opposition SINGULAR (which denotes ‘one) – PLURAL

(which denotes ‘more than one’) and
(b) the distinction between COUNT(ABLE) and UNCOUNT(ABLE)
(MASS) nouns.

The first opposition is grammatical in the sense that one of the two
terms, namely the plural one, is marked morphologically (usually by
the morphological marker –s) while the singular one is the unmarked
term. The second distinction, closely related to the first, is semantic in
nature and has to do with the distinction between nouns denoting
entities with divided reference (i.e. entities which can be counted) and
nouns denoting entities with undivided reference (i.e. entities which
53
cannot be counted and therefore do not vary for number). The
difference between countable nouns (e.g. book, girl, flower, etc) and
uncountable/ mass nouns (e.g. water, copper, sugar, etc.) is that the
entities belonging to the latter set cannot be easily individualizable so
as to be able to count them (Baciu 2004b, Hornoiu 2009).
The English number system applies to nouns and NPs without
exception and is grammatically relevant with regard to:

 noun inflection: generally, plural nouns are morphologically

marked (books) while singular nouns are unmarked
 concord between nouns and determiners (this book vs. these
books; a book vs. several books; another penny vs. *another
money)
 subject-verb agreement (This book is mine vs. Those books
are mine)
 pronoun-antecedent agreement (I have read that book. It is
very interesting)

2.2 The conceptual basis of the count/mass distinction

2.2.1 Count vs. mass nouns

Before embarking on a detailed analysis of the subclasses of English

nouns, a special attention should be given to the count-mass
distinction. This is a complex issue, on which a substantial literature
has been written10. For our purposes, we shall adopt the theoretical
frameworks of cognitive semantics and cognitive grammar relying
namely on Langacker (2008), Pelletier (1979), and Quine (1979).
Traditional grammars identify two basic types of nouns count
and mass on the basis of the contrasting grammatical behaviour of
these nouns. The differing grammatical properties of count and mass
nouns are symptomatic of a fundamental conceptual opposition. These
two basic subclasses correspond to the conceptual archetypes object
and substance (Langacker 2008). These two broad classes into which

10
There are some fine observations in McCawley (1975); an influential paper which
includes cross-linguistic evidence is Chierchia (1998b) See Langacker (2008:128-
146) for an account within the Cognitive grammar framework. Markman (1985,
1989:168-74) is concerned with children’s acquisition of the count-mass distinction
and suggests a link between superordinate categories and mass terms.
54
English nouns are divisible11 are exemplified in (1). Typical for count
nouns are names of physical objects (e.g. diamond, book, cup), and for
mass nouns, the names of physical substances (e.g. gold, meat, water).

(1)

Count nouns: diamond, book, cup, pencil, house, table, tree, apple,
dog, neck, edge, county, lake, cloud, question, idea, joy, complaint, etc.

Mass nouns: gold, meat, water, wood, coal, glue, beer, skin, steel, air,
smoke, moisture, electricity, nonsense, anger, righteousness,
complaining, etc.

However, both classes include terms for other types of entities. Count
nouns, for instance, also label creatures (dog), parts of larger wholes
(neck), or geographical regions (county), as well as entities that are
either nebulous (cloud) or abstract (idea). Similarly, mass nouns
designate entities whose substantial nature is rather tenuous (air,
electricity, smoke) or entities which are wholly non-physical (nonsense,
righteousness, joy). Thus the descriptive labels object and substance
apply straightforwardly only to prototypical members, not to all
members (Langacker 2008:129).
The count/mass distinction has been established and
characterized in terms of distinctive grammatical properties. Some of
these properties are given in (2), taking diamond and gold as
prototypical instances of the count and mass nouns categories.

(2) a. They are looking for *diamond/gold

b. a diamond/*gold
c. most *diamond/gold
d. all *diamond/gold
e. a lot of *diamond/gold

The examples in (2) highlight the following distinctive grammatical

properties that hold for all the nouns in (1):

11
Cross-cutting this classification is the distinction between common and proper
nouns. The examples in (1) are all common nouns.
55
  only a mass noun can stand alone as a complete nominal
expression, without a determiner
 only a count noun permits the indefinite article a(n)
 a number of determiners – including the quantifiers most, all,
and a lot of – only occur with mass nouns

Count nouns designate entities that can be counted: one diamond, two
diamond, three diamonds, etc. Countability correlates with the
possibility of forming a plural (e.g. diamonds) that designates multiple
instances of the type specified by the singular noun (diamond). By
contrast, mass nouns do not form plurals (*golds), nor are their
referents countable: *one gold, *two gold(s), *three gold(s). The
referent of a typical mass noun lacks the discreteness required for the
recognition and counting of multiple instances.
Although only a count noun can be pluralized, interestingly
enough, a plural functions grammatically as a mass noun. Going
through the properties in (2), we notice that gold and diamonds behave
alike, in contrast to the singular form diamond:

(3) a. They are looking for *diamond/gold/diamonds

b. a diamond/*gold/*diamonds
c. most *diamond/gold/diamonds
(d) all *diamond/gold/diamonds
(e) a lot of *diamond/gold/diamonds

With regard to other morpho-syntactic properties, however, plurals do

not behave identically to mass nouns. By its very nature, a plural (e.g.
diamonds) refers to multiple instances of the type (diamond). Therefore
a plural “portrays the mass it designates as “consisting of individual
‘particles’ salient enough to be countable” (Langacker 2008:130).
Consequently, plurals co-occur with numerals, plural demonstratives
and certain quantifiers, whereas mass nouns do not, as the examples in
(4) illustrate:

(4) a. those diamonds vs. that gold

b. these diamonds vs. this gold
c. many diamonds vs. much gold
d. few diamonds vs. little gold
e. several diamonds vs. *several gold
f. numerous diamonds vs. *numerous gold
56
These morpho-syntactic properties are symptomatic of underlying
conceptual differences. In what follows we shall assume two properties
as basic for an act of individuation (Langacker 2008:131):

 an entity can be construed as being discretely bounded in time

(and/or space)
 an entity can be construed as being continuous (i.e. amorphous
and not inherently limited) in space (and/or time)

2.2.2 Conceptual basis

The grammatical distinction between count and mass nouns is

reflective of a basic conceptual distinction. A count noun profiles an
entity construed as being bounded in a certain dimension. An entity is
bounded in a certain dimension if the various locations along this
dimension contain its parts, but not the whole entity. Defined more
abstractly, a thing is bounded where there is “some limit to the set of
constitutive entities’ Langacker 2008:136). Bounding can be effected
on the basis of contrast with surroundings12 (if bounded in space they
have contour, i.e. they have a certain spatial shape13or form), internal
configuration14, and function15. These three means of bounding are

12
Contrast with surroundings is achieved by mentally scanning through an entity in
any direction and reaching a point at which the entity fails to be manifested. The limit
is defined by this point of contrast where we detect a transition from the presence of
the entity in question to its absence. For instance, a beep is the occurrence of a certain
kind of noise bounded by silence on either end. In hearing or imagining a beep, we
first encounter a transition from the absence of that noise to its presence, and then
from its presence to its absence. If further scanning through time reveals more of the
sound, it represents the onset of another beep and not the continuation of the previous
one.
13
Conceiving an entity as being bounded does not depend on being able to impose
boundaries, i.e. a precise line of demarcation in any specific place. Boundaries may be
fuzzy, but entities bounded fuzzily are still bounded. For instance, there is no precise
boundary between the handle of a bat and its barrel, yet each is a bounded region
distinguishable from the other.
14
For instance, a car consists of a certain set of parts connected in a particular manner
to form a structured whole. To recognize an instance of this type, it is sufficient to
observe the requisite parts in the appropriate configuration. At this point, transition
from car to non-car, i.e. contrast with surroundings, seems inessential. The noun
alphabet provides a more abstract example of bounding by configuration. An alphabet
is a set of letters limited in number and occurring in a certain sequence (i.e. order)
57
not mutually exclusive. An alphabet for instance is delimited not only
by configuration (a fixed sequence of a limited number of items with
initial and final letters) but also by function: it comprises the full set of
letters used together to represent the sounds of a certain language
(Langacker 2008: 137-138).
A mass noun referent, on the other hand, is unbounded, i.e.
amorphous and not limited. An entity that is unbounded is continuous
and can be defined as not having parts in the dimension in which it is
continuous. An entity that is unbounded can be found in its entirety in
the respective dimension. In distinguishing count and mass nouns,
bounding should not be considered by itself. As Langacker 2008:139)
has put it, “it shares the burden with three conceptual factors:
homogeneity, contractibility and replicability” (my emphasis).
The referent of a mass noun is construed as being internally
homogenous. A typical mass noun such as water designates a
substance indentified by various prototypical qualities: a liquid of low
viscosity, largely transparent, tasteless, odourless, non-alcoholic, etc.
Ideally, any sample of water will reveal these properties. Homogeneity
thus consists of being qualitatively the same throughout16.
The homogeneity of a mass is dependent on the lack of intrinsic
bounding. These two factors are responsible for another property on
mass nouns, namely contractibility. By this we mean that “any portion
of a mass of a given type is itself a valid instance of that type”
(Langacker 2008:141). If we consider the water in a lake, any portion
selected for individual examination can be described as water, no
matter the size. In other words, if the referent of water is divided, what
is left is still water. This does not hold for count nouns: part of a lake
is not itself a lake. Similarly, the tail of a dog is not a dog, the sequence
ABCD, although part of an alphabet, is not an alphabet, or if the

A>B>C>….X>Y>Z. The referent of the noun alphabet is bounded by the first and last
elements in the sequence.
15
If we consider a wooden baseball bat, physical examination reveals no obvious
boundary between the portions referred to as the handle and the barrel. The bat gets
thicker as we scan from handle to barrel, but with no evident point of transition. The
demarcation, i.e. contrast with surroundings, depends primarily on the function
served: the handle is where we grip the bat, and the barrel is the part that hits the ball.
16
Contrast with a typical count noun such as pencil, for instance, which does not
display such qualitative uniformity or homogeneity. Instead, it is usual for differnt
parts (lead, shaft, eraser) to consist of different substances (e.g. graphite, wood,
rubber). With respect to qualitative properties, a typical count noun referent is
heterogeneous.
58
referent of a book or a car is divided, what remains is no longer a book
or a car.
The homogeneity and lack of bounding also lead to another
property that is characteristic of a mass: expansibility. The mass
obtained by combining any two instances of a given type is a valid
instance of that type. By adding some sugar to the sugar already in a
bowl, we obtain a larger mass that also counts as a single instance of
sugar which later we can refer to as that sugar or the sugar in the bowl,
but not *those two sugars17. This property does not apply to count noun
referents. Several dogs put together do not form a larger dog.
Langacker (2008:142) proposes another property that is the opposite of
expansibility and which he calls replicability and which applies to
count nouns. Because a count noun specifies bounding (i.e. some limit
to the constitutive entities), replicability provides a way of determining
when one instance ends and another begins. These opposing properties
of expansibility and replicability that apply to mass and count noun
referents respectively are indicated by more vs. another: when two
instances are combined, the result is more sugar but another bowl.

2.2.3 Variable construal

Given its conceptual nature, the count/mass distinction reflects human

capacity for conceiving or portraying a situation or an entity in alternate
ways. This capacity has the consequence that categorization can be
fluid to a certain extent. For a large number of English nouns, both a
count-noun variant and mass-noun variant are well established as
conventional linguistic units. Though novel, the mass-noun use of lake
in (5a) illustrates a general pattern for construing a bounded entity as an
unbounded mass. Conversely, the count-noun use of water in (5b)
follows a general pattern for construing a mass as a bounded entity:

(5) a. You need a lot of lake for speedboat race.

b. I want two lemonades and a water.

17
Contractibility and expansibility correspond to subdivisibility and additivity,
respectively, in mereological logic (i.e. the logic of the part-whole relationship).
Additivity can be identified by Quine’s (1979) test of cumulative reference: any sum
of parts, which are sugar, is sugar.

59
 For a more detailed analysis of the recategorization of mass
nouns as count ones and the reverse, see Section 2.6. At this point,
suffice it to say that generally one variant is perceived as basic, while
the other one constitutes a semantic extension. For water, the mass-
noun sense is clearly primary. In contrast, diamond is primarily a count
noun, with a secondary mass-noun use (e.g. Diamond is one of the
hardest substances known). With many nouns, however, the two
variants are of comparable status; examples of such nouns include:
rock, stone, brick, tile, glass, hair, fur, cloth, rope, string, cake, squash,
steak, thought, insight, pain, rest, law, principle, etc. As a mass noun,
each designates a physical or abstract substance, whereas the count-
noun counterpart designates a bounded entity composed of that
substance.

2.2.4 The sortal/non-sortal distinction

Count terms like man, dog, star, river, etc are also called sortals,
while mass nouns like water, smoke, ice, gold, etc. are called non-
sortals. The philosophical sortal/non-sortal distinction thus parallels
the grammatical count/mass distinction which grammars have
acknowledged for many years.
As shown by philosophers of language, “the purpose of the
sortal distinction was to be able to apply number to it in a definite
manner and not to permit any arbitrary division of the sortal term. Non-
sortals do not allow number to apply to them and arbitrary division into
parts is an identification test” (Pelletier 1979). The purpose of the
philosophical distinction is to give a semantic characterization. The
sortal/non-sortal distinction is intended to divide predicates that
provide a criterion for counting from predicates that do not provide
such a criterion. Pelletier (1979:3) argues that “in a space appropriate to
the sortal ‘S’, we can count how many S’s there are in that space; but in
a space appropriate to a non-sortal ‘M’ we cannot straightforwardly ask
how may M’s there are. Thus we can ask how many men are in a room,
but not how many waters (without changing the sense of water)”. Non-
sortal terms are collective in the sense that if ‘M’ is a non-sortal term,
then ‘M’ is true of any part of an entity of which ‘M’ is true and it is
divisive to the extent to which ‘M’ is true of any part of an entity of
which ‘M’ is true.
The grammatical distinction count/mass applies to simple noun
phrases only, whereas the philosophical distinction sortal/non-sortal
60
applies to complex noun phrases as well. For instance, ‘white man’ is
sortal and ‘dirty water’ non-sortal.
Moreover, if the grammatical distinction applies to nouns only,
the philosophical distinction sortal/non-sortal is said to be instrumental
in individuating other types of entities as well, namely situations. Verb
phrases such as build a house, write a letter, buy a book (described as
events) share properties characteristic of sortals and are bounded in the
dimension of time. Situations designated by verb phrases such playing
the piano, walking in the park are describable in terms of the properties
of individuation characteristic of non-sortals. These entities, named
processes, are conceived as being unbounded, i.e. continuous in the
dimensions of time and space (Pelletier 1979).

2.3 Sortals (i.e. count nouns)

2.3.1 The semantic and morphosyntactic properties of sortals (i.e.

count nouns)

At the semantic level of analysis, countable nouns are considered to be

sortals. This semantic characterization is based on the process of
individuation. As Baciu (2004b:37-8) points out “no division of a sortal
term in the spatial area can yield the entity as a whole. [....] sortal terms
have in-built-modes of dividing their reference – so that we distinguish
between one rabbit, another rabbit, etc.”
Countable or sortal terms are also known as general terms,
which are the opposite of singular terms. Quine (1960:90) argues that
‘semantically the distinction between singular and general terms is that
a singular term names or purports to name one (unique) object, [...]
while a general term is true of each, severally, of any number of
objects’. Having a certain shape or form is another characteristic of
general terms. From a pragmatic point of view, people employ sortal
terms when they want to designate individual objects (Stefanescu
1988:46).
The morphosyntactic properties of sortals (i.e. count nouns)
mentioned in (6) are the reflexes of their semantic behaviour discussed
in Section 2.2.

(6)

 they are individuated by means of the indefinite article a(n);

61
  they co-occur with cardinal numerals;
 they allow such countable quantifiers as many, few, each, every;
 they take the plural morpheme;
 they trigger plural agreement with the verb and plural anaphoric
pronouns.

I prefer a dog to a cat. Dogs are more interesting.

At Beckford in Worcestershire fifty hedgehogs have been brought in
by worried animal lovers.
I invited a few friends around on Saturday night.
You’ve been reading too many romantic novels.
Every child will receive a certificate at the end of the course.
There are three different series of the computer. We think they were
all made in South Korea.

2.3.2 The plural morpheme

The vast majority of English count nouns (sortals) form the plural by
adding the inflectional suffix –s. Although the plural form has often
been taken as the main criterion for distinguishing between count and
mass nouns (i.e. mass nouns/ non-sortals), this criterion is notoriously
unreliable. As the examples below show the plural suffix –s is but one
possible realization of the plural morpheme 18 , i.e. one of the
allomorphs of the morpheme which stands for the feature [+ plural]:

18
In one the most readable histories of the English language Pyles and Algeo
(1982:116) sum up the development of English plural formation as follows: “One of
the most significant differences between Old English and Modern English nouns is
that Old English had no device for indicating plurality alone – that is, unconnected
with the concept of case. It was not until Middle English times that the plural
nominative-accusative –es (from OE -as) drove out the other case forms of the plural
(save for the comparatively rare genitive of measure). Even in the root-consonant
stems [like foot], the mutated forms [like feet] were, as we have seen, not exclusively
plural forms. The –en ending (from OE -an), surviving in oxen, likewise did not
indicate plurality alone in earlier periods; in Old English, as a backward glance at the
plural of oxa will show, the oblique singular forms had –an and were thus identical
with the nominative-accusative plural form oxan”.
62
(7)

Singular Plural Plural allomorph

a) dog dogs -s
book books
table tables

b) sheep sheep Ø
fish fish
deer deer
series series
species species
gallows gallows

c) foot feet Ablaut

mouse mice

d) ox oxen -en
child children

e) knife knives -s + F/V Rule

wife wives

In the above singular/plural pairs, the realization of the plural

morpheme varies from one set to another. The first set includes nouns
whose plural forms end in –s, being thus regular. The set under (7b)
includes nouns which make no formal distinction between the singular
and the plural and which have been singled out in structural grammars
as having zero plural (Quirk et. al 1985). The set under (7c) includes
nouns whose plural form is not marked by an inflectional suffix but by
Ablaut (vowel change). The set in (7e) includes nouns such as knife,
wife, leaf, life, wolf, etc. These nouns are subject to the F/V rule19
when they are pluralized. In other words, their plural is marked not
only by the inflectional suffix –s but also by voicing, a phonological
phenomenon whereby the final voiceless consonant of the stem is

19
F/V Rule: Change the last f of a root to v is the root is of the class leaf, loaf, etc.
63
replaced by its voiced counterpart. The set under (7d) includes Old
English plural forms.
All these suffixes represented above as –(e)s, -en, -Ø, or –s +
voicing mean plural and are therefore allomorphs of the plural
morpheme (i.e. the morpheme that stands for the feature [+ plural]).
These idiosyncratic plurals depend on the identity of the stem to which
they are attached.
To account for the distribution of these allomorphs, the strategy
in generative phonology has been to propose a single underlying form
and provide phonological rules that adjust this form according to the
context in which it occurs. In the case of Plural, the underlying form in
English is –s. To put it differently, the allomorph –s has been chosen as
basic and all the other allomorphs are derived from it by applying
certain rules to this basic allomorph. The realization of the plural
morpheme is as follows:

(8)
PLURAL -en with class A (ox, etc.)
-Ø with class B (deer, etc.)
-s plus F/V Rule with class C (leaf, etc.)
Ablaut with class D (foot, etc)
-s elsewhere

It should be pointed out that these plurals cannot be predicted in

any way from their corresponding singular forms and there is no
semantic mnemonic to help the speaker/learner decide which ones
apply to which. Even in the case of so-called ‘regular plurals’, contrary
to what traditional grammars argue, the plural is not fully predictable
from the singular form. There is nothing in the form or meaning of a
noun with regular plural that will enable the user to infer that its plural
form ends in the suffix –s. We suggest that the –s allomorph should be
seen as ‘regular’ or basic only in so far as this allomorph occurs with
by far the largest class of nouns (a class which is in fact so large as
never to be enumerated exhaustively, whereas other classes could be)
and represents the first choice in the early stages of language
acquisition. It is also the suffix that people use when they have not
learnt the special lists of nouns which take the other allomorphs, as in
the children’s speech form ‘foots’, rather than feet.
To the classes of nouns mentioned above we can add the
following classes of foreign plurals:
64
 Singular Plural Plural allomorph

f) cactus cacti -i
alumnus alumni

g) addendum addenda -a
bacterium bacteria
symposium symposia

h) analysis analyses -es

thesis theses
axis axes
diagnosis diagnoses

The sets under (f) and (g) include Latin forms while the last group is
Greek in origin. Thus the set of plural allomorphs in (7) can be
supplemented with the following endings: -i, -a, -es.

2.3.2.1 The pronunciation of the plural allomorph –s

The inflectional suffix –s is phonologically realized as (/ɪz/, /z/, /s/)

depending on the final sound of the stem:

The pronunciation /ɪz/ occurs after stems ending in fricatives and

affricates

(9)

/s/ horse ~ horses /hɔ:sɪz/

/z/ size ~ sizes /saɪzɪz/
/ʃ/ rush ~ rushes /rʌʃɪz/
/ Ʒ / mirage ~ mirages /'mɪrɑ:ʒɪz/
/tʃ/ church ~ churches /tʃɜ:tʃɪz/
/dƷ / language ~ languages /'læɳgwɪdʒɪz/

The pronunciation /z/ occurs after stems ending in vowels and voiced
consonants other than /z/, / ʒ/, /dʒ /, and /s/

65
(10) bud ~buds /bʌʣ/
day ~ days /deɪz/
dream ~dreams /dri:mz/
leg ~legs /legz/

The inflection –s is phonologically realized as /s/ if the stem ends in

vowels and voiceless consonants other than /s/, /ʃ/, /tʃ/.

(11) week ~ weeks /wi:ks/

cap ~ caps /kæps/
pet ~pets /pets/

2.3.2.2 The spelling of the plural allomorph -s

The plural inflection –s is spelt ‘s’ after most nouns including nouns
ending in silent –e. However, there are several exceptions to this rule.

Addition of –e:

The ending is –es with nouns ending in:

(12)

-ch: porch ~ porches; church ~ churches; speech ~speeches

-tch: match ~matches
-s gas ~ gases;
-ss: glass ~glasses
-sh: bush ~bushes
-z: buzz ~ buzzes
-x: box ~ boxes

Treatment of –y

With nouns ending in a vowel letter followed by -y, -y remains

unchanged and the plural ending is –ys:

(13) boy ~boys

day ~ days
valley ~ valleys

66
The same rule applies to proper names such as two Germanys and to
such compounds as stand-bys, lay-bys, drys (‘prohibitionists’).
With nouns ending in a consonant letter followed by -y, -y is
replaced by –ie before the plural suffix –s:

(14) country ~ countries

lady ~ ladies
opportunity ~ opportunities
spy ~ spies

Doubling of the final consonant

Doubling of the final consonant occurs in a few nouns:

(15) fez – fezzes

quiz - quizzes
bus – busses (but also: bus ~ buses)

Doubling also occurs in some abbreviations:

(16) p → pp (pages)
l →ll (lines)
Ms→Mss (manuscripts)

The plural of numbers and abbreviations is formed by adding ’s

(traditional) or only –s (a more recent trend):

(17) to count by 10’s / 10s

to know your ABC’s / ABCs
in the 1930’s or 1930s
two MP’s / MPs
three PhD’s / PhDs

The variant without apostrophe is on the increase.

The plural of letters, symbols and words used as examples is formed

by adding ’s:

(18) a. Cross your t’s and dot your i’s.

b. There are too many and’s in this sentence
67
c. There were three large X’s on the map

The apostrophe is not added to a number that is written out.

(19) The gymnast scored three tens in the European competition.

Nouns ending in –o

Nouns ending in –o require special attention since the regular plural

suffix of such nouns has two spellings –os and –oes. In the following
cases the spelling is –os:

(a) after a vowel: bamboos, embryos, radios, kangaroos, zoos

(b) in proper names: Filipinos, Neros, Romeos
(c) in abbreviations: kilos, photos, pros (‘professionals’)

In other cases there is considerable vacillation between –os and -oes:

archipelago – archipelagos – archipelagoes

buffalo – buffalos – buffaloes
cargo – cargos – cargoes
commando – commandos – commandoes
flamingo – flamingos – flamingoes
fresco – frescos – frescoes
ghetto – ghettos – ghettoes
innuendo – innuendos – innuendoes
manifesto – manifestos – (manifestoes)
memento – mementos – mementoes
mosquito – mosquitos – mosquitoes
motto – mottos – mottoes
stiletto – stilettos – stilettoes
tornado – tornados – tornadoes
volcano- volcanos – volcanoes

However, the following nouns ending in –o have plurals ending in –

oes:

domino – dominoes
echo – echoes
embargo – embargoes
68
mango – mangoes
negro – negroes
potato – potatoes
tomato – tomatoes
torpedo –torpedoes
veto – vetoes

2.3.3. Classes of sortals (i.e. count nouns)

2.3.3.1 Plural by voicing

With some nouns the final consonant changes between the singular and
the plural. More specifically, several singular nouns ending in the
voiceless 20 fricative consonants /f/ and /θ/ replace these consonants
with their voiced counterparts /v/ and /ð/ respectively when they occur
in the plural. This phenomenon is known as voicing 21 or consonant
mutation. Of the two changes, the former is reflected in spelling, the
latter not:

knife – knives /naif/ - /naivz/

mouth – mouths /mauθ/ - /mauðz/

This voicing alternation found in plural formation is losing

ground in Modern English, and of the alternations involving voicing

20
Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech
sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless (unvoiced) or voiced. At the
articulatory level, a voiced sound is one in which the vocal cords vibrate, and a
voiceless sound is one in which they do not. Voicing is the difference between the
pairs of sounds that are associated with the English letters “s” and “z”. The two
sounds are symbolically written /s/ and /z/ to distinguish them from the English
letters, which have several possible pronunciations depending on context. If one
places the fingers on the voice box (i.e. the location of the Adam’s apple in the upper
throat), one can feel a vibration when one pronounces /zzzz/, but not when one
pronounces /ssss/.
21
Voicing is a relic of Old English, where each vowel was pronounced. Unvoiced
consonants between voiced vowels were ‘coloured’ with voicing. As the language
became more analytic and less inflectional, final vowels/syllables stopped being
pronounced. For example, the present day English noun knives is a one-syllable word
instead of a two-syllable word, with the vowel ‘e’ not being pronounced.

69
speakers generally retain only the nouns observing the F/V Rule, which
is supported by spelling as well. The rule might be stated as follows:

F/V Rule: Change the last f of a root to v if the root is of the class leaf,
loaf, etc.

The following derivation in (20) shows the steps from the input to the
output:

(20)

Word Structure Rule Noun -Plural

Lexical insertion leaf -s
F/V Rule leave -s
Final Output leave -s

The following list includes nouns which are subject to the F/V rule or
voicing when they are pluralized. Note that with these nouns voicing is
also reflected in spelling:

Singular Plural

calf calves
elf elves
half halves
leaf leaves
life lives
loaf loaves
knife knives
thief thieves
self selves
shelf shelves
wife wives
wolf wolves

The painting term still life has a regular plural still lifes, as shown in the
following examples in (21i):

70
(21i) a. The apparent realism of much Dutch art can be deceptive: many
floral still lifes, for instance, show combinations of flowers that do not
bloom at the same time of year.
b. Cézanne’s still-lifes, in their simplicity and delicate tonal harmony,
are a typical work and thus ideal for an understanding of his art.

The compound still life painting is another option:

(21ii) Still life paintings often adorn the walls of ancient Egyptian
tombs.

With some nouns such as dwarf, handkerchief, hoof, scarf the

plural can involve voicing or be regular (-fs).
The F/V Rule does not apply to such nouns as cloth, death,
faith, moth, puffs, cough, cliff, chief, waif and fife. With these nouns
only the regular plural is found. Consider the examples in (22):

(22) a. The dark moths appeared in London by 1897.

b. Cloths can be one of the top causes of cross-contamination in the
kitchen.
c. The tensions are growing between members of different faiths.
d. Disease can be spread by coughs.
e. It has bushy cliffs on both sides that lean like hairy ghosts over the
unknown waters.
f. Efforts to reorganize and liberalize the army alienated other military
chiefs.
g. She loved dogs, and would take any waifs and strays into her home.

2.3.3.2 Plural by ablaut

The following seven nouns form their plural by ablaut 22 (or vowel
change):

22
The term ablaut designates “vowel variation (as in English sing, sang, sung, song)
caused by former differences in syllabic accent. In a prehistoric period the
corresponding inflected forms of the language (known through internal
reconstruction) had differences in accent rather than in vowel. Phonological change
resulted in alteration of syllable structure and in vowel gradation” (The Columbia
Encyclopedia, New York: Columbia University Press,2007)
71
foot – feet (also, forefoot – forefeet)
louse – lice
mouse – mice
goose – geese
man – men
tooth – teeth
woman – women

Like the F/V Rule, the ablaut rule is restricted to a small subset of
nouns. Plural by ablaut is accounted for on historical grounds as well. It
should also be noted that compounds of man and woman change to
‘men’ and ‘women’ respectively, as in:

alderman – aldermen
fireman – fireman
postman – postmen
Norseman – Norsemen
horsewoman – horsewomen
charwoman – charwomen

Certain words ending in –man are not (or are not regarded as)
compounds of man. German, Norman, Roman form their plural
according to the general rule by adding the plural suffix –s: Germans,
Normans, Romans.
When the noun mouse refers to the computer peripheral device
its plural is generally regular: mouses

(23) The best known such mouses are Microsoft’s current optical
models.

Although Principles of English Usage in the Digital Age

suggests the plural should normally be mouses since mice is too
“suggestive of furry little creatures”, nevertheless it points out that both
terms are common.

(24) a. Mice first broke onto the public stage with the introduction of
the
b. Apple Macintosh in 1984, and since then they have helped to
completely redefine the way we use computers.

72
However, The Microsoft(R) Manual of Style for Technical Publications
cautions against the use of the plural form mice and suggests mouse
devices.

When the noun foot is used to denote measurement the plural

form can be either feet or foot (i.e. unmarked for the plural):

(25) a. She’s described as five foot three, with blonde permed hair, slim
build and green eyes.
b. She was tall, too, inches taller than Juliet, who was a petite five feet
three inches.
c. I received £300 prize money and a three foot tall trophy.

2.3.3.3 –En plural

Other survivals from Old English take the plural suffix –en:

child – children
ox – oxen
brother – brethren

In child/children the plural is marked not only by the plural suffix –en
but also by ablaut.

The plural form brethren is nowadays used in religious contexts

to address or talk about the members of an organization or group,
especially a religious group.

(26) But among his brethren this benefactor would be sadly missed.

But in the strict sense of the word, and in the sense ‘fellow-men’ or
‘soldiers who have fought together in a war’, the plural is brothers:

(27) a. Brothers! Fellow-workers!

b. A war is always a war between brothers.

2.3.3.4 Zero plural

The zero allomorph of PLURAL in English also triggers a minor rule

for some nouns. For nouns like deer and sheep, the zero allomorph

73
occurs, but since these nouns do not appear in the list of nouns which
undergo Ablaut, their plural form is identical with the singular form
(i.e. Sg = Pl). Thus nouns with zero plural have the same spoken and
written form in both singular and plural. However, they should not be
confused with uncountable which do not change their form but are
either singular (This music is too loud) or plural (All the cattle are
grazing in the field).
Zero plural nouns are countable and thus take both singular and
plural verb agreement. They also take all the articles and quantifiers
(numerals included) that are characteristic of genuine countable nouns.
The plural use of these nouns is marked on the verb, determiners and
anaphoric pronominal substitutes which take plural form. Their
irregular behaviour can be accounted for in terms of their diachronic
evolution (Baciu 2004b). In Old English nouns had several declensions
according to gender distinctions. Nouns such as deer, sheep, swine,
which in Modern English have zero plural, belonged to the class of Old
English neuter nouns, which in the nominative and accusative had the
same form in the plural as in the singular (Poutsma 1926:122).
Consider the examples below:

(28) a. This sheep looks small.

b. All those sheep are mine.
c. A deer is a large wild animal with horns that eats grass and leaves.
d. We still have many deer, very little water and not many open spaces.

The following classes of nouns are marked by the zero allomorph

when they are pluralized:

A. Nouns denoting some animals

Nouns denoting wild animals, wild fowl and fish often have zero plural,
i.e. the unmarked singular form is used for both singular and plural
contexts. Examples of such nouns include: cod, deer, fish, grouse,
moose, reindeer, bison, halibut mullet, salmon, mullet, mackerel, tuna,
snipe, sheep, i.e. names of animals generally found in flocks
(Schibsbye 1973:102). These nouns are countable and have count
properties, except for the lack of the plural marker on the noun.
Jespersen (1911: 51) points out that “in (expressions like) five snipe or
a few antelope we have neither a collective word or a singular, but a
real (individualizing) plural though the form be identical with the
74
singular”. These nouns tend to be used when reference is made to
animals in mass as food or game.

(29)
fish: What advantage did Grimsby have over Hull for the distribution
of fresh fish? Ronny caught three huge fish this afternoon. The
Arundell Arms Hotel in Devon runs a variety of courses in wet and dry
fly fishing for salmon and trout. Salmon, tuna, sardines, and kippers
are good sources of polyunsaturated fat.

wild animals: Thousands of starving reindeer, too weak to make the

crossing, are being carried across in landing craft. On the opposite
shore I saw two large gray black moose. So we decide to ride up to
Graveyard Lake to see about getting some ducks, or maybe a moose.

wildfowl: Wildfowl are numerous in winter with thousands of teal as

well as widgeon, pintail and shoveler.
In cases of variation, i.e. with nouns having two plural forms,
the zero plural is more common to denote hunting quarries as in (30)
or to denote a group of specimens from a single species as in (31):

(30) We caught only a few fish

(31) The North Atlantic stock of Gadus morhua is estimated to contain

several million fish

The plural form marked by the inflection –s, on the other hand,
is used to denote different individuals, or species:

(32) a. Mike’s aquarium contains three different fishes: guppies,

platies, and swordtails.
b. The marine fishes reach their greatest diversity in the coral reef
ecosystems.

The following nouns consistently take zero plurals include: cod,

deer, grouse, sheep, plaice, and salmon.

(33) a. A deer makes tracks in the snow.

b. Several deer/sheep are grazing in the distance.
c. It used to be said that any salmon running up the Dee made a one-
way journey.
75
d. Jim has since caught six more salmon in Ayrshire rivers on the same
fly.

The following nouns may have both zero plural or regular

plural: crab, carp, herring, trout, duck, etc. In some contexts, as the
examples below show, the unmarked form is not a zero plural but a
mass/uncountable term. In other contexts these nouns have two plural
forms (zero plural and regular plural) which are not in free variation,
however. The regular plural forms trouts, carps, herrings, are used to
denote the variety of the kind.

(34)

a. Herrings have no adipose fin, and all the fins have soft rays. The
majority of the herrings are marine pelagic species but some of them
occasionally venture into rivers and a few species are exclusively found
in freshwater [CT – the regular plural denotes different species]

b. A few dozen herring here or there; nobody troubled: every child

went home with a few dozen herring on a string. [CT – the zero plural
denotes quarries]

(35)

a. The loch is full of wild brown trout; where a basket of thirty trout is
the rule, rather than the exception. [CT – zero plural]

b. In the nature, trouts are found in the sea as well as in freshwater. [CT
– the regular plural makes reference to different species]

c. Providing fresh trout for dinner was rarely a problem. [MT – ‘the
flesh of this fish’]

(36)

a. Instantly the water becomes a maelstrom, as huge grey carp or

catfish lunge for the food. [CT – zero plural]

b. I used to be able to summon a carp from the pond. [CT – zero plural]

c. There were carp in there and we saw them. [CT – zero plural]

76
d. There are many species of heavy-bodied cyprinid fishes collectively
known as Asian carps. [CT – the regular plural denotes various
species/kinds]

e. It is sensible to give the carp a balanced diet for we want the carp to
do well on our baits. [CT – zero plural]

(37)

a. The majority of our wild duck are mallard although we are able to
supply widgeon and teal from time to time. [CT – the zero plural
denotes ‘wild duck’; ‘mallard’ and ‘widgeon’ refer to two species of
wild duck]

b. But tiresome authority deems that tickling a trout or two or felling

the odd wild duck for the supper table is illegal. [CT – the zero plural
denotes hunting quarries]

c. Most commercial ducks now come from farms in Northern

California or the Midwest states, especially Indiana. [CT – the regular
plural makes reference to ‘ducks raised on farms’]

d. A report had been received by his inspector that a discreet cull of the
wild ducks on Hury Reservoir was under way. [CT – regular plural]

e. In 1608 famed explorer Captain John Smith reported that great

numbers of wild ducks abounded. [CT – regular plural]

Nouns denoting sea animals other than fish also take regular plural:
crabs, lobsters, shrimps, prawns.

(38)

a. In general, larger lobsters are sold into the fresh/live market where
they command premium prices. [CT - regular plural]

b. Personally, I would need a lobster or two. [CT – regular plural]

c. Like the flesh of other animals, lobster is loaded with excessive

protein and cholesterol. [MT – ‘the flesh of a lobster, which is eaten’]

(39)
77
a. In the confusion, many crabs lose their foothold, tumble into the
water and are swept away. [CT - ‘a sea animal with a hard shell’]

b. From Alaska Red King Crab to Snow Crab and everything in

between, we’ve got you covered. [CT – zero plural; different species]

c. We pride ourselves in offering only the finest in fresh crab and

seafood, delivered straight from the dock to your door. [MT - ‘the flesh
of this animal that can be cooked and eaten]

As far as the noun shrimp is concerned, the zero plural and the
regular plural may be used interchangeably. On the other hand, the
unmarked (singular) form may be recategorized as a mass noun.

(40)

a. Brine shrimp, which are eaten by birds and ducks, hatch in the
ponds. [CT – zero plural]

b. In some fish, shrimp, and reptiles, gender is determined by the

temperature at which the egg is incubated. [CT – zero plural]

c. The grill had mutton chops and mash; the buffet ran things like
smoked salmon, potted shrimps and corned ox tongue. [CT – regular
plural]

d. Add shrimp, salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste. [MT]

B. Nationality names ending in –ese:

Nationality names ending in –ese such as Ceylonese, Lebanese,

Chinese, Portuguese, Japanese, Vietnamese when preceded by a
numeral have specific reference, whereas when accompanied by the
definite article they have generic reference.

(41) a. I bumped into a Chinese the other day.

b. There were two Chinese at the party.
c. The Chinese are believed to have invented gunpowder.

78
C. Some quantifying nouns

Quantifying nouns such as hundred, thousand, million, brace, dozen,

gross, head, score, yoke when premodified by cardinal numerals or
other indication of number have zero plural. However, when these
nouns are postmodified by the of- construction their plural form is
marked by the plural inflection –s. Consider the following examples:

(42)

two dozen people vs. dozens of people

several hundred books vs. hundreds of books
fifty thousand pounds vs. thousands of pounds
many thousand insects vs. thousands of insects
five million people vs. millions of people
a few billion stars vs. billion of stars
three score years vs. scores of victims

The nouns pound, stone and foot often take a zero plural inflection,
when followed by a smaller unit:

(43) a. The bill came to four pound ten.

b. She used to weight nine stone (or stones) but she has gone down to
eight stone three.
c. His brother is six foot three.
d. His brother is six foot (or feet) tall.

Moreover nouns denoting measure or quantity have zero plural when

they are premodifiers in noun phrases:

(44)

a five-pound note
a ten-dollar bill
a twelve-inch ruler
a six-mile walk
a five-second pause
a ten-minute conversation
a two-hour exam
a sixty-acre farm
79
D. Nouns ending in –(e)s

Like the nouns in the previous three classes, these nouns have all the
syntactic properties characteristic of genuine countable nouns. They co-
occur with cardinals and plural anaphoric pronouns. Verb agreement is
either in the singular or in the plural. Similarly, they evince only one
notable exception to the morpho-syntactic behaviour of countable
nouns: their plural form is identical with the singular form. This
subclass includes such nouns as barracks, chassis, crossroads, gallows,
headquarters, means, mews, patois, précis, works, series, species, etc.

(45)

(i) barracks

a. Lord Apsley was nearly four times over the legal limit when he
arrived for a function at an army barracks.
b. He had an idea there had been a car bomb at another barracks.
c. New barracks are rising where dilapidated Navy quarters had been.
d. He ordered two barracks torn down and a fountain constructed on
the cement base of a latrine.

(ii) chassis

a. Its chassis offers terrific handling balance, great traction matched to

positive brakes and accurate steering.
b. The company is currently designing a new chassis to provide full
mechanical functionality, expecting it to ship in June.
c. Chassis are available as spare parts, and include all of the
components required for operation except the processor modules.

(iii) crossroads

a. Donna accelerated, seeing a crossroads ahead.

b. The tunnel to the right turned left after a short distance, while the
tunnel to the left led to a crossroads.
c. At each crossroads the stone fountains with their precious supply of
water were guarded by men-at-arms.

80
(iv) gallows

a. Next a policeman puppet arrived carrying a gallows.

b. The arrangement was later modified, and gallows were erected
outside, in the hanging corner.

(v) headquarters

a. Budapest Week will move over the river to the red-light district in
b. Budapest, where Duna’s headquarters are situated.
c. The army headquarters is on the other side of the square, in a former
colonial mansion.
d. Another 4 percent are involved in energy and water industries, and
we have a regional headquarters of the electricity board.
e. Their headquarters is rich in symbolism.

(vi) mews

a. Simon Templar had lived in a mews.

b. We knew the rents were going up in Tottenham mews and we
couldn’t find any good, affordable space in town.

(vii) means

a. E-mail has become an increasingly important means of business

communication.
b. The most effective means of improving the nation’s economy are
education and training.
c. Do you have any means of identification?
d. He had considered every means of transport, air-routes and sea-
routes, and found them wanting.

(viii) works

a. Batchelor constructed a small cement works which continued to

operate until 1931.
b. The government of Belarus plans to invite a tender for construction
of two new cement works with the participation of foreign investors in
October-November 2007.

81
c. Most scholars regarded these waterworks as man-made, but the
techniques of underground orientation and ventilation employed by the
builders, as well as the numerous anomalies and ostensible mistakes in
design, mystified investigators.

A few nouns ending in –es, such as series or species, have the

same form in the singular and in the plural. Although historically
foreign, these zero plurals are not probably felt to be foreign in the
same way as, for instance analysis – analyses or basis – bases.

(46)

(i) series

a. The police are investigating a series of attacks in the area.

b. A new TV series called “The Hamilton Dynasty” will be starting
next autumn.
c. Reuters reports that Will and Jada Pinkett are to be the proud
‘parents’ of two comedy series that will air on CW and ABC
respectively.
d. The UN Information Centre (UNIC) in Asuncion collaborated with
the National Post Service of Paraguay in December 2007 in the release
of a series of stamps commemorating the International Year of Deserts
and Desertification.

(ii) species

a. Seven species of birds of prey have been observed.

b. Scientists have discovered a new species of Eucalyptus tree.

2.3.3.5. Foreign plurals

Countable nouns with irregular plurals also include foreign plurals.

Some nouns borrowed from Latin and Greek keep their foreign plural
or there may be alternation with regular forms. Foreign plural generally
occurs in technical usage, while the corresponding regular plural is the
most natural in everyday language:

Nouns of Latin origin ending in –us

82
Singular Foreign plural Regular plural

alumnus alumni -
locus loci -
cactus cacti cactuses
fungus fungi funguses
corpus corpora corpuses

Nouns of Latin origin ending in –a

Singular Foreign plural Regular plural

antenna antennae23 antennas24

formula formulae25 formulas26
larva larvae -

The following however have regular plural: diploma, drama,

encyclopaedia, idea, era, sofa, umbrella, villa.

Nouns of Latin origin ending in –um

Singular Foreign plural Regular plural

aquarium aquaria aquariums

curriculum curricula -
medium media mediums
bacterium bacteria -
stratum strata -

The following are regular: album, asylum, museum.

Nouns of Latin origin ending in –ex/-ix

Singular Foreign plural Regular plural

index indices27 indexes28

23
The irregular foreign plural antennae occurs in biology.
24
The regular plural antennas occurs in everyday language and in electronics.
25
The irregular plural is used in mathematics.
26
The regular plural occurs in everyday use of language.
83
appendix appendices29 appendixes30
matrix matrices matrixes31

Nouns of Greek origin ending in –is

Singular Foreign plural

analysis analyses
axis axes
basis bases
crisis crises
diagnosis diagnoses
ellipsis ellipses
hypothesis hypotheses
oasis oases
parenthesis parentheses
thesis theses

Nouns of Greek origin ending in –on

Singular Foreign plural

criterion criteria
phenomenon phenomena

The following nouns of Greek origin have regular plural: demon,

electron, neutron, proton.

(47) a. Quarks unite to form protons, neutrons and electrons, which in

turn unite to form atoms.
b. Astrology was condemned as the doctrine of demons.

Nouns of French origin ending in –eau

27
a standard by which the level of something can be judged or measured
28
an alphabetical list of names, subjects etc at the back of a book, with the numbers of
the pages where they can be found; a database containing information, usually
arranged in alphabetical order and used especially in a library
29
a part at the end of a book containing additional information
30
(an anatomical term) a small organ near your bowel, which has little or no use
31
a technical term
84
Singular Foreign plural

plateau plateaux
bureau bureaux
tableau tableaux

Nouns of Italian origins ending in –o

Singular Foreign plural Regular plural

virtuoso virtuosi virtuosos

libretto libretti librettos
solo soli solos
tempo tempi tempos

Although a plural form in the language of origin, confetti takes the verb
in the singular:

(48) The simplest confetti is simply shredded paper.

Nouns of Hebrew origin with –im plurals

Singular Foreign plural Regular plural

cherub cherubim cherubs

seraph seraphim seraphs
kibbutz kibbutzim -

2.3.3.6 Collective nouns

Foreign learners and native speakers of English alike are faced with the
problem of how to treat collective nouns (e.g. army, audience, board,
class, committee, company, crew, crowd, family, federation,
government, group, staff, team, etc.), since both singular and plural
concord are possible. Semantically, these nouns designate ‘sets of
individual concepts’. Formally, most collective nouns pass all the tests
of countability: they allow countable quantifiers and determiners,
and in the sense of ‘body/group’ vs. ‘several bodies/groups’, they allow
the plural marker –s and thus plural agreement and plural anaphoric
85
pronouns (Baciu 2004b:43; Hornoiu 2009). Consider the sentences in
(49).

(49) a. A coalition government is now going be established.

b. Governments in all countries are trying to control the financial crisis.

It has been often argued that a verb in the singular is used when
the group is thought of as a unit whereas a verb in the plural is used
when the speaker or writer focuses on the individual members that
make up the group (Poutsma 1914:283; Quirk et al 1985:316). Thus a
distinction is drawn between singular, which is triggered by
grammatical concord, and plural, which is motivated by notional
concord. The former involves agreement with the syntactic form of the
subject, whereas the latter involves agreement with its meaning.
When collective nouns designate the individual members of the
set they acquire a distributive interpretation and agree with the verb
in the plural. When they are used to designate the whole set as a body
or group, they acquire a collective interpretation and agree with the
verb in the singular.
The singular/plural distinction is also triggered in connection
with the pronominal substitutes used to refer to collective nouns. Thus
in (50a) and (51a) reference is made to the committee as a unit whereas
in (50b) and (51b) the collective is viewed as a number of separate
individuals.

(50) a. The committee has decided that it will postpone its decision –
collective reading
b. The committee have decided that they will postpone their decision –
distributive reading

(51) a. Her family has disgraced itself (collective reading)

b. The family still resolve to hold up their heads (distributive reading)

On the collective reading the predicate is true of the entire group ‘en
masse’. This is the case in the examples in (50a) and (51a) above. The
semantic feature of distributivity (which amounts to [- collective])
triggers plural agreement with the verb and plural determiners and
anaphoric pronouns. On the distributive reading the sentences above
read as: ‘the predicate is true of each member (each person), of the set’

86
(Baciu 2004b:43; Hornoiu 2009). This applies to examples in (50b) and
(51b) above.
Agreement is also displayed in relative pronouns. There is
great consistency in the use of which + singular verb (i.e. on the
collective interpretation) and who + plural verb (on the distributive
interpretation). That is also consistently used with singular verbs.
Jacobsson (1970:355) and Zandvoort (1975:162) argue that which is
used when the group is in focus and who when the individuals making
up the group are in focus.
Another important factor influencing agreement in number
between collective nouns and verbs was adduced by Strang (1969).
Collective nouns preceded by determiners and numerals associated
with singular forms (e.g. a, one, every, each, this and that) are
generally used with singular verbs (Strang 1969:107). Consider the
following examples:

(52)
Not that every married couple is happy [....] (FLOB B07) 32
The deal is another example of a company that stubs its toe [....]
(Frown A36)
They kept the pace fast with many digressions, a sensible tactic to keep
the attention of an audience who has not been interested enough in
cooking to try it before. (FLOB C04)

Example (53) in which a plural verb is used after a singular determiner

seems, at first sight, to be an exception:

(53) This Government are dedicated to a sustainable, economic

recovery based on stable, low inflation. (FLOB H15)

The example in (53) is not an instance of notional concord which

emphasizes the individual members who make up the government
(Hundt 1998:88). Instead, it appears that agreement with the verb in the
plural is the norm with the noun government in British ‘officialese’
(Fries 1981). This usage stands in marked contrast to AmE ‘officialese’
which uses a singular concord with collective nouns (Hornoiu 2009).
32
Brown stands for the Brown corpus and LOB for the Lancaster-Oslo/Bergen
corpus. LOB and Brown contain, respectively, BrE and AmE texts sampled in
1961.FLOB and Frown stand for Freiburg updates of LOB and Brown respectively.
The sampling year for FLOB is 1991 and for Frown 1992.
87
At this point we should mention another peculiarity of the usage of the
noun government in BrE. The singular is sometimes used with
government in official documents in BrE. This is a reflection of the
tendency that “plural concord is used with the British government and
singular concord with foreign governments”, as argued by Bauer
(1994:64). Consider (54) below:

(54) (.....) the Government of Denmark is applying the General

Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in respect of Greenland. (LOB H14)

Overall, pronouns used after collective nouns are more likely to

yield plural marking than verbs (Nixon 1979:123; Hundt 1998:84-86;
Levin 2001:91). One of the main reasons for this is that verbs are more
likely to show close proximity to the collective noun, as shown in
example (55), whereas pronouns are more likely to occur at a greater
distance.

(55) No modern government has won four consecutive elections.

The connection between the pronoun and its antecedent is thus weaker
than the connection between the subject and the verb (Levin 1999).
Pronominal concord may even run across sentence boundaries. As
Wales (1996:163) points out, plural personal pronouns are particularly
frequent across clause and sentence boundaries. Consider the example
in (56).

(56) The group meets once a week in the Boliou Student Workshop.
They are assisted and advised by members of the Art Department
(Brown H28)

The likelihood for notional concord increases with the distance

from the antecedent (Nixon 1972; Hornoiu 2009). As the sentence in
(57) shows, the longer the distance between a node word and concord
marker, the greater the likelihood that the noun takes plural agreement
with the verb33.
33
These shifts in concord involving singular forms followed by plural ones can be
accounted for in terms of the primacy semantic memory over syntactic-lexical
memory. It has been shown that the meaning of a sentence is more easily remembered
than the form, both in long-term memory (Begg and Wickelgren 1974) and in short-
term memory (Begg 1971).
88
(57) The British Travel Association, which does excellent work in
taking care of all foreigners who want to have a good time here and
study what is pompously called ‘The British Way of Life’, have a hard
time on their hands. (LOB B05)

Examples (58) and (59) are exceptional because who is followed by

singular concord marking.

(58) They were anxious to entertain the clinic staff who mostly its free
time elsewhere [....] (LOB K23)

(59) [.....] it is not surprising that the crowd of reports who greeted him
upon his arrival in New York on 8 November 1911, was less concerned
with stories of his ‘collapse’ in Berlin [....] (FLOB G21)

Although such shifts as those in (58) and (59) can be found in both BrE
and AmE, this area needs further investigation before we can determine
with any certainty whether this a case of ongoing linguistic change or
random variation.
The examples from (56) to (59) indicate a divergence between
verbal and pronominal concord and illustrate what has been referred to
as mixed concord or discord, i.e. the combination of a singular verb
and a plural pronoun. Discord “typically occurs where there is
considerable distance between co-referent noun phrases; discord is
generally motivated by notional considerations, i.e. tendency towards
agreement with the meaning, rather than the form, of the subject noun
phrase” (Biber et al. 1999:192). Mixed concord or discord shows a
fairly complex interaction of regional, stylistic and inter-linguistic
variation. The following tendencies have been identified:

 Mixed concord is slightly more common in AmE than in

BrE, AusE and NZE.
 Mixed concord is more often used in informal and spoken
language than in formal, written language (cf. Levin 2001,
Biber et al. 1999)
 Some collective nouns are more likely to yield mixed concord
than others (e.g. family and team vs. government and
committee).

89
This last aspect brings us to the lexico-grammatical aspect of linguistic
variation: the preference for certain concord patterns is linked to
individual collective nouns. Biber et al. (1999: 188) point out that
“most collective nouns prefer singular concord, although a few
collective nouns commonly take plural concord”. Nouns like audience,
board, committee, government, jury and public favour the singular;
staff is given as a noun that prefers plural concord. Nouns that show
variation in taking both singular and plural concord are crew and
family. It is to this last group of collective nouns that the regional
differences between AmE and BrE apply. However, the group of truly
variable collective nouns is considerably larger. Nixon (1979:120)
argues that for the following collective nouns, which he refers to as
“corporate” nouns, all types of singular, plural and mixed concord were
recorded:34

army, association, audience, board, cast, clan, class, club,

college, commission, committee, company, corporation, council,
couple, crew, crowd, department, family, federation, gang,
generation, government, group, institute, majority, minority,
ministry, minority, opposition, party, population, staff, team, and
university

With respect to regional variation, various authors (Quirk et al.

1985:16-17; Biber et al. 1999: 188; Trudgill and Hannah 2002: 70)
have found that singular concord is most frequently used in AmE;
plural concord, on the other hand, is used most frequently in BrE. In
contrast, varieties like AusE and NZE35 take an intermediate position
(Hundt 1998: 83; Levin 2001:60-70). As Depraetere (2003:112-13)
points out, “From a sociolinguistic point of view, the preference for the
singular may reflect the pecking order among the different varieties of
English: American English [......] is beginning to set the norm for
British English”.
With respect to stylistic variation, the general tendency in all
varieties of English is that singular concord is preferred in more formal
styles (with the exception of BrE officialese; cf. Fries 1981 and Hundt

34
Nixon (1972:120) argues that “the possibility of plural verbal concord exists only
with those words denoting a collection of living individuals”. This observation is
illustrated by the following two sentences: The fleet is in the harbour (i.e. a number of
ships) vs. The fleet are in town (i.e. a number of sailors).
35
AusE and NZE stand for Australian English and New Zealand English respectively.
90
1998), whereas plural concord is on the increase in more informal
styles, such as sports reportage or informal conversation (Levin 2001).
To conclude, it should be pointed out that in present-day AmE
and BrE there seems to be a tendency towards a more frequent use of
singular forms. Marckwardt (1985) claims that AmE “has retained the
older practice” of using plural concord and that in the 1950s there were
no indications of change. Evidence from the second half of the
twentieth century, however, shows that AmE is currently leading world
English in a change towards a more frequent use of singular concord.
Although British English does favour singular forms, it has not
been influenced by American English 36 . The development within
British English must have taken place independently, because singular
forms were increasingly used in British English in the 1930s, a time
when influence from American English through mass media and
increased global mobility was less widespread than it is today (Bauer
1994: 61-66). Data from the eighteenth and nineteenth century suggest
that the singular has always been a latent option in both British and
American English (Hundt 2009).

2.4 Quasi-count nouns

The term quasi-count nouns applies to a class of uninflected plural

nouns which are used only in the plural, i.e. nouns which are
morphologically unmarked for plural. This subclass includes nouns
such as cattle, folk, livestock, poultry, police, people, vermin, etc 37 .
Like true collective nouns and plurals, they display both distributive
and collective readings. Unlike true collective nouns, however, they
agree with plural only (i.e. plural verb and plural pronominal
substitutes) (Hornoiu 2009). The sentences in (60) illustrate their
morpho-syntactic behaviour.

36
Diachronically, AmE is more advanced in the use of singular concord than BrE
(Hundt 1998:88-89, 2006, Levin 2001) at the end of the twentieth century.
37
Quirk et al (1985) include these nouns in the class of aggregate nouns which they
define as nouns denoting entities that comprise or are viewed as comprising an
indefinite number of parts. The class of aggregate nouns, which also includes such
nouns marked for plural as arms, communications, data, media, outskirts, remains,
troops, is a class of invariable nouns in the plural.

91
(60) a. Police have surrounded the courthouse.
b. No one is going anywhere until the cattle move.
c. Several police were injured during the rioting.

These nouns lack the singular – plural contrast, as the examples in (61)
and (62) illustrate:

(61) a. These cattle belong to John

b. *This cattle belongs to John.

Another peculiarity of these nouns is that they do not occur with

low numerals. Thus, distinct lexical items must be used whenever
individuation takes place (Crainiceanu 2007; Hornoiu 2009).

(62)

*four police vs. four policemen/police officers

*five cattle vs. five cows

However, they generally co-occur with high numerals:

(63)

two hundred police/cattle/poultry

On the other hand, folk and people can be used with low numerals:
these six/five/two city folk/people.

When the noun people is used to denote ‘the people who belong to a
particular country, race, or area’, it displays a regular count behaviour:

(64)

a. ….the Basques, a people of north western Spain

b. The peoples of Europe are confident about the future.
c. Ours is a great people.

92
2.5 Non-sortals (i.e.mass nouns)

2.5.1 The semantic and morphosyntactic properties of non-sortals

(i.e. mass nouns)

The most adequate way of highlighting the semantic and syntactic

properties of non-sortals (i.e. mass terms) is by setting up a comparison
with sortal terms (i.e. count terms). Their major distinctive
characteristic, namely individuation, will provide the most adequate
basis for such a comparison as well as for the formulation of their
semantic and syntactic characteristics.
Because sortals (i.e. count nouns) specify bounding, they
possess in-built modes of dividing their reference 38 (so that we can
determine when one instance ends and another begins and therefore
distinguish between one dog, another dog, etc) which results in the
application of number to such terms. Non-sortals (i.e. mass nouns), on
the other hand, do not divide their reference. Being unbounded, non-
sortals are subdivisible, additive or cumulative in reference39.
Philosophers of language have argued that the purpose of sortal
designation is to apply number in a definite way to them (Pelletier
1979). Quine (1960:91) in his account of mass nouns has pointed out
that “[...] so called mass terms like water footwear [...] have the
semantic property of referring cumulatively: any sum of parts which
are water is water [...] Semantically they are like singular terms in not
dividing their reference, but syntactically they do not go along with
singular terms which purport to name a unique object each”. In other
words, as far as their semantic behaviour is concerned, non-sortals (i.e.
mass terms) should be opposed not only to sortals, but also to singular
terms (i.e. nouns with unique reference such as mama, London, the
book on the table). The opposition between mass terms and singular
terms centres round their purport to name or not a unique object:
singular terms purport to name unique objects while mass terms do not.
Mass terms also qualify as names but they designate a different type of
entity, namely kinds.

38
Their ability to divide reference corresponds to Langacker’s (2008) notion of
replicabilty in cognitive grammar.
39
These features correspond to contractibility and expanisibility in Langacker’s
(2008) terms.
93
 The syntactic properties of mass terms reflect their semantic
behaviour. I shall repeat them here for convenience:

 mass nouns trigger singular agreement with the verb and the
singular anaphoric pronoun it
 they combine with specific quantifiers, also called amassives,
such as much, little, which are used with both concrete and
abstract mass nouns
 they cannot take the indefinite article (a)n or the cardinals
 mass noun are resistant to pluralisation (i.e. they are not marked
for plural)
 in point of their morphological structure, morphologically
complex nouns that contain in their structure the suffixes – ness,
- ity, - hood are, generally, mass nouns

The syntactic behaviour of mass nouns and that of count nouns can be
brought out by a tabulation of grammatically comparable constructions:

(65)

the book is the books are the water is

a book books water
this book these books this water
- few books little water
- many books much water
every book all books all water
one book two books -
some book some books some water (some stressed)
- some books some water
(some unstressed)

It should be pointed out that mass nouns include both concrete

and abstract nouns. The expression mass noun has clearer intuitive
force in the context of concrete ‘stuff’. Concrete mass nouns, however,
have a lot in common syntactically and semantically with non-concrete
(i.e. abstract) nouns such as speed, decency, attention, etc. Thus the
term ‘mass nouns’ has been extended to cover both concrete and non-
concrete nouns distinguished by the semantic and syntactic properties
discussed above. Examples of concrete mass nouns include: silver,
gold, water, wine, butter, milk, tea, coffee, cheese, powder, gas, sugar,
94
flesh, meat, grass, etc. Whereas examples of abstract mass nouns
include: leisure, progress, success, luck, tact, love, attention, nonsense,
knowledge, vagueness, safety, constancy, decency, experience, danger,
harm, etc.

2.5.2 Co-occurrence of mass nouns with quantifiers

The syntactic restrictions imposed on mass terms as a consequence of

their being be construed as unbounded (i.e. continuous and not
inherently limited in space and/or time) and of their lack of built-in
modes for dividing their reference, can be transgressed. Characteristic
of typical mass nouns is a set of quantifiers which operate as
partitioning expressions and individuate a certain ‘portion’ of the
intended ‘stuff’. When mass nouns are used with these quantifiers they
are recategorized into count nouns. Some of these quantifiers can be
used with both concrete and abstract mass nouns (see the examples in
(66)); others are used with concrete mass nouns only (see the examples
in (67)); still others collocate with abstract mass nouns only (see the
examples in (68)).

(66)

a piece of gold honesty

an amount of butter regret
a (little) scrap of iron consolation
coffee love
air wisdom
meat kindness
ice perfidy
sugar politeness
flour justice

(67)

a fall of snow
a stack of hay
a cake of soap
a lump of sugar
a bar of chocolate
a skein of wool
95
a blade of grass
a slice/rasher of bacon/ham
a clod/lump of earth/clay
a grain/sheaf of wheat/barley/corn

(68)

A flutter of excitement
A pang of jealousy
A stroke of luck
An act of kindness/love/justice

As already mentioned, mass nouns do not co-occur with the

indefinite article a(n), with numerals and the plural marker. Whenever,
they do, the indefinite article, the numerals and the plural marker have
an individuating effect, and the respective mass nouns are recategorized
as count nouns. Consider the following examples:

(69) a. I had two coffees this morning

b. Teas, coffees and cakes are available
c. He had a beer for lunch.

The examples in (69) are elliptical for “two cups of coffee”, “cups of
tea, cups of coffee, slices of cakes”, “a glass of/ a bottle of/ a can of
beer”, respectively.
The definite article the does not occur with mass nouns. When it
does, the mass noun is recategorized as a sortal and the whole noun
phrase functions as singular term: a unique portion of stuff is
individuated (Baciu 2004b). Contrast the examples in (70) and (71):

(70) a. Milk is healthy – mass term

b. *Milk is on the table
c. The milk is on the table – singular term

(71) a. Gold is a precious metal – mass term

b. *Gold was found in the next room
c. The gold was found in the next room – singular term

The DP in (70c) and (71c) is elliptical for “the amount/quantity of

milk/gold”. Thus the mass noun is recategorized as count noun (i.e. a
96
sortal). Ware (1979:23-24) argues that “the definite article was said to
be appropriate only to count nouns and not to mass nouns. This would
give a certain unity to the articles (definite and indefinite), and it could
perhaps explain some matters about individuation. On the other hand, it
would appear to give all nouns a count occurrence. For any stuff on the
table we can speak of the stuff on the table, whether it be sugar, water,
dust or whatever. And we can always speak of the stuff here and there”.
The determiners this and that achieve the same individuating
effect when they accompany mass terms. Just like in the case of the +
N, noun phrases including this/that + a mass noun qualify as sortals
with unique reference, i.e. as singular terms (Baciu 2004b, Hornoiu
2009).

(72) a. Butter is healthy – mass term

b. This butter is stale – singular term

(73) a. Gold is precious metal – mass term

b. This gold was found in the next room – singular term

The individualizing quantifiers each, every, another have

restricted co-occurrence conditions since they are characteristic of
general terms (i.e. countable nouns) and therefore require criteria of
distinctness and individuation. In contexts in which they occur with
mass nouns an individualizing expression is assumed and we are
dealing again with a case of recategorization from mass terms into
count terms.

(74) Each/every/another wine/tea was excellent (i.e.

‘each/every/another kind of wine/tea, etc was excellent’)

All and some can be used with mass nouns; no criteria of

division are required. The noun phrase is a mass term:

(75) a. All water is blue.

b. All attention is needed.
c. Some water was blue.
d. Some attention was needed.

The predeterminers half, double, twice, three times, one third,

one fifth require criteria of division into ‘half’, ‘double’, etc ‘of the
97
stuff’ described. Therefore they are used with countable nouns: half the
apple, one third of the rabbit, etc. In these predeterminers are used with
mass nouns some other article or quantifier must be present to operate
the division into a certain ‘portion of the stuff’:

(76) a. *Half water was cold.

b. Half the water was cold.
c. Half the amount of water was cold.

The same applies to predeterminers double, three times, etc, which

require the presence of an individuating modifier or article for the
sentence to be well formed. Consider the examples in (77):

(77) a. *Double wine was needed.

b. *Three times wine was needed.
c. Double the/this wine was needed.
d. Double of the/this quantity of wine/strength/ attention/love was
needed.

The characteristic quantifiers for mass nouns are much and

little. Many and few are used only with countable nous, as shown in
(78):

(78)

(a) Much butter was needed.

Little attention was needed.

(b) Many girls were there.

Few books were there

(c) *Much girls was needed.

*Little books was needed.
*Many butter was needed.
*Few attention was needed.

The quantifiers plenty of, a lot of, lots of are indefinite

quantifiers and co-occur with both mass nouns and countable nouns:

(79) Plenty of/a lot of/lots of/ butter/attention/books

98
If one of these quantifiers is used with a countable noun in the singular,
the entire noun phrase becomes a complex mass term, as illustrated in
(80):

(80) a. She showed a lot of foot.

b. There is too much tooth about her.
c. She is more of a woman now.

2.6 Recategorization

2.6.1 Recategorization of mass nouns as count nouns

This section addresses the classes of mass nouns that undergo

recategorization40 as countable nouns by means of pluralization and/or
the use of the indefinite article a(n). By means of recategorization a
noun that is usually treated as unbounded (mass) becomes bounded
(count). As we shall see in Section 2.5.3., the reverse is also possible.
The process of recategorization has far-reaching implications for the
count-mass distinction to the extent to which a very substantial part of
the noun inventory in English can be used in count and mass contexts
(Corbett 2000).

A. The first class includes mass nouns which can be recategorized as

count nouns when they occur in the plural and they mean kinds of X.
Examples of such mass terms which undergo a shift from X (a kind-
level individual) to kinds of X are listed below:

(81)

wine, tea, gas, food, fruit, meat, metal, steel, grass, coffee, butter,
cheese, fashion, experience, etc.

Compare the sentences41 from (82) to (88).

40
Various terms are used to describe this process: Lyons (1968:282) talks of
‘secondary recategorization’, while Quirk et al. (1985:248) uses ‘reclassification’.
41
The examples included in this section, as well as in Section 5.3, and labelled as MT
or CT illustrate the morpho-syntactic behaviour of mass terms (i.e. mass nouns) and
count terms (i.e. count nouns) respectively.

99
(82) a. Wine is healthy if you drink it in small quantities. [MT]
b. Four wines were served at dinner. They were dry wines. [CT]
c. Full-bodied, sweet or sparkling wines are usually drunk at a cooler
temperature. [CT]
d. This is an astonishingly fine wine with great concentration and
wonderful flavours of black cherry, chocolate, black raspberry and
herbs. [CT]

(83) a. The luncheon table in the little cottage was spread with cheese,
olives, sardines and bread. [MT]
b. Top with the cottage cheese, and sprinkle the mixed herbs on top.
[MT]
c. To make a fresh milk cheese at home is the simplest of processes.
[CT]
d. Swaledale is a traditional cheese of the same era as Wensleydale,
which has been revived and is now selling well. [CT]
e. It won’t be long before cheeses such as these become rarities. [CT]
f. a selection of English cheeses [CT]

(84) a. The room smelt of stale sweat and strong coffee. [MT]
b. Peter returned with fresh coffee and explained how to score and
interpret the material. [MT]
c. A variety of gourmet coffees are on sale. [CT]

(85) a. She enjoyed the feel of grass beneath her feet. [MT]
b. All grasses need light to grow well. [CT]

(86) a. The gate is made of metal. [MT]

b. They traded in gold and other precious metals. [CT]
c. A large number of chemical reactions take place when trace metals
move through the environment. [CT]

(87) a. Fur coats were considered to be the height of fashion and

sophistication. [MT]
b. Having conquered the world of fashion, she is now being courted by
Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks film company. [MT]
c. This year’s men’s fashions are brighter and more casual than ever
before. [CT]
100
d. I always find it hard to keep up with the latest fashions. [CT]

(88) a. I’d like two teas and a piece of chocolate cake, please.
b. We stopped for a cream tea on the way home
c. They competed to see who could eat most in the hotel restaurant and
gorged themselves on Cornish cream teas.
d. It may be black or green tea flavoured with jasmine flowers, is very
fragrant and is always drunk without milk.

The noun wine in (82a) is a mass noun, naming thus a kind-

level individual in Carlson’s terms. Semantically it does not divide its
reference; instead its reference is cumulative and subdivisible: any sum
of parts which are wine is wine. These semantic properties are reflected
in the syntactic behaviour: it triggers singular agreement with the verb
and singular anaphoric pronouns. This analysis applies to the nouns
cheese in (83), coffee in (84), grass in (85a), metal in (86), fashion in
(87).
In (82 a, c) the reference of the mass noun wine is viewed as
being partitioned into ‘kinds’ according to various special properties
such as flavour, colour, origin, etc. These properties provide “different
partitions with criteria of distinctiveness implicitly contained in kind of
wine” (Baciu 2004b:57). Thus any kind of wine is wine, and any
quantity of wine is part of a kind of wine. Syntactically the plural
countable term wines has count properties: plural agreement with the
verb, plural anaphoric pronouns, count quantifiers, collocations
with numeral, regular singular form that collocates with the indefinite
article a (Hornoiu 2009).
It should be noticed that such proper names as Bordeaux,
Chianti, Chablis, Jidvei, Prince Stirbey, etc. represent lexicalizations of
kinds of wine. Syntactically and semantically these proper names
function as mass terms, designating thus kind-level individuals in
Carlson’s theory.

(89) He drank too much Chianti; it went straight to his head.

B. The second class includes mass nouns whose recategorization as

countable nous refers to an act/an instance/an occasion or
occurrence of X, i.e. an act/an instant/an occasion or occurrence that
has the quality expressed by X. The interpretations of mass nouns as
count nouns may be given a unified analysis by considering the terms
101
falling under this type of recategorization as stages of the kind. All
these mass nouns recategorized as count nouns denote “spatio-temporal
slices of the kind” denoted by the corresponding mass term prior to
recategorization (Baciu 2004b; Hornoiu 2009). Examples of mass
nouns that undergo this type of categorization include the following:

(90)

attention, affection, confidence, curiosity, decency, education, idiocy,

feeling, freedom, ignominy, immorality, immersion, implication,
imposture, kindness, law, novelty, mentality, regard, respect, etc.

This type of recategorization is fairly well illustrated by the

examples below:

(91)

freedom [MT] – ‘the state of being free and allowed to do what you
want’; ‘the right to do what you want without being controlled or
restricted, especially by a government or by someone in authority’

a. There was a huge party at the Berlin Wall as East Germans

celebrated their freedom. [MT]

b. Kids have too much freedom these days. [MT]

freedoms [CT] – ‘the right to do what you want without being

controlled or restricted by anyone’

c. As children, they dreamed about the freedoms and riches they would
enjoy in the U.S. [CT]

(92)

attention [MT] – ‘the interest that people show in someone or

something’; ‘the state of carefully listening to, looking at, or thinking
about someone or something’

a. Pets need a lot of care and attention. [MT]

b. The exhibition received little attention in the press. [MT]
102
c. Scott sat down at his desk and turned his attention to the file he had
in front of him. [MT]

attentions [CT] – ‘an act of courtesy or gallantry’

a. The man then turned his attentions to (=became romantically

interested in) her sister. [CT]

(93)

law [MT] – ‘the whole system of rules that people in a particular

country or area must obey’; ‘law as a subject of study, or the profession
of being a lawyer’

a. In Sweden it is against the law to hit a child. [MT]

b. She’s studying law in London. [MT]

law [CT] ‘a rule that people in a particular country or area must obey’;
one of the rules which controls a sport or activity

c. On the crucial issue of land ownership, the many agrarian laws

passed in various States have been ineffective in practice. [CT]
d. The laws against drug use were very severe. [CT]
e. FIFA is the organization that runs world football and decides
whether any of the laws should be changed. [CT]

(94)

regard [MT] – ‘respect and admiration for someone or something’;

‘attention or consideration that is shown towards someone or
something’

a. Burt had high regard for his old law professor, Dr. Finch. [MT]
b. The present administration has demonstrated little regard for
environmental issues. [MT]

regard [CT] – ‘good wishes or greetings’

c. My husband sends his regards. [CT]

103
(95)

affection [MT] – ‘a feeling of liking or love and caring’

a. Their father never showed them much affection. [MT]

affection [CT] – ‘the feelings of love and caring that someone has’

b. Africa has always had a special place in my affections. [CT]

c. Bart had a deep affection for the old man.

(96)

confidence [MT] – ‘the feeling that one can trust someone or something
to be good, work well, or produce good results’; ‘the belief that one has
the ability to do things well or deal with situations successfully’

a. Opinion polls show that voters have lost confidence in the

administration. [MT]
b. The following teacher’s writing illustrates how his pupils have
gained in confidence and initiative. [MT]

confidence [CT] – ‘a secret or a piece of information that is private or

personal’

c. They spent their evenings drinking wine and sharing confidences.

[CT]
(iv) I have never betrayed a confidence. [CT]

(97)

kindness [MT] – ‘kind behaviour towards someone’

a. I shall never forget her kindness to me. [MT]

kindness [CT] – ‘a kind action’

b. It would be doing him a kindness to tell him the truth. [CT]

104
(98)

novelty [MT] – ‘the quality of being new, unusual, and interesting’

a. I loved driving to work at first, but the novelty soon wore off. [MT]

novelty [CT] – ‘something new and unusual which attracts people’s

attention and interest’

b. Fast-food restaurants like McDonald’s are still something of a

novelty in Moscow. [CT]

As the sentences from (91) to (98) show, the recategorized

countable nouns evince all the syntactic properties of countable nouns
in allowing count quantifiers and agreement with the verb in plural or
in taking the indefinite article a(n), when used in the singular.
In (97) kindness is an abstract mass noun which has all the
syntactic properties of mass terms and denotes ‘kind behaviour towards
someone’. The noun phrase a kindness, on the other hand, is a
countable noun and denotes one act of such behaviour.
Similarly, law is an abstract mass noun denoting ‘whole system
of rules that people in a particular country or area must obey’, whereas
the noun phrase a law refers to one slice of this whole system of rules,
to only one instantiation which realizes the kind law, namely ‘one rule’.
In (98) novelty is an abstract mass noun which denotes ‘the quality of
being new, unusual, and interesting’. A novelty, on the other hand,
denotes an instantiation of this quality.
The instances of recategorization under classes (A) and (B) are
cases of synecdoche: the part is substituted for a whole or a whole is
substituted for a part.

C. The third class includes mass nouns whose recategorization into

countable nouns denotes something related to X (X being the mass
noun recategorized as count noun). The interpretations of mass nouns
as count nouns may be given a unified analysis by considering the
terms falling under this type of recategorization as objects of the kind.
All these mass nouns recategorized as count nouns denote “object-level
entities of the kind-level entity” denoted by the corresponding mass
term Baciu (2004b: 59). The instances of recategorization belonging to

105
class (C) are cases of metonymy: the substitution of a word referring to
an attribute for the entity that is denoted.

(99)

beauty [MT] – ‘a quality that people, places, or things have that makes
them very attractive to look at’

a. This was the birthplace of the Renaissance and its streets revel in
artistic beauty. [MT]
(ii) He had written a poem about Sylvia, praising her charm and beauty.
[MT]

beauty [CT] – ‘a beautiful thing’; ‘a woman who is very beautiful’

b. Eric’s new car is a real beauty. [CT]

c. She was considered a great beauty in her youth. [CT]

(100)

novelty [MT] – ‘the quality of being new, unusual, and interesting’

a. I loved driving to work at first, but the novelty soon wore off. [MT]

novelty [CT] – ‘an unusual, small, usually cheap ornament or trinket,

often given as a present’

b. They sell a selection of crafts, novelties, and T-shirts. [CT]

(101)

justice [MT] – ‘the administration of law according to prescribed and

accepted principles’

a. The criminal was brought to justice. [MT]

justice [CT] – ‘a person appointed to administer justice’

b. A magistrate is a justice of the peace. [CT]

106
(102)

nylon [MT] – ‘a class of synthetic polyamide materials’

a. The tent was made of nylon. [MT]

nylon [CT] – ‘cloth or yarn made of this’; ‘women’s stockings that are
made of nylon’

b. She bought several nylons. [CT]

(103)

tin [MT] – ‘a soft silver-white metal that is often used to cover and
protect iron and steel’

a. The alluvial tin, from the Malayan river gravels, is almost exhausted.

tin [CT] – ‘a metal container with a lid in which food can be stored’; ‘a
small metal container in which food or drink is sold’; ‘a metal container
with a lid, in which paint, glue etc is sold’

a. She bought a tin of Christmas cookies. [CT]

b. Do you want a tin of beer? [CT]
c. All I wanted was a tin of paint. [CT]

To conclude our discussion of the recategorization of mass

nouns as countable nouns, it should be pointed out that all the three
main cases of recategorization are productive in present day English.

2.6.2 Singular mass term – Plural mass term shift

There is another class of mass nouns which, although have a

corresponding plural form, does not involve recategorization as count
nouns, as the newly formed noun is still a mass term. Consider the
following examples:

(104)

snow – snows;
107
salt – salts;
sand – sands;
water – waters;
wit – wits.

If recategorization of mass nouns into countable nouns

determines nouns to adopt new meanings, the newly formed nouns in
(104) do not change their meaning. In terms of meaning there is no
significant difference between the singular mass noun and its
corresponding plural mass noun to the extent to which the former
includes the latter (snow – snows ‘a large amount of snow’). As far as
their syntactic behaviour is concerned, these plural mass nouns differ
from their singular counterparts in that they trigger plural agreement
with the verb and plural anaphoric pronouns. However, like singular
mass nouns they require mass quantifiers (cf. Crainiceanu 2007;
Hornoiu 2009).

(105) a. Mount Kenya’s snows are fading.

b. Antarctic waters are cold, dark, deep and teeming with life.
c. The waters of the Indus basin begin in the Himalayan Mountains of
Indian held Kashmir. They flow from the hills through the arid states of
Punjab and Sind, converging in Pakistan and emptying into the Arabian
Sea south of Karachi.

2.6.3 Recategorization of count nouns as mass nouns

As we have already seen in Section 2.6.1 on the recategorization of

mass nouns as count nouns, the material may be transferred to the
entity (iron - an iron; silver – a silver; butter – butters). Similarly, a
noun denoting an entity or class of entities can be used to name the
material (an onion – much onion; a pudding – much pudding). The list
below includes several examples of nouns that although are countable
in their basic meaning may acquire a mass noun use depending on the
context:

(106) a. The rattling carriage was full of rucksacks and hikers and
black-dressed Greek ladies with chickens. [CT]
b. Would you like some chicken for dinner? [MT]

108
(107) a. Tests on naturally contaminated eggs show multiplication
cannot occur in an intact egg. [CT]
b. She cooked me egg and chips and sat by me while I ate. [MT]

(108) a. Would you like an apple? [CT]

b. There is too much apple in the salad. [MT]

(109) By mashing ten potatoes [CT], you get enough potato [MT] for
this recipe.

(110) a. Several hundred acres of rustling, wind-blown grass swept

over our feet and under scattered oaks. [CT]
b. She pressed her back against the door, grateful for the support of its
solid carved oak. [MT]

As the examples above show the countable use is for separate things or
individual instances, while the uncountable use is for something viewed
as substance or material.

2.6.4 Count nouns with no corresponding mass occurrences

Some count nouns cannot be recategorized as mass nouns, but instead

they have lexicalized forms for the corresponding mass use. This is the
particular case of count nouns that denote some animals. The meat of
the respective animal is designated by a lexical item which is
semantically and syntactically a mass noun. Consider the examples
below:

(111) Count Mass

pig pork
sheep mutton
calf veal
deer venison
cow beef

(112) a. He kept pigs and poultry. [CT]

b. She has bought some pork for dinner. [MT]

(113) a. Sheep were grazing on the hillside. [CT]

109
b. He therefore ordered an early dinner of roast mutton to be served in
his quarters at three o’clock that afternoon. [MT]

(114) a. Thus farmers sell milk and young calves, as well as wool and
lambs which are fattened on nearby lowland farms. [CT]
b. Menus tend to be Germanic with large helpings of soup, veal or
sausage and Rösti potatoes. [MT]

(115) a. We still have lots of deer, very little water and not many open
spaces. [CT]
b. They’re deer-stealers - I saw a dead deer in their car. [CT]
c. He serves the venison with a wild rice compote that contains sun-
dried pears, a hard-to-find ingredient. [MT]

(116) a. This part of West London seemed like the country to me, with
none of the disadvantages, no cows or farmers. [CT]
b. In the land of the cowboy you might expect beef to be an unfailingly
popular dish. [MT]

The noun poultry is a special case. When it denotes ‘birds such

as chickens and ducks that are kept on farms in order to produce eggs
and meat’ the noun is invariable in the plural and therefore triggers
agreement with the verb in the plural, plural anaphoric pronouns and
collocates with a plural demonstrative.

(117) a. Because the poultry being held have been fed adulterated
products, USDA cannot approve products derived from these poultry
for human consumption.
b. Poultry are free ranging and scavenge for food.
c. Smuggling of these poultry and poultry products is considered by
many to be the primary way avian flu is likely to be spread into other
countries.

When poultry denotes to ‘meat from birds such as chickens and ducks’
it has the properties of a mass noun: it triggers singular agreement
with the verb and singular anaphoric pronouns and requires mass
quantifiers.

(118) a. Have poultry once or twice a week.

b. Raw poultry is a known source of pathogens.
110
c. It’s difficult to estimate how much poultry China buys from U.S.
producers.

In both cases, however, the noun is uncountable.

2.6.5 Recategorization of proper names as count nouns

To conclude our discussion on the recategorization we should turn our

attention to cases of recategorization of proper names as count nouns.

(119) a. It is a Rembrandt but not a self-portrait.

b. The National Gallery has many more Rembrandts than the National
Gallery of Scotland.
c. So many Vermeers have not been seen together since a sale in 1696.
d. Forty pictures reputed to be “lost” Van Goghs are to go on public
display this week in an exhibition that will throw open one of the
longest-running and most acrimonious controversies in the art world.
e. Another Monet, Les arceaux de Roses, Giverny, from the artist’s
water lilies series painted in his famous garden, started the night in
pride of place with an estimate of £9-£12 million. But it sold for £8
million.
f. I believe the souls of five hundred Sir Isaac Newtons would go to the
making of a Shakespeare or a Milton.

As Quine (1960) points out, “it is not the nature of the referent which
makes a name to be a mass term, a general term or a singular term42,
but rather the way in which reality is viewed and ordered within each
natural language”.

2.7 Pluralia tantum nouns

The term pluralia tantum is Latin in origin (in the singular: plural
tantum) and it can roughly be translated as ‘plural only’. It covers the
nouns which have only one form, the plural one. Pluralia tantum nouns
have been classified according to their meaning and origin in various

42
Quine (1960:90) contrasts general terms to singular terms and defines singular
terms as terms that have unique reference, while a general term “is true of each,
severally, of any number of objects”.

111
groups that designate (i) illnesses, (ii) names of sciences, (iii) names of
games, (iv) instruments, (v) articles of clothing, (vi) parts of the body,
as well as other nouns that do not belong to these subclasses
(Stefanescu 1988: 80-81; Hornoiu 2009).
Traditional grammars have regarded the class of pluralia tantum
nouns as a homogenous one. As we shall see, however, the nouns
labelled pluralia tantum are definitely non-homogeneous with respect
to the distinction between sortals (that evince count noun properties)
and non-sortals (that display mass noun properties). Pluralia tantum
nouns can be divided into two main subclasses: (i) nouns that display
mass noun properties and (ii) nouns that evince count properties
(Stefanescu 1988; Hornoiu 2009).

2.7.1 Pluralia tantum nouns with mass noun properties

A. Nouns denoting certain physical and mental illnesses such as

appendicitis, creeps, diabetes, dismals, dumps, fidgets, glanders,
gripes, horrors, hysterics, jerks, jumps, measles, mumps, pouts, rabies,
rickets, shakes, shivers, shingles, sullens, staggers, sulks, tantrums,
thrills, tonsillitis, vapours, etc. These nouns have the properties of mass
nouns, except for the presence of the plural suffix –s on the noun.
Consider the following examples:

(120) a. Measles is in most cases a relatively harmless disease.

b. Tuberculosis and malnutrition were prevalent, as was rickets.
c. Insulin will bring a diabetic to normal without the faintest need of a
knife, but appendicitis needs an operation.
d. Rickets is caused by a deficiency of vitamin D.
e. Shingles has severe complications.

The examples in (120) show that the pluralia tantum nouns in this
group have mass noun properties:

 They trigger singular agreement with the verb and singular

anaphoric pronouns
 These nouns do not co-occur with the indefinite article a(n) and
cardinal quantifiers
 Individuation can be achieved by means of the following type
of individuating expressions: a series of, a fit of, e.g. a fit of the
dismalls/sulens, a series of sulks.
112
B. Nouns denoting some games: billiards, bowls, cards, checkers,
darts, dominoes, draughts, fives, forfeits, marbles, ninepins, skittles,
etc. These nouns have mass noun properties, except for the presence
of the plural marker. Consider the following examples that illustrate
their use:

(121) a. Billiards was gradually replaced by bridge.

b. Ninepins requires great skill.
c. Marbles is a game similar to bowls.

As in previous case, this group of nouns display mass noun behaviour:

 They trigger singular agreement with the verb and singular

anaphoric pronouns
 They do not occur with the indefinite article, count quantifiers
and numerals
 Individuation is achieved by means of such individuating
expressions as: a game of, around of.

Skittles, ninepins, draughts dominoes may also be recategorized as

countable nouns and occur in the singular form, i.e. ninepin, skittle,
draught, domino. In this case, however, designation to the pieces is
intended.

(122) a. He sets up his four ninepins – designation to bottle-shaped

objects is intended
b. In this game you must knock over as many skittles as possible –
‘skittles’ designates the objects shaped like bottles

C. Nouns that denote subjects of study/sciences and sports ending

in - ics: acoustics, aerobics, aerodynamics, aeronautics, athletics,
classics, economics, electronics, ethics, genetics, gymnastics,
linguistics, logistics, mathematics, mechanics, obstetrics, phonetics,
physics, politics, statistics, thermodynamics etc. These nouns have
mass noun behaviour since they display all the properties of mass
terms: (i) singular agreement with the verb, (ii) singular anaphoric
pronouns, (iii) no indefinite article and or cardinal quantifiers.

Consider the examples in (123):

113
(123) a. Acoustics is the study of sounds.
b. Linguistics has developed significantly in modern times.
c. Mathematics is the science of quantities; its students are
mathematicians.
d. Politics, as a profession, was of importance to him.
e. Statistics is a branch of mathematics.

Some of these nouns can be recategorized as countable nouns,

in which case they may occur with the verb in the plural, as well as
with plural determiners and anaphoric pronouns. Some may even
develop a singular form. It has been suggested that in this case we deal
with a case of metonymic shift of the type ‘the instrument for product
shift’ (Baciu 2004b:78; Hornoiu 2009). The examples below illustrate
this use:

(124)

acoustics [MT] – ‘the scientific study of sound’

acoustics [CT] – ‘the shape and size of a room which affect the way
sound is heard in it’

Seats are small but plush, and the acoustics are excellent [CT]

economics [MT] – ‘the study of the way in which money and goods are
produced and used’
economics [CT] – ‘the way in which money influences whether a plan,
business etc will work effectively’

Perhaps it is time we had a choice between parties which agree that

liberal free-market economics are here to stay [CT]

mathematics [MT] – ‘a group of related sciences including algebra,

geometry, and calculus, concerned with the study of number,
quantity, shape, etc.’
mathematics [CT] – ‘mathematical operations and processes involved
in the solution of a problem or study’

‘Do mathematics make one’s manners masculine?’ ‘Well, they have

not done so in your case. But still they are not womanly pursuits’ [CT]
114
It was those infernal mathematics, which I have always neglected [CT]

politics [MT] – ‘the study of political power and systems of

government’

politics [CT] – ‘ideas and activities relating to gaining and using power
in a country, city, etc.’; ‘someone’s political beliefs and
opinions’

Company politics are frequently vicious [CT]

His politics are clearly right-wing [CT]

statistics [MT] – ‘a science concerned with the collection, classification

and interpretation of quantitative data’
statistics [CT] – ‘quantitative data themselves’; ‘a single number which
represents a fact or measurement’

Statistics show that 50% of new businesses fail in their first year [CT]
There is one surprising statistic in your report [CT]
The statistic comes from a study recently conducted by the British
government [CT]

tactics [MT] – ‘the science of arranging and moving military forces in a

battle’
tactics [CT] – ‘plans followed to achieve an aim’

Shock tactics are being used in an attempt to stop drink drivers [CT]
One tactic she has used is to decide matters outside the formal Cabinet,
either in committees or in informal groups [CT]
Giving out criticism rather than praise is a tactic that rarely works in
the workplace [CT]

At this stage of our investigation of pluralia tantum nouns, it

should be pointed out that these three groups of nouns described above
display mass noun properties. Syntactically they co-occur with
singular verbs and singular anaphoric pronouns and they do not co-
occur with the indefinite article a(n) and cardinal quantifiers.
Semantically they do not divide their reference. The nouns in the third
group, nouns that designate sciences, may be recategorized as
countable terms. In all cases in which the recategorization from a mass
115
term to a countable term has taken place, there is a change in the type
of determiners and quantifiers.
To these three subclasses we should add the noun news, which
although plural in form, triggers singular agreement with the verb and
singular anaphoric pronouns as the examples below illustrate:

(125) a. Here’s the 10 o’clock news

b. No news is good news.
c. The latest news down the telephone line is that Madonna has just
bought one.

As in the case of the first two groups which behave as mass

nouns, individuation is achieved by means of phrases such as a piece of
news, an item of news, several pieces of news, several items of news.

(126) a. Every piece of news is scrutinised for negative implications.

b. The space agency decision was a welcome piece of news.
c. I received this piece of news with resignation but no enthusiasm.

In what follows we will move on to three more subgroups of

nouns that could be included under the heading pluralia tantum,
although some grammars treat these nouns as examples of binary nouns
or summation plurals given the fact that they denote entities (either
tools, instruments or articles of dress) that are viewed as comprising
two equal parts joined together. As we shall see from the examples
below, the nouns belonging to these subgroups display count
properties and semantically divide their reference, qualifying thus as
sortals.

2.7.2 Pluralia tantum nouns with count noun properties

D. Nouns denoting instruments/tools comprising two equal parts

joined together such as: bellows, binoculars, chains, fetters, forceps,
glasses, irons, pliers, scales, scissors, shears, spectacles, tongs,
tweezers, etc. All these nouns trigger plural agreement with the verb,
plural anaphoric pronouns and plural determiners. For the vast
majority of these nouns, individuation is possible by means of the
individuating expression a pair of, several pairs of. The individuating
expression used with the noun scales is a set of: a set of kitchen scales.

116
(127) a. Don’t touch those scissors.
b. Never use these scissors to cut paper as this will blunt them.
c. Downstairs he found Beryl at the table with the newspaper, her
coffee and a pair of scissors.
d. A pair of secateurs might also be useful.
e. On the whole, good secateurs are safer and cleaner for your roses, as
well as yourself.
f. She was plucking her eyebrows with a pair of tweezers.
Tweezers are used for handling small objects or plucking hairs.
g. I spend a lot of time on the bathroom scales - too much time - I
really should throw them away!
h. The bathroom scales are a shrine to which believers turn daily.
i. I went down to the cellar to find a pair of pliers.

A few of these nouns are found with the plural used as a

singular:

(128) a. About the only way to eliminate Argulus is to remove the sea
horses and pick off the parasites with a tweezers.
b. I had seen Bella, when she was about to fry meat, cutting it with a
scissors instead of a knife.

E. Nouns denoting articles of dress consisting of symmetrical parts

such as: braces, jeans, overalls, pants, pyjamas, shorts, suspenders,
tights, trousers, trunks, etc. Just like in the previous case, these nouns
display count noun properties: they trigger plural agreement with the
verb, plural anaphoric pronouns and plural determiners. Individuation
is achieved by means of the individuating expression a pair of.
Consider the examples below:

(129) a. These trousers are slightly too short for you.

b. Those pants have a big patch on them.
c. I stripped off my pyjamas and restored them to the rucksack.
You will then change into a set of white overalls which are made of
paper.
d. He was still carrying his mop and broom and wearing his brown
overalls.

Remarks

117
  The noun overalls has developed a singular form overall with a
slightly different meaning (‘a loose-fitting piece of clothing like
a coat, that is worn over clothes to protect them’) that displays
all the properties of countable nouns.

He was wearing a white overall on top of his grey prison issue

clothes and he pulled the overall off as soon as he was inside.
That white overall was a passport to the scene of the murder.

 Whenever nouns under D and E occur in attributive position or

in compounds, the singular form is used: a spectacle case, a
pyjama cord, a suspender belt, a trouser leg, etc.

F. Nouns designating parts of the body which are made up of two (or
several) more or less distinct parts such as: bowels, entrails, guts, gums,
lungs, innards, whiskers, etc. These nouns also evince countable
properties, qualifying as sortal terms.

(130) a. The lungs, or as they are vulgarly called lights, are eaten as
parts of the pluck or fry.
b. I stopped, breathed deeply, and smiled as sweet air filled my lungs.
c. Vitamin C is also important for healthy gums.
d. There were blood and guts all over the place.
e. She laughs and says his whiskers tickle.
f. The bowels contain more nerves than the spine.
g. Whiskers are an important sensory organ for rats.

When reference is made to one of the two parts that make up the
respective body part, some of these nouns also have a singular form,
qualifying thus as fully fledged countable terms (bowel – bowels, lung
– lungs, whisker- whiskers, gum – gums, tit – tits, eyelash – eyelashes,
etc.).

(131) a. If the lung is expanding, the radiation bouncing off it is pushed

closer together, slightly raising its frequency.
b. One of the knife blows had punctured a lung.
c. It can take 72 hours for food to pass through the gut.
d. This suggests a discrepancy in absorption in both the large and small
bowel.

118
e. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University removed all but one
whisker from a group of rats. Not only did the single whisker activate
the expected neurons, it also stimulated surrounding clusters of
neurons.

To the six subgroups of nouns considered so far and labelled

‘pluralia tantum’, grammarians also add some other nouns that seem to
display a coherent syntactic behaviour but do not appear to form a
semantically coherent group. Such a subgroup includes such nouns as
dregs, grits, grounds, husks, lees, sediments, remains, etc. These nouns
trigger plural agreement with the verb. However, from a semantic
point of view, they behave like mass nous and thus they do not divide
their reference: any sum of parts of the stuff is the respective stuff.
Consider the examples below:

(132) a. On the table were the remains of the evening meal.

b. Coffee grounds act as a green material with a carbon-nitrogen (C-N)
ratio of 20-1. Combined with leaves and straw, coffee grounds
generate heat and will speed up the compost process.

Nouns like amends, annals, arms (‘weapons’), assizes,

auspices, communications (‘ways of sending information, especially
using radio, telephone, or computers’), outskirts, remains, and troops.
These nouns are plural-only nouns both in form and syntactically. They
trigger plural agreement with the verb and plural anaphoric
pronouns.

(133) a. He still lives on the outskirts of his adopted city close on 30

years after he signed for them.
b. The annals of the police courts tell a rather different story.
c. Assizes were held periodically in every English county.
d. Modern communications are enabling more people to work from
home.
e. As for the Federal troops, they were dispirited but not robbed of
their confidence.
d. Six hundred federal troops from Fort Sam Houston were assigned
to aid in keeping order.

Another group of nouns that are often included in the class of

‘pluralia tantum’ nouns includes nouns ending in –ing which occur
119
with a plural form and trigger plural agreement with the verb and
plural anaphoric pronouns, as the examples below illustrate:

(134) a. All bearings herein are magnetic.

b. There were considerable savings both on the capital cost of power
stations and on their operating costs.
c. So they packed their few belongings and rushed to southeast
Washington.
d. The incomings and outgoings of the private purse are faithfully set
down.

All these nouns, with few exceptions (e.g. earnings, leavings)

have a singular form. Thus they seem to behave as countable terms.
Nevertheless, most of these nouns, when used in the singular, qualify as
‘event nouns’ in which case they designate an ‘act’ or ‘process’ and
semantically and syntactically behave like uncountable/mass nouns
(Baciu 2004b:84). We can thus safely assume that when they are used
in the singular they undergo the recategorization MT → CT.
Regarding the semantic and syntactic behaviour of pluralia
tantum nouns we can conclude that, contrary to the descriptions
offered by traditional grammars, these nouns make up a non-
homogenous class with respect to the distinction mass term –
countable term. The class can be roughly divided into two subclasses: a
subclass of pluralia tantum nouns that exhibit mass noun properties and
another sub-class that displays countable noun properties. The presence
of in-between cases like the ones discussed above clearly shows that
the distinction between mass nouns and countable nous is not discrete
but scalar: some nouns meet some but not all count or mass noun
properties.

2.8 Number with compound nouns

Compound nouns may be countable or uncountable. Others, although

including countable nouns, tend to be used in the singular or plural. The
plural forms of compound nouns vary according to the type of words
they consist of.

120
2. 8.1 Plural in the first element

A few compound nouns are less directly related to phrasal verbs

consisting of a noun or a gerund that has been derived from a phrasal
verb (e.g. pass by ˃ passer-by; sum up ˃ summing-up).

(135) But outside the battered congress building few passers-by look
twice at yet another standoff between demonstrators and riot police.

In compound nouns where the noun is postmodified by a

prepositional phrase, an adjective, an adverb or an infinitive, the first
element (i.e. the noun) is usually marked for plural.

(136) a. I like birds of prey and hawks particularly.

b. The veil places brides-to-be at a distinct advantage.
c. I have considered them my comrades in arms.

The following list includes some common compound nouns marked for
plural in the first element:

Singular Plural

attorney general attorneys general

brother-in-law brothers-in-law
coat-of-arms coats-of-arms
commander-in-chief commanders-in-chief
consul general consuls general
court martial courts martial
father-in-law fathers-in-law
grant-in-aid grants-in-aid
hanger-on hangers-on
lady-in-waiting ladies-in-waiting
looker-on lookers-on
maid of honour maids of honour
man-at-arms men-at-arms
man-of-war men-of-war
mother-in-law mothers-in-law
notary public notaries public
passer-by passers-by
poet laureate poets laureate
121
sister-in-law sisters-in-law
summing-up summings-up

In a number of compounds where the head is postmodified by an

adjective, the compound is felt as a single unit, thus the plural
inflection -s can be added at the end:

lord mayors for lords mayor

brigadier generals for brigadiers general
court-martials for courts-martial
knight-errants for knights-errant
poet laureates for poets laureate

(137) Two US soldiers face court martials for marrying Iraqi women.

Similarly, in some compounds where the noun is postmodified

by a prepositional phrase the compound is felt as a single unit, thus the
plural inflection -s is often added at the end. This feature is particularly
characteristic of AmE:

(138)
AmE BrE
commander-in-chiefs commanders-in-chief
mother-in-laws mothers-in-law
sister-in-laws sisters-in-law
daughter-in-laws daughters-in-law

(139) a. Some mother-in-laws are sweet. They bake cookies for you
and support your every decision.
b. Probably one of the most beloved Commander-In-Chiefs in history c.
was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a man who led the U. S. and its allies
in World War II, crafted the New Deal, and is rightly (or wrongly)
credited with lifting the U. S. out of the Great Depression.

2.8.2 Plural in the last element

If the final word of a compound noun is a countable noun, the plural

suffixes is added to the last element of the compound.

(140) a. Air raids were taking place every night.

122
b. Shrill voices would be heard through letter-boxes.
c. …health centres, banks, post offices and police stations.

Compound nouns related to phrasal verbs are spelt with a hyphen and
marked for plural in the last element.

(141) a. Nobody seems disturbed about cover-ups when they are

essential to the conduct of a war.
b. People who drive smarter, faster cars than mine are a bunch of low-
grade show-offs.

The following are some of the most common compounds marked for
plural in the last element:

Singular Plural

apple tree apple trees

assistant director assistant directors
boy friend boy friends
close-up close-ups
cover-up cover-ups
fountain pen fountain pens
shut-in shut-ins
grown-up grown-ups
sit-in sit-ins
show-off show-off
take-off take-offs
gin-and-tonic gin-and-tonics
forget-me-not forget-me-nots

Compounds written as one word add the plural morpheme to the end of
the word.

Singular Plural

breakdown breakdowns
bucketful bucketfuls
cupful cupfuls
journeyman journeymen
spoonful spoonfuls
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standby standbys
stepchild stepchildren
stowaway stowaways
toothpick toothpicks

2.8.3 Plural in both the first and the last element

Compounds including the nouns man and woman are marked for plural
in both elements.
Singular Plural

gentleman farmer gentlemen farmers;

manservant menservants
woman doctor women doctors

Some compound nouns borrowed from such languages as

French and Latin retain their plural forms from the language of origin.

(142) a. [...] aided by agents by agents provocateurs sent into our

midst.
b. [...] while the nouveaux riches of younger states built themselves
palatial mansions.

2.9 Conclusions

The count/mass distinction depends on how things are conceptualized,

which to a certain extent is independent of their objective nature. An
entity can be construed in alternate ways, each of which highlights
certain aspects of it while downplaying others. To take an example,
some oblong pieces of wood can be referred to as either boards or
lumber. Although they are referentially identical, the plural form
boards renders salient the individual constitutive entities, whereas
lumber suppresses their individuation in favour of highlighting a
homogenous mass: three boards vs. *three lumber, these boards vs. this
lumber. These different construals are incorporated as part of the
established meanings of these forms, a matter of shared linguistic
convention. Speakers thus have the conceptual flexibility to construe
the situation in either fashion and select the form whose meaning best
suits their communicative intent.

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 A further consequence of this conceptual flexibility is the great
fluidity of the count/mass distinction. The count/mass distinction is
anything but a rigid lexical opposition such that a given noun belongs
definitively and exclusively to one or the other category. For instance,
diamond functions as a mass noun when the constitutive substance is
not discretely instantiated, but instead its qualitative properties are
focused on (Diamond is a very hard substance). Similarly, gold may
function as a count noun when it refers to a kind of gold (a discrete
though abstract entity) rather than the substance per se (I am looking
for a gold that is just the right colour for a ring).
To varying degrees, particular forms are conventionally
established as either count or mass nouns, or even both. Learning such
conventions is part of mastering a language. However, there is always
the option a novel construal. Consequently, general patterns of
language use for recategorizing count nouns as mass nouns, and the
reverse, ensure that almost every noun can in principle be employed in
either manner.
However, not all nouns fit comfortably in the classificatory
scheme mentioned above. Cattle, for instance, is not a plural (since
there is no corresponding singular), yet it grammatically behaves as
such: those cattle, few cattle, Several cattle are grazing, etc.
Conversely, many nouns that are plural in form diverge from typical
plurals both in meaning and grammatical behaviour. A well-known
example is oats, which appears to be the plural of oat, a stem which
does occur (e.g. oatmeal). But this stem cannot be used as a singular
count noun to designate one of the salient constitutive particles (*an
oat, *this oat), nor are the particles countable (*three oats, many oats).
On the other hand, nouns like scissors, pliers, tweezers, binoculars,
trousers, shorts, which designate a single object made up of two
identical parts, exhibit varying mixtures of singular- and plural-noun
behaviours (a scissors, but These scissors are broken).

2.10 Practice

Activity 1
Using Appendix I as a guide underline all the words that fit the
following sentences without any other alterations.

1. Not a great deal of experiments/investigations/work/research

has been done on this.
125
 2. Almost every detail/explanation/information/news he gave us
seemed inaccurate to me.
3. You see a lot of bad behaviour/conduct/custom/manner at
football matches.
4. Does it do much damage/harm/hurt/injury?
5. That picture isn’t of much importance/price/value/worth.
6. They have such terrible climate/storms/temperature/weather.
7. Neither computer/equipment/machine/machinery is suitable.
8. Each bag/baggage/luggage/suitcase should be labelled.
9. There’s not enough fun/joke/joy/ around these days, but plenty
of complaint/courage/patience.
10. They’re looking for diamond / gold / diamonds.

Activity 2

Underline the correct words or phrases in italics to complete this

article.

In today’s Cookery Corner I’d like to address a request from Mrs

Parkinson of Suffolk for (1) an information/information about which
type of (2) chocolate/chocolates to use in cooking. Well, Mrs
Parkinson, my (3) advice is/advices are always to use the best possible
chocolate you can find. It’s the same principle as with (4) wines/wine:
in cooking always use (5) an equivalent quality/equivalent quality to
what you eat or drink. With chocolate, the reason for this is that higher
quality chocolate will always give your cakes and sweets (6) better/a
better taste. To judge the quality of chocolate, look at the amount of
cocoa in the chocolate. Good quality chocolate has more cocoa solids
and (7) less sugar/fewer sugars. For the best taste choose chocolate
with a high cocoa (8) contents/content – never (9) fewer than/less than
70 per cent cocoa solids and as much as 80 percent if possible. It goes
without saying that you should also use other (10)
ingredient/ingredients of the highest quality, too. If, for example,
you’re using coffee in your chocolate recipe, always use (11) a strong,
fresh coffee/strong, fresh coffee. If you’re making (12) a cake/cake, use
the right kind of (13) flours/flour, and always weigh the ingredients on
your kitchen (14) scale/scales. Believe me, if you follow these simple
rules, next time you bake a chocolate cake, there won’t be (15) a
lump/a slice left over!

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Activity 3

Put into the singular as many of the nouns in the following

sentences as can be used in the singular in the given context, and
make other changes that then become necessary:

1. The Middle Ages were times of feudal rivalries.

2. The drivers must produce their certificates to the customs.
3. The soldiers left their arms in the barracks.
4. Barracks are buildings used as military quarters.
5. Goods trains carry heavier loads than trucks do.

Activity 4

Put into the plural as many of the nouns in the following sentences
as will take a plural form, and make other changes that become
necessary.

1. A crisis often occurs in the best regulated families.

2. Another criterion is needed in analyzing this phenomenon.
3. The anonymous workman was the real hero on the campus.
4. The runner-up was given a pound note.
5. The skeleton found in the lower stratum was taken at once at the
museum.

Activity 5

Using Appendix I as a guide underline all the words in italics that

without further alteration can fit into the following sentences.

1. Tom is always offering advice/ assistance / idea / suggestion.

2. You shouldn’t judge him on one achievement /failure /progress
/success.
3. It was difficult for him to find career / employment /job / work.
4. His new job is something to do with advertisement / advertising
/ publicity / marketing.
5. Buy now – it’s a real bargain/saving/savings/reduction.
6. There is a/an fortune/income/money/wealth to be made from
computers these days.

127
 7. I need a new clothes/clothing/ suit/underwear.
8. Modern ammunition/arms/ equipment/ weapons/ weaponry is
sophisticated.
9. You’ll have to get a leave /pass /permission/ permit to get into
the factory
10. Did you have a good experience /fortune/luck/time while you
were away?
11. One scene/ scenery/ view/ countryside particularly stays in my
mind.

Activity 6

Complete each sentence with one suitable partitive from the list
below. The same partitive can be used more than once. You may
choose to refer to Appendix II

bar; blade; clap; cube; dollop; flight; grain; head; hunk; item; loaf;
lump; piece; pinch; rasher; set; sheet; shred; slice; speck; squeeze;
wad

1. Let me give you a ….. of advice.

2. There is not a …. of evidence to support the theory.
3. There is an interesting ….. of news in the paper.
4. A ….. of stairs takes you to the top of the house.
5. Could I have another ….. of paper, please?
6. Put another ……. of coal on the fire.
7. Helen has a lovely…. of hair.
8. Do you want another ….. of toast?
9. We bought Mike and Lynn a …. of cutlery for a wedding
present.
10. There was not a single …… of grass left standing.
11. It was a gross exaggeration, but there was a …. of truth in it.
12. The lightning was followed by a ……. of thunder.
13. I’ve got one or two useful…..of information to pass on to you.
14. Adam fried himself an egg and a couple of ….. of bacon.
15. I saw him trying to press a … of cash into the woman’s hand.
She wouldn’t take it.
16. For twenty years they had baked a small … of bread for each
child in the parish as a First Communion gift.
17. Jack cut off a …. of meat and handed it to Simon.
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 18. Your average chocolate …., far from being the energy snack
advertisers would have you believe, is loaded with fat.
19. He brushed a … of dust from his sleeve as he waited for the
silence he required.
20. He put a …. of honey on his bread and spread it around with a
knife.
21. Add a little finely chopped onion, a few black olives, fruity
olive oil and a …. of lemon.
22. A …. of salt in each bowl stops the mosquitoes breeding in the
water.
23. You always end up with …. of sand in your food when you eat
at the beach.
24. To my left as I entered were two washbasins with a single cold-
water faucet and a … of soap on the side.
25. She dropped a …. of sugar into her tea and stirred it with a
spoon.
26. They are no bigger than …. of rice.

Activity 7

Fill each of the numbered gaps with one of the nouns listed. Each
noun should be used once only.

stroke, stream, amount, shock, drop, trace, stack, torrent, touch, dash

Danny had a (1) ……. of red hair at the time and was at an age when a
(2) ……… of questions was the order of the day. I was tired of the (3)
…………. of answers I had been required to give all day and had
anyway been suffering from a (4) ……… of flu. I decided that a (5)
……. of brandy with a (6) ……… of lemon might just help my mental
and physical condition. I worked my way through the (7) ……… of
empty bottles left in the kitchen after last night’s party and by a (8)
………. of luck found one with a tiny (9) …….. of the contents still
remaining. I took a sip and felt much better. As I was tucking Danny
into bed he asked, naturally without a (10) …… of irony: ‘Why are you
wearing Daddy’s perfume, Mummy?’

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Activity 8

Using Appendix II as a guide add one of the following nouns to

complete these sentences:

chips; rain; thugs; silence; milk; sunshine; abuse; dust; evidence; flu

1. He was attacked by a gang of ……

2. Would you like a portion of……..?
3. I’m sure I just felt a spot of ………
4. You haven’t got a shred of……., have you?
5. Would you like a drop of ….?
6. My grandson’s real a rain of ……
7. There wasn’t a speck of …. to be seen.
8. I think I’ve got a touch of ….
9. He was greeted with a torrent of …..
10. Her enquires were met with a wall of ……

Activity 9

Make the right agreement between the subject and the verb by
selecting one member of each of the pairs of verb phrases in the
following sentences:

1. There is/are people waiting to see you.

2. The people wholeheartedly support/supports you.
3. Ours is/are a great people isn’t it/aren’t they?
4. The police has/have an unenviable task.
5. You old folk doesn’t/don’t know anything about us.
6. Splendid cattle was/were grazing on the hillside.
7. The youth is/are more serious than my generation was.
8. The youth was/were more serious than his uncle.
9. The news, I’m afraid, has/have got much worse.
10. Measles is/are an unpleasant ailment.
11. Linguistics has/have developed rapidly in modern times.
12. The acoustics of this hall is/are excellent.
13. The archives of this society is/are kept in the basement.
14. Bacteria of the harmful kind cause/causes disease.

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Activity 10

Make the right agreement in the following sentences. Write out all
the possible alternatives.

1. Some/this/these folk don’t/doesn’t know how to spend its/their

money.
2. This/these family need/needs help.
3. This/these belongings of John’s was/were found in the
cupboard.
4. I paid 100 pounds for this/these binoculars, but it/they
isn’t/aren’t very good.
5. The police has/have a hard job to do.
6. What was/were the news on television last night?
7. There is/are a couple of people outside who/which want/wants
to talk to you.
8. The Prime Minister’s office has/have issued a statement.
9. The outskirts of the town is/are rather dull.
10. A majority of the strikers want/wants to return to work.
11. Our MP’s majority was/were higher this time than last time.
12. Why is/are there remains of food on the table?
13. The public has/have a right to know what money is being spent
in its/their name.
14. The audience was/were enraptured.

Activity 11

In the following groups, there is one noun that cannot be used in

the phrase, either for reasons of meaning or collocation. Underline
the one that does not fit.

1. a torrent of water/abuse/questions/snow
2. a pool of water/spilt milk/blood/strawberries
3. a bunch of flowers/people/bread/bananas
4. a trace of irony/blood/children/smoke
5. a lump of coal/ideas/sugar/meat
6. a touch of frost/salt/flu/irony
7. a ray of sunshine/hope/paper/light
8. a flock of birds/sheep/tourists/grass
9. a gang of hooligans/thieves/actors/kids
131
 10. a point of honour/question/order/light

Activity 12

Using Appendix II as a guide circle the word that best completes

each sentence.

1. Even the tiniest……of dust can damage delicate electrical

equipment.
a piece; b portion; c shred; d speck
2. Lawyers claim that there isn’t a ……. Of evidence that would
stand up to examination.
a touch; b tuft; c shred; d segment
3. This particular species had ….of hair behind the ears.
a tufts; b groups; c morsels; d pieces
4. A constant……of traffic made its way past the building.
a jet; b dribble; c gush; d stream
5. News of the stock market crash caused a ……. of panic among
financial traders in the city.
a wave; b piece; c clump; d column
6. The plane crashed in a …….of fire.
a pile; b spurt; c mass; d ball
7. I’m afraid I’ve completely lost the …… of the argument.
a stream; b trace; c thread; d idea
8. You need to mix equal……of oil and lemon juice.
a segments; b portions; c piles; d pools
9. Do you want to open another ……of orange juice?
a packet; b sack; c cask; d carton
10. A piece of paper was caught by a …….of wind.
a blow; b spurt; c gust; d wave

Activity 13

Using Appendix I as a guide complete the following by supplying the

plural form of the nouns in italics. There may be alternative
answers.

1. Is this the only series of series of children’s book you stock?

2. No, we have several other……. for older children.
3. I’m buying another encyclopaedia.
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 4. How many …… have you got now?
5. She’s busy writing an index, and the appendix to her book.
6. She seems to spend more time writing …… and …… than the
actual book.
7. 4. This is a crisis.
8. Oh dear, your whole life is a series of ……..
9. He’ll send you a memorandum.
10. He’s always sending …….
11. Have you got a prospectus?
12. There are two …… Which do you want?
13. He needs a stimulus.
14. But he never reacts to any …….
15. What’s your criterion for personal success?
16. I think different people have different ……..

Activity 14

Finish each of the following sentences in such a way that it is as

similar as possible in meaning to the sentence printed before it.

1. I heard some fascinating news on the radio this morning. I heard

a fascinating ………………………………….
2. The police used handcuffs to restrain the aggressive young man.
Handcuffs………
3. A few roads in the Brighton area have been affected by the
recent floods. A small
number……………………………………
4. The medical profession considers that children eat too many
sweet and fatty things today. The medical profession considers
that children should………………………
5. We’ve got quite a lot of unwanted furniture since we moved to
the smaller house. We’ve got several…………………………
6. The management expects all staff to attend the meeting
tomorrow afternoon. All
staff……………………………………….
7. They should now address the questions of VAT and fuel tax.
What……………………
8. A lot of older men sit in the cafés and play dominoes.
Dominoes…………………………………

133
 9. In a democracy the government is elected by the people. In a
democracy the people…………………………………….

Activity 15

In each of the following sentences replace the underlined phrase by

a noun phrase with an adjective as head (i.e. an adjectival head),
when such replacement is possible.

1. Democracy gave poor people, as well as rich people, a part to

play in governing the city.
2. The injured people were conveyed in ambulances to the General
Hospital.
3. The injured man lay unattended for several hours.
4. If those who are blind lead others who are blind, both will fall
into the ditch.
5. He sat there as silent as if he were a dumb man.
6. Does anyone know the dead man’s name?
7. Always speak well of those who have died.
8. I fear she is no longer in the land of those who live.
9. Fear of what is unknown often makes people conservative.
10. Nothing is so certain to happen as something that we do not
expect.
11. These seats are reserved for people who have been disabled.
12. The English country gentleman galloping after a fox – what is
unspeakable in full pursuit of something he cannot eat.
13. The nurse sleeps sweetly, hired to watch those who are sick,
whom, snoring, she disturbs.
14. Have you heard the latest news?
15. Wise men are often confounded by a foolish man.
16. We’re trying to raise money to help people in need.

Activity 16

Arrange the following words to make 18 compounds:

friend; news; pull; mouse; pen; freezer; estate; mat; bulletin; ring;
fridge; car; cookery; computer; flow; phone; watch; ozone; will; skate;

134
recycling; traffic; sliding; white; game; chart; book; card; strap; centre;
layer; lights; doors; board; power;

Activity 17

Using Appendix I as a guide supply the plural of the following

countable compound nouns:

address book frying pan

air conditioner gin-and-tonic
air raid guided missile
alarm clock health center
assembly line heart attack
baby-sitter high school
back-seat driver human being
bank account letter-box
bird of prey lily of the valley
book token looker-on
blood donor musical instrument
bride-to-be nervous breakdown
brother-in-law news bulletin
bring-and-buy sale old hand
burglar alarm one-parent family
bus stop package holyday
can opener parking meter
car park passer-by
come-on pen-friend
compact disc police station
comrade in arms post office
contact lens runner-up
cover-up sleeping bag
credit card summing-up
drawing pin swimming pool
driving licence T-shirt
estate agent tea bag
fairy tale telephone number
film star traveller’s cheque
fire engine tea-table
forget-me-not washing-machine
fork-lift truck X-ray
135
 zebra crossing youth hostel

Activity 18

Rewrite the following sentences in correct English.

1. The whole family was too shocked to say a word.

2. A pack of sheep were scattered all over the field.
3. There were less horses in the stables than we expected.
4. What will they do with those money?
5. Everybody there were reluctant to accept it.
6. That morning she heard a terrible news.
7. I couldn’t find the luggages I had left on the platform.
8. The bad in each of us must be kept under control.
9. He went to the shed to cut some woods.
10. The volcanos in the seas around Japan are said to be active.
11. The cattle was taken to the market.
12. The production of these goods and their sale abroad has
increased.
13. The audience is asked to take its seats.
14. There are several hundred of strikers in the factory yard.
15. In today’s world the plane is the safest mean of transport.
16. The aircrafts were all ready to take off.
17. There are a lot of bacteriums in this water.
18. A big number of people were already there.
19. They were brothers in the same religious order.
20. The old and the ill find winter especially hard.
21. Johnsons invited us over to dinner.
22. These crimes are the works of terrorists.
23. Please mind your own businesses!
24. I’ve got a terrible tooth pain.
25. All the man-servants were tired.

136
 CHAPTER 3

Determiners

3.1 Preliminary remarks

The functional category typical of the lexical category noun is that of

determiners. The category Determiner (D) includes a limited number of
members that have idiosyncratic behaviour, having specific
distributional and interpretative properties (Cornilescu 2006). In actual
usage, nouns appear in noun phrases. The reference of a noun phrase
depends on the accompanying determiner. The following items are
included in the category of determiners:

a) Articles: the definite article the (e.g. the book), the indefinite
article a/an (e.g. a book, an umbrella), the null determiner
(e.g. books), and the negative indefinite article no
b) Demonstrative determiners: this, that, those, these (e.g.
this/that book, these/those books)
c) Possessive determiners: my, his, etc. (e.g. my book, his car)
d) Article-like quantifiers (that have the syntactic position of
articles): every, each, all, some, any, what, which, etc.

(Jackendoff 1977, Cornilescu, 2006)

Determiners form a set of closed-system items. Within the

larger class of determiners Quirk et al. (1985) further distinguish three
sub-classes, set up on the basis of their position in the NP in relation to
each other:

Central determiners: the, a, this, my, as in the book, my car, this dog
Predeterminers: half, all, double, as in all the people
Postdeterminers: seven, many, few, etc., as in the many passengers

137
Within each sub-class, the items are mutually exclusive with each
other, i.e. they are in a choice relation, they occur one instead of
another. For instance, in the case of central determiners, there cannot be
more than one central determiner occurring before the noun head:

(1)

*a the boy
*the my book
*a some boy

Across these classes, however, they are in a chain relation, i.e. they
occur one after another. Their order within the NP is a fix one, with
predeterminers preceding central determiners, and postdeterminers
following central determiners: all the many pretty houses.
The aim of this chapter is to show that, although they belong to
the same distributional paradigm, there are important differences
between the two. The differences between the definite and indefinite
articles can be accounted for in terms of the affinity between the
definite article the and the demonstrative this on the one hand, and the
affinity between the indefinite article a(n) and the numeral one on the
other hand.
As shown in Chapter 2 the definite and indefinite articles
subcategorize nouns differently. The definite article the is neutral with
respect to the opposition countable-uncountable, or singular-plural, thus
being able to accompany any kind of noun (with the exception of
proper names). The distribution of the indefinite article a(n), on the
other hand, is restricted to countable singular nouns.
Moreover, there are differences between the definite and
indefinite articles that arise from the types of entities implied by their
use. While the definite article can determine a noun whose referent may
be situated at any ontological level (object-level individual, kind-level
individual), the indefinite article cannot determine a noun designating a
kind. Consequently, the indefinite article cannot accompany a mass
term (MT), unless the MT is recategorized into a countable term, as we
have seen in Chapter 2.

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3.2 Co-occurrence of determiners

3.2.1 Central determiners: the, a(n), null determiner

The articles (a(n), null determiner, the) are central to the classes of
determiners to the extent to which they have no function independent of
the noun they precede. Unlike the articles, other determiners, like some,
are also independent pronouns:

(2) a. I want the ink. *Here is the.

b. I want some. Here is some

Furthermore, the articles have no lexical meaning but solely contribute

definite or indefinite reference to the nouns they determine. Yet the
dependence is not unilateral. A countable noun in the singular like
book, for instance, is, on its own, only a lexical item. It requires a
central determiner of some kind to assume grammatical status.
The definite and indefinite articles are the most commonly used
central determiners and their distribution is dependent upon the class of
nouns they precede. Relating definite reference to the category of
number, we obtain the following system for countable and uncountable
noun phrases:

Count Uncountable
Definite the book the music
Singular
Indefinite a book music

Definite the books -

Plural
Indefinite books -

Beside the definite article the, there are two indefinite articles in
English a(n) and null determiner. The former occurs with countable
nouns in the singular, while its null determiner analogue precedes mass
139
nouns and countable nouns in the plural. Both the and a have a
different form when the following word begins with a vowel, though
the does not display this difference in writing:

the bird /ð∂/ the owl /ði/

a bird /∂/ an owl /∂n/

Like the definite article, there are several other determiners that can
co-occur with singular countable nous, plural countable nouns and
mass nouns.

(a) The demonstrative determiners: this and that (with mass nouns
and singular countable nouns), these and those (with plural countable
nouns):
(3) a. I prefer this painting/music to that painting/music.
b. These desks are imported but those tables are made locally.

(b) The possessive determiners: my, our, your, his, he, its, their.
(4) I admire her house/books/taste.

(c) The wh- determiners: which, whose, whichever, whatever, whether

as relatives, indefinite relatives or interrogatives.

(5) a. Please come at noun, by which time I shall be back in my office.

b. The woman whose book you reviewed is on TV tonight
c. They will disapprove of whatever music is played.
d. Which house do you prefer?

(d) The negative determiner no

(6) He has no car/children/concentration.

All these determiners (sometimes with a modification of form as in

theirs) have a pronominal role as well.

140
Like the indefinite article, the following classes of determiners co-
occur only with singular countable nouns:

(a) The article-like quantifiers: every, each:

(7) We have to interview every/each student separately.

(b) The non-assertive dual determiner: either

(8) There is no parking permitted on either side of the street.

(c) The negative dual determiner: neither

(9) Parking is permitted on neither side of the street.

Like the null determiner, there are determiners that co-occur only with
mass nouns and countable nouns in the plural:

(a) The general assertive determiner: some

(10) I would like some bread /rolls, please.

(b) The general non-assertive determiner: any

(11) I haven’t any bread/rolls left.

(c) The quantitative determiner: enough

(12) We have enough equipment/tools for the job.

3.2.2 Predeterminers

Predeterminers form a class of generally mutually exclusive items that

precede central determiners. Within the class of predeterminers, the
following subsets can be identified:

(a) all, both, half

(b) the multipliers: double, twice, three times
(c) fractions: one-third, one-fifth

All, both, half

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These predeterminers can occur before articles, demonstratives, and the
possessives: all/both/half the/these/our students. None of these
predeterminers can co-occur with the following quantitative
determiners: every, each, some, any, no, enough. However, there is an
adverbial use of half in emphatic negation where it can precede enough:

(13) He hasn’t half/nearly enough money.

Beyond these generalizations, their occurrence needs to be described on

an individual basis.

ALL occurs with countable nouns in the plural and with mass nouns as
in:

(14) all the book all the music

all books all music

All is used with the null determiner for generic reference:

(15) a. All men are born equal (generic reference).

b. All the men in the mine wore helmets (specific reference).

c. All is rare with singular concrete count nouns:

(16) ? I haven’t used all the pencil

though it is less rare with contrastive stress:

(17) I haven’t read áll the book

Where the book is treated as a kind of divisible mass noun. The normal
constructions would be: all of the book, the whole book. Before certain
singular temporal nouns all is used with the null determiner in variation

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with the definite article: all(the) day/morning/night. The null
determiner construction is normal in negative contexts:

(18) I haven’t seen him all day.

BOTH occurs with countable nouns in the plural, as in both books. ALL
and BOTH (but not HALF) can occur after the head:

(19) The students all/both handed in their papers.

With pronouns this is the only possible position:

(20) They all/both handed in their papers.

HALF occurs with countable nouns in the singular or in the plural and
with uncountable nouns as in:

(21) half the books half the music

half a book * half music

In addition to being predeterminers, all, both, half can be used

pronominally:

(22) a. All/Both the students sat for the exam and all/both passed.
b. All/Both the students sat for the exam but half failed.

All, both and half can be followed by an of- construction, which is

optional with nouns but obligatory with personal pronouns:

(23) all (of) the meat all of it

both (of) the students both of them
half (of) the time half of it

(b) Multipliers:

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This second type of predeterminers includes DOUBLE, TWICE,
THREE/FOUR….TIMES, etc. which occur with countable nouns in the
plural and mass nouns and with countable nouns in the singular
denoting number or amount: double their salaries, twice his strength,
three times this amount.

The multipliers have two uses as predeterminers. When the following

determiner is the definite article, demonstrative or possessive the
multiplier applies to the noun so determined:

(24) twice/double the length (‘a length twice as great’)

three times her salary (‘a salary three times as large’)

When the following determiner is the indefinite article or each or every,

the multiplier applies to a measure such as frequency set against the
unit specified by the following noun: once a day, twice each game, four
times every year.

Unlike ALL and BOTH, these predeterminers cannot occur after the
noun head:

(25) *The amount double is what I asked for

Moreover DOUBLE, TWICE, THREE/FOUR….TIMES, etc. have no

analogue with of- construction: *double of the amount.

(c) Fractions

The fractions ONE-THIRD, TWO-FIFTHS, THREE-QUARTERS, can be

followed by determiners and have the alternative of- construction:

(26) He did it in one-third (of) the time it took me.

ALL is not mutually exclusive with fractions when it serves as a mass

modifier:
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(27) a. They cut out two-thirds of it.
b. All two-thirds of it

3.2.3 Postdeterminers

In a noun phrase, postdeterminers immediately follow after central

determiners just as predeterminers immediately come before
determiners.

Prederminer: Both the young women were successful.

Postdeterminer: The two young women were successful.

With null determiner the distinction is neutralized:

(28) a. Both young men were successful.

b. Two young men were successful.

Within the class of postdeterminers two sets can be identified:

(a) ordinals: first, fourth, last, other;

(b) quantifiers: seven, ninety, many, few, plenty of, a lot of, several.

When they can co-occur in the same NP, items from (a) usually precede
items from (b):

(29) the first two poems

my last few possessions

Among items in (b), there are two important distinctions involving few
and little. First few occurs only with plural countable nouns, little only
with uncountable nouns. Second when preceded by the indefinite
article a each has a positive meaning; without the indefinite article a
each conveys a negative connotation. Thus:

(30) a. I play a few games (i.e. ‘several’).

145
b. I play few games (i.e. ‘hardly any’).
c. She ate a little bread (i.e. ‘some’).
d. She ate little bread (i.e. ‘hardly any’).

There is also a contrast involving assertive and non-assertive usage.

Some items are predominantly assertive (such as plenty of, a few, a
little, a good many), while others are predominantly non-assertive (such
as much, many):

(31) a. They need plenty of time.

b. They don’t need much time.
c. He has written a good many poems.
d. He hasn’t written many poems.

3.3 The definite article and definite descriptions

Linguistic expressions that include in the definite article the and a

nominal head are known as definite descriptions, e.g. the man, the car,
the dog, the house, the book on the table, etc. Definite descriptions
refer to entities which can be identified uniquely in the contextual or
general knowledge shared by the speaker and the addressee. Definite
descriptions carry presupposition-related readings of existence, i.e. they
invoke the speaker’s commitment to the existence of the entity named,
thus expressing familiarity and shared knowledge. Such shared
knowledge is partly knowledge of the world and partly knowledge of
the English grammar. The definite article the conventionally implicates
that there is a subset of entities in the universe of discourse which is
mutually shared by speaker and addressee and within which definite
referents exist and are unique. Like demonstrative expressions,
personal pronouns and proper names, definite expressions function as
singular terms the referent of which can be uniquely identified (Quine
1960:90).
Expressions like man, dog, book, etc. do not ‘refer’, they do
not have a referent in the sense of pointing to a particular entity, but
rather express a property and designate denote a set of entities that have
the property of ‘being a man/dog book’. In order to make an expression
‘referential’ i.e. pick out/identify a particular entity from a set, a

146
determiner like the definite article must be added. This is the reason
why it is DPs that may occur as arguments (as syntactic subjects and
objects).
Noun phrases including definite articles are assumed to have
‘interpretive independence’ unlike noun phrases including other types
of elements that belong to the same distributional paradigm (e.g.
every/each, all or even the indefinite article a(n)). To have ‘interpretive
independence’ means, roughly, that there is no ambiguity as to the
‘referent’ (the identified individual) designated by the expression in
question. In this respect, definite descriptions are of the same logical
type as proper names. Consider the sentences in (32):

(32) a. Every student has read a book by Chomsky.

b. Every student has read ‘Syntactic Structures ’.
c. Every student has read the assigned book.

The sentence in (32a) is ambiguous between two interpretations: the

first interpretation (or reading) is ‘every student has read some book by
Chomsky, not necessarily the same’; the second interpretation is: ‘there
is a (particular) book by Chomsky that every student has read (i. e.
every student has read the same book by Chomsky’). The ambiguity of
the sentence in (32a) is due to the lack of ‘interpretive independence’ of
the elements ‘every’ and ‘a’, which are called quantifiers. The
sentences in (32 b,c), on the other hand, have only one ‘there is one
particular book by Chomsky which every student has read’.

3.4 The deictic function of definite descriptions

Hawkins (1978) argues that the reference of a definite (and indefinite)

expression which denotes an object level individual, can be established
by relating it to a “set of objects which contains the object(s) in
question”. This set of objects is pragmatically delimited by what
Barwise and Perry (1983) call a ‘resource situation’. Hawkins considers
that the definite article (or rather the definite description) refers
‘inclusively’ to the totality of objects belonging to the pragmatically
delimited set. Consider the examples (33):

(33) a. Bring the wickets in after the game of cricket is over, please.
b. I must ask you to move the sand from my gateway.

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In (33a) the definite description the wickets refers to all six wickets
necessary for a game of cricket. Thus, if the addressee only brings five
of them, the speaker will not be satisfied. Similarly, in the case of kind-
level individuals, the noun phrase the sand in (33b) refers to all the
sand that is in front of the gateway, not just part of it.
The reference of a definite description is established in
relation to a set of objects which is pragmatically delimited by a
‘resource situation’ Barwise and Perry (1983). As in the case of
indexical expressions, the uniqueness of reference of definite
descriptions is worked out on the basis of various ways in which
resource situations become available for exploitation: (i) by direct
perception; (ii) by being the object of shared knowledge between the
speaker and the addressee; (iii) by being built up by previous or
subsequent discourse.

3.4.1 The deictic gestural function

The deictic gestural value is based on the speaker and addressee’s

direct perception of the resource situation. There are several sub-cases
that can be distinguished, as illustrated by the examples (34):

(34)
(a) (i) Close the door, please! – both the speaker and the addressee have
access to the resource situation
(ii) Close that door, please! – both the speaker and the addressee have
access to the resource situation

(b) (i) PC 48, catch the jailbird! – only the addressee has direct
perception of the resource situation
(ii) PC 43, catch that jailbird! – only the addressee has direct
perception of the resource situation

(c) Harry, mind the table – only the speaker has direct access to the
resource situation
Don’t come into this house, my friend, I’ll set the dog onto you! – only
the speaker has direct access to the resource situation

(d) Beware of the deer! – the object designated by the definite

description is not directly perceived by either the speaker or the
addressee in a given resource situation
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Don’t feed the deer! – the object designated by the definite description
is not directly perceived by either the speaker or the addressee in a
given resource situation

(Hawkins 1978)

In (34a) the definite description is used deictically to point to

the intended door, present and uniquely identifiable in the resource
situation that is available to both the speaker and the addressee. In such
contexts, the definite description may overlap in its deictic function
with demonstrative determiners as shown in (34a(ii)). According to
Hawkins (1978) the demonstrative determiner that can be used in those
cases in which the hearer has direct, physical perception of the resource
situation that includes the object in question, that is to say the use of the
demonstrative is constrained by a visual monitoring of the speech event
as in the case of indexical expressions used in a deictic gestural way.
The examples in (34b) illustrate the case in which only the
addressee has direct access to the resource situation. The utterances in
(34b) could be spoken (over the radio) by a policeman chasing an
escaped prisoner; the speaker knows about the prisoner‘s presence in
the addressee’s resource situation. The speaker cannot see the intended
individual at the time of the utterance but can instruct the addressee,
who has direct perception of the resource situation, to perceive/locate
and catch the escaped prisoner. In this case the definite article is again
replaceable with the demonstrative that and establishing the correct
identity of the referent is based on the visual monitoring of the resource
situation.
The sentences in (34c) illustrate the case when the addressee
has no direct, physical access to the object designated by the definite
description. Both sentences are uttered by the speaker, “who has direct
perception of the resource situation, to inform the hearer, who for one
reason or another has no direct perception of the object in question, of
the presence/existence of the object designated by the definite
description”. As can be noticed the demonstrative that is no longer a
possible substitute for the definite article since, as Hawkins (1978: 114)
puts it “the use of the demonstrative requires that the hearer is actually
able to see the object in the immediate situation, while the definite
article does not have a visibility condition for its use... The hearer is
instructed to locate the object in the immediate situation of the
utterance. In contrast to the demonstrative, he is not being instructed to
149
actually perceive it, but only to assign it to the situation he is in, in the
sense that he understands that it (the object) exists in the situation”
(Hawkins 1978:114).
The examples in (34d) illustrate the situation in which the
referents of the definite descriptions, in this case ‘the deer’, are not
accessible to the addressee in the given resource situation (the two
sentences could be notices in a zoological garden park). In both
sentences the addressee is instructed that he is to assign the object
designated by the definite descriptions to the resource situation he finds
himself in.

3.4.2 The deictic symbolic function

The definite noun phrases in the sentences in (35) function in a way

which is similar to indexicals which have a symbolic usage. The
resource situation is exploited by being the object of shared knowledge
between the speaker and the addressee.

(35) a. Can you give me a lift to the town hall?

b. The prime minister has just returned from a visit in the countryside.
c. Where is the church?
d. Who are the bridesmaids?

The intended referents designated by the definite expressions give in

italics (e.g. ‘the town hall’, ‘the prime minister’, ‘the church’, ‘the sun’)
are considered to be objects familiar to both speaker and addressee, i.e.
the identity of the referent can only be correctly established if the
referent is known to belong to (a certain part of) the world that is
familiar to both speaker and the addressee. The definite noun phrase the
prime minister connects the speaker to ‘the prime minister of his own
country’ that would constitute the resource situation shared by speaker
and hearer. If the speaker were in a foreign country he would have to be
more specific about which prime minister he is referring to, since the
physical situation the speaker is in could lead the addressee to
understand that reference is made to the prime minister of the country
he is in. In such cases appropriate referring expressions would be our
prime minister or Romania’s/England’s prime minister.
In the examples in (35a) and (35b) the use of the definite
article is based on the speaker and addressee’s shared knowledge of the
existence of certain uniquely identifiable referents in the resource
150
situation (e.g. the unique town hall in the town, the unique church in
the village).
Along the same lines, the question in (35d) is successfully
interpreted on the basis of ‘general knowledge’ shared by the speaker
and the addressee, namely that weddings typically have bridesmaids
along the bride, the bridegroom, the best man. In (35d) the plural
definite description still has unique reference. The uniqueness relates to
an entity of a different ontological level than that of objects (the set of
bridesmaids belonging to the given resource situation). The examples
in (35) share one common characteristic: the use of the definite article
is based on knowledge of the existence of certain objects in certain
situations. The function of the definite descriptions in the sentences in
(35) is to instruct the addressee to locate the intended object within a
resource situation on the basis of the shared knowledge of the
parameters of the speech event. This use of the definite article is known
as the deictic symbolic use.

3.5 Discourse functions of definite descriptions

Unlike the deictic functions of the definite article which rely on the
spatial and temporal parameters of the speech event as well as
participant roles, which relate the linguistic expression to the physical
world, the discourse functions are syntactic in nature and they are based
on the syntagmatic rules that make the progress of discourse possible.
The distinction into anaphoric and cataphoric is based on
whether reference by means of definite descriptions relies on previous
discourse (anaphoric use) or on ensuing discourse (cataphoric use). In
what follows we shall discuss these two non-deictic usages in more
detail.

3.5.1 The anaphoric function

The anaphoric function is the result of a syntactic process based on the

relation between an antecedent noun phrase and an anaphor. The
definite description functions as the anaphor to an indefinite description
(the indefinite article has an epiphoric value) which introduces the
object/the referent into the domain of discourse and, hence, functions as
the antecedent. As an illustration, consider the example in (36):

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(36) When she entered her office she saw a little man. The little man
was sitting in her armchair scratching his nose.

In the example in (36) the indefinite description a little man functions

as a syntactic antecedent to the anaphor expressed by the definite
description the little man. The role of the indefinite description is to
introduce individuals in the discourse which is can be resumed later on
in the discourse by definite descriptions. In other words, the uniqueness
of reference of the definite description is ensured by the discourse that
precedes the use of the definite description. In anaphoric usage a term
picks out as referent the same entity or class of objects that some prior
term in the discourse picked out. Thus, the linguistic discourse acts as
resource situation in such cases.

3.5.2 The cataphoric function

The cataphoric use of the definite article is also based on linguistic

context that acts as a resource situation. In cataphoric usage, the
uniqueness of the reference of the definite description is secured by
discourse that is subsequent to the respective definite description.
Consider the following examples:

(37) a. The woman who is standing in the corner is my sister.

b. The comment of the publisher was completely at fault.

In the sentences in (37) the expressions in italics function as post-

modifiers and their role at the level of the discourse is to increase the
recipient’s ability to uniquely identify the entities referred to.

3.6 Null determiner with definite meaning

Despite its widespread correspondence to the indefinite article, the null

determiner can be used in ways that closely resemble the definite
article. This is notably so where a phrase specifies a unique role or task.
In the following examples, the definite article the could be present or
absent with very little difference in meaning:

(38) a. Maureen is (the) captain of netball this year.

b. As (the) chairman, I must rule you out of order.
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 In institutional usage, the null determiner replaces the in a way
that implies proper-name status for an item:

(39) Council will consider this in due course ~ The Council will…..

Analogues to the use of the with sporadic reference, the null determiner
is used with the implication of definite rather than indefinite meaning.
This is especially so with idiomatically institutionalized expressions
relating to common experience:

(a) Quasi-locatives (where a particular activity or role in connection

with the location is implied)

(40) be in town/bed/church/prison/hospital
go to town/bed/church/prison/hospital
go to sea/college
be at/go home

Frequently there is a distinction in meaning between null determiner

and the; thus on stage will usually refer to a play or participant in
current theatrical production, while on the stage refers to literal
physical location or is an idiom denoting the acting profession:

(41) She was a teacher, but now she is on the stage.

Again there are distinctions in meaning between AmE and BrE:

AmE in school would be used for the state of being a school pupil (BrE
at school). BrE in school would merely refer to being inside the
building.
in the hospital: - in AmE is used of a patient (BrE in hospital)
in BrE denotes physical location

(b) Transport and communication

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When the preposition by precedes the mode in question, null determiner
occurs:

Travel/come/go by bus/train/car/plane vs. She came on the bus.

Should we take the train?
Send it by telex/post (BrE)/mail (AmE) satellite

Cf. also The message came by hand/by special delivery.

(c) Time expressions:

The null detereminer is common especially after the prepositions at, by,
after, before

(42) at dawn/daybreak/sunset/night
by night/by day (‘during’)
by morning/evening (‘when morning/evening came’)
after dark/nightfall
before dawn/dusk

In less stereotyped expressions, the is used as in:

(43) a. The sunrise was beautiful.

b. I’ll rest during the evening.
c. Can you stay for the night?

When the preposition in co-occurs with nouns denoting seasons, the

null determiner may be used, unless a particular one is meant:

(44) a. In winter/spring/autumn, I like to have a break in Switzerland.

b. This year I am going to Switzerland in the winter/spring/autumn.

(d) Meals

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As with seasons, the null determiner is usual unless reference is made
to a particular meal:

(45) a. What time do you normally have breakfast/lunch/supper?

b. (The) breakfast was served late that day.

(e) Illness

The null determiner is normal especially where the illness bears a

technical medical name.

(46) She has anaemia /cancer / diabetes / influenza / pneumonia /

toothache.

The definite article the is also used for afflictions lees

technically designated. Consider the example in (47).

(47) She had (the) flu / hiccup / measles /mumps.

Nouns denoting some conditions co-occur with the indefinite article:

a cold, a fever, a headache, a temperature. However, the null
determiner is used in catch cold.

Fixed phrases

As already discussed above, the null determiner corresponds to a

certain idiomatic fixity; this fixity is particularly noticeable with some
prepositional phrases such as: on foot, in step, out of step, in turn, by
heart, in case of, by reason of, with intent to, etc.
The null determiner is also characteristics of binominal
expressions used adverbially:

(48) a. They walked arm in arm/ hand in hand/mile after mile/day in

day out.
b. We stood face to face/side by side/back to back.
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Cf. also inch by inch, eye to eye, turn and turn about, man to man, from
beginning to end, from father to son.

3.7 The generic reference of definite descriptions

The sentences in (49) unambiguously that definite description with

generic reference are kind level constructions:

(49) a. The tiger is striped/ Tigers are striped.

b. The wolf is getting more rare as you move north / Wolves are getting
more rare as you move north.
c. The American has, on the average, two children / Americans have,
on the average, two children.

Generic definites show conceptual uniqueness. The definite

article with singular nouns conveys a rather formal tone in generic use:

(50) a. No one can say with certainty when the wheel was invented.
b. Her work on anatomy is focused on the lung.

In more general use we find the used with musical instruments and
dances:

(51) Jessica plays the harp, frequently accompanied by her brother on

the piano.

With plural nouns, the is used to express generic meaning:

(a) where the referent is a national or ethnic group as in: the
Chinese, the Russian, the Welsh
The Welsh are found of singing
(b) in phrases comprising an adjective head with human reference:
the blind, the affluent, the unemployed
There are instances where the definite article is followed by a noun in
the plural. They are called definite article plural generic sentences:
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(52) a. The lions are noble beasts.
b. The generals usually get their way.
c. The Italians are lazy.

The is a slight difference between bare plural generics and definite

article generics (cf. Cornilescu, 1986). Hawkins (1977) makes the
following comment on the difference between the sentences in (53):

(53) a. Italians are lazy.

b. The Italians are lazy.

“The former is more damning than the latter. (53a) claims laziness is an
inherent attribute of Italians. By contrast, (53b) involves a pragmatic
restriction on the definite reference. The Italians, therefore, generally
refers to fewer individuals than Italians” (Hawkins 1978: 217). Thus, a
paraphrase of sentence (53b) would be “out of the group of workers,
the Italians are lazy”.

3.8 The non-referential (attributive) use of the definite article

Donnellan (1966) points out that definite descriptions have not only a
referential use, but also a non-referential or attributive use when they
occur in contexts like those illustrated by the example in (54):

(54) I’m grateful to the inventor of the computer.

Moreover, there are contexts where the definite description is

ambiguous between a referential interpretation and non-
referential/attributive interpretation. Consider the following example:

(54) Mary believes that the man who lives upstairs is insane.

The sentence in (54) can be ascribed two readings:

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(a) Mary believes that a certain individual, namely the man who lives
upstairs (say John Smith), is insane – the referential interpretation of
the definite description
(b) Mary believes that whoever it is that lives upstairs is insane – the
non-referential/attributive interpretation of the definite description

The non-referential readings of definite descriptions are favoured by

opaque linguistic contexts like those engendered by such verbs as
believe.

3.9 Proper names in definite descriptions

In general, proper names cannot be used with the definite article

because of the redundant marking of the feature of uniqueness: both
proper names and the definite article have the role of uniquely
identifying an entity. However, the following classes of proper names
occur with the definite article the:

(a) Nouns denoting titles or referring to deities: the King of Sweden,

the Count/Duke/Earl of…., the President of General Motors, the
Reverend John Fox, the Queen, (the) Prince Edward, the God of Israel,
the Buddha
(b) Geographical names of plural form:
(i) groups of islands: the Hebrides, the Bahamas
(ii) mountain ranges: the Himalayas, the Pyrenees
Note also the Netherlands, the Highlands.
(c) Names of rivers, canals, expanses of water, areas of territory: the
(River) Thames, the Potomac (River), the Suez Canal; the Atlantic
(Ocean), the Baltic (Sea)
Note the absence of the in lake names: Lake Huron
(d) Geographical names of the form the N1 of N2: the Isle of Man, the
Gulf of Mexico, the Cape of Good Hope, the Bay of Naples
Contrast: Long Island, Hudson Bay

158
(e) Names of theatres, galleries, major buildings: the Tate (Gallery), the
Hilton (Hotel), the Huntington (Library), the Taj Mahal, the Empire
State Building, the Ritz, the House of Lords.
(f) Names of ships and less commonly aircraft: the Queen Mary, the
Mayflower
(g) Names of journals: The Economist, The Times, The New York
Review of Books
(h) Names of newspapers: The Independent, The Sunday Times

The definite article is not used with names of magazines: Life,

Cosmopolitan.
There are instances when definite/indefinite articles co-occur
with proper names. In this case, the proper names are recategorized as
countable/sortal nouns and they are interpreted as designating two or
more individuals or collective nouns.

(55) a. I met two Susans at the party last night.

b. I am referring to the Napoleon who lost the battle of Sedan, not the
Napoleon who died on Saint Helena.
c. She has a Picasso at home.

A small class of common nouns related to Christian cultural and

historical heritage are recategorized as proper names: the Book, the
Virgin, the Flood, the Lord, the Savior, the Devil.

3.10 Proper names without article

There are two major classes of names that occur without article: names
of persons and names of places.

Personal names

These comprise:
(a) Forenames (also called first, given or Christian names) used alone
when referring to family or friends
159
It’s good to see you, Frank
(b) Family names (surnames), used alone without discourtesy in
address only in certain male circle (e.g. in military use) and in third
person discourse for rather formal or distant reference.
What time do you have to report, Watkinson
the Smiths
(c) Combinations of forenames and family names – chiefly used where
full name is required in self-introductions or in third person reference.
I am Roger Middleton; the manager is expecting me
(d) Combinations involving a title in second and third person reference
You are very welcome Mrs Johnson/Mr Parker/Dr James/Sir
John/Major Fielding

Locational names

These are used without articles and comprise a wide range of

designations:
(a) Extraterrestrials: Jupiter, Mars (but the moon, the sun)
(b) Continents: Asia, (South) America
(c) Countries, provinces: Great Britain, Canada, Ontario, Argyle
(County)
but the United Kingdom, the United States
(d) Lakes: Lake Michigan, Loch Ness
(e) Mountains: (Mount) Everest
(f) Cities: New York, Stratford-upon-Avon
but the Hague, The New York City, the Bronx
(g) Streets, buildings, bridges: Fifth Avenue, Park Lane, Brooklyn
Bridge, London Bridge, Canterbury Cathedral, Scotland Yard, Leeds
University, Waterloo Station, Oxford Street
but the Old Kent Road, the High Street

3.11 Bare Plural NPs

Traditional grammar has assumed that bare plurals (e.g. cats, mice,
books, students, etc.) represent the plural equivalent of indefinite
160
descriptions (e.g. a cat, a mouse, a book). This assumption was based
on the similarity between the two types of noun phrases from a
syntactic point of view. However, despite certain parallelisms in their
distribution, the bare plural NP cannot always be taken as the plural
counterpart of indefinite noun phrases (a + NP).
As far as their distribution is concerned, both bare plural NPs
and a/an + NP appear in generic sentences (56 c, d) and in predicative
positions (56 a, b) as nominal predicates:

(56) a. Tom is a dog.

b. Tom and Daisy are dogs.
c. Madrigals are polyphonic.
d. A madrigal is polyphonic.

Another property that indefinite subjects and bare plural NPs

have in common is that they may occur with stage-level predicates; in
this case, both types of NPs may have an existential/episodic reading
and the bare plural subject does have the interpretation of a distributive
plural. Compare the sentences in (57).

(57) a. Mice are creatures – generic reading

b. Mice will come out of the wall if you pound on it – indefinite
plural/existential interpretation
c. A mouse is a creature – generic reading
d. A mouse will come out of the wall if you pound on it – existential
reading

The sentence in (56c) could be paraphrased by a sentence

containing the existential quantifier some. Examples like the ones in
(56 c) and (57a) above have led grammarians to assuming that a bare
plural is to be interpreted as the indefinite plural of a + NP.
Carlson’s (1977) semantic analysis, however, proves that there
are important differences between a bare plural and an indefinite a +
NP. Firstly, indefinite noun phrases are ambiguous in opaque contexts.
Bare plurals, just like other noun phrases that refer to kinds (such as
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expressions including a kind of), never show any ambiguity in the
context of opacity elements such as quantifiers. Compare the sentences
in (58).

(58) a. Everyone read a book on linguistics

i. there is a certain book on linguistics that everyone read
ii. everyone read one (single) book on linguistics (not necessarily the
same book)
b. Everyone read books on linguistics
c. Everyone read this kind of book

Secondly, the bare plural fails to pick up a group that persists through
time and space in its membership. When bare plurals are resumed by
definite pronouns, they still have a non-specific interpretation.
Compare the following:

(59) a. Susan is looking for a mouse and Tom is looking for it too.
b. Susan is looking for a mouse and Tom is looking for one too.
c. Susan is looking for mice and Tom is looking for them too.
d. Susan is looking for this/some kind of animal and Tom is looking for
it/them too.

The sentences in (59 c, d) are interpreted like the sentence in (59 b),
although they employ a definite pronoun. There is no sense in which
Susan and Tom are looking for the same group of mice. The sentences
only mean that the subject NPs are both engaged in some activity of
mice seeking, despite the definite pronoun in the second conjunct.
The third important difference between indefinite NPs and bare
plurals is that indefinite NPs, unlike bare plurals (and noun phrases that
refer to kinds of things overtly), do not co-occur with what we have
called kind-level predicates such as: be widespread / common / extinct /
indigenous to / in short supply /everywhere, come in all sizes, etc.
Consider the sentences in (60).

(60) a. *A dog is widespread/everywhere

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b. Dogs are widespread/everywhere
c. This kind of animal is widespread/everywhere

These three differences identified by Carlson (1977) definitely

show that bare plurals are not the plural counterpart of indefinite
singulars (a/an + NP). Instead, the plural counterpart of a/an + NP is
some + NP.
Carlson’s semantic analysis (1977) leads to the conclusion that
indefinite NPs in generic sentences and generic bare plurals designate
two distinct entities. Bare plural noun phrases designate kind-level
individuals (entities that are continuous in the dimension of space and
time, hence non-sortals), while singular indefinite NPs designate object
level individuals (entities that are bound in space, hence sortals).

3.12 Generic sentences

The subject of a generic sentence can be a definite description, an

indefinite description or a plural noun with a null determiner (i.e. Bare
Plural). As an illustration, consider the sentences in (61):

(61) a. The dog is intelligent.

b. A dog is intelligent.
c. Dogs are intelligent.

Generic sentences have the following properties. The subject in

the generic sentence has a non-specific reading (i.e. it does not refer to
a particular individual). The predicate in generic sentences designates a
property of the subject. The predicate is always used in the generic
present. Generic sentences are atemporal: they do not specify a
particular point in time or period of time when the property predicated
about holds. They may but need not include adverbs of quantification
such as generally, usually, typically. If the sentences (61a) and (61c)
are compared, one can easily notice a significant difference. A generic
sentence is true in a significant number of cases (not necessarily in all
cases). Thus, a sentence such as Dogs are intelligent is true if there is a
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significant number of dogs that are intelligent and the fact that my dog
is not intelligent does not make the sentence false. By contrast, the
semantic interpretation for the sentence in (61a) is as follows: “if X is a
dog, then X is intelligent”.

3.12.1 The generic reference of indefinite descriptions

All three types of articles can be used to make a generic reference: the
usually, and a/an always, with countable nouns in the singular, null
determiner with countable nouns in the plural (i.e. Bare Plurals) and
with mass nouns.

(62) a. The car/A car/Cars became an increasing necessity of life in the

twentieth century.
b. Silk is an excellent material for curtains.

However, of the three articles, the null determiner is by far the most
natural way of expressing the generic irrespective of the function or
position of the NP in sentence structure:

(63) a. Research is vital to human progress.

b. Many professors prefer research to teaching.
c. Crime is often attributable to drugs.
d. Horses are still wild animals in some parts of the world.

Bare plural noun phrases and indefinite noun phrases display a

number of semantic differences that that can be accounted for by the
fact that they denote different entities. The fact that indefinite
descriptions do not take kind level predicates provides evidence for
their status as object level constructions. Consider the sentences in (64).

(64) a.*A cat is everywhere/widespread/numerous in these areas.

b. *A wolf gets bigger as you go north from here
c. *A cat has been here since Columbus landed
d. A cat is intelligent
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The sentences in (64a-c) become well-formed if the indefinite
descriptions are replaced by definite descriptions and bare plural noun
phrases. One can easily notice the incompatibility between indefinite
descriptions and kind level constructions. With the example in (64d),
on the other hand, the predication of intelligence applies to particular
cats. In intuitive terms we might think that ‘Kitty is intelligent, Duffy is
intelligent, etc .... therefore cats are intelligent” is a well-formed
paraphrase of for (64d). Thus, the semantic interpretation of (64d) is “if
X is a cat, then X is intelligent”.
This line of reasoning indicates that indefinite generics are
object level constructions and that indefinite subject generics are
always characterizing generic sentences. Moreover, the fact that the
adjective intelligent (assumed to be an object level predicate) can
occur with bare plurals and definite descriptions, which are kind level
constructions even in characterizing, generic sentences, indicates that a
predicate can be ‘elevated’ to a predicate that applies to a higher level
individual, i.e. kinds (Baciu 2004).
Another interesting issue related to indefinite NPs functioning
as subjects in generic sentences is that indefinite descriptions are
interpreted as non-specific when they read as generic sentences. This
interpretation is proven by the fact that indefinite noun phrases cannot
be anaphorically resumed by a definite description, as the sentences in
(65) show.

(65) a. A pork chop is tender - indefinite generic

b. *The pork chop is nourishing – definite description

Non-generic indefinite NPs may refer to a specific individual (specific

indefinites) and can be resumed by a definite description or personal
pronoun as the sentence in (R/66) indicates.
(66) When she entered her office she saw a little man. The little man
was sitting in her armchair scratching his nose.

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 Another piece of evidence that supports the non-specific
reading of indefinite generics is that they do not display any ambiguity
in the context of opacity conducing elements, such as quantifiers like
every/all, when they are related to state predicates (object level
predicates). Compare the following:

(67) a. A good teacher loves all students

b. A girl student in my class can beat any boy

The sentence in (67a) has no interpretation in which some specific

teacher is referred to. By contrast, the indefinite noun phrase in the
sentence in (67b) (related to stage-level predicate) is ambiguous
between a specific and non-specific interpretation.
So far this section addressed two important properties of
indefinite noun phrases in generic sentences: (i) they refer to object
level entities; (ii) they have non-specific reading. Given the non-
specific reading, indefinite generics only occur in characterizing
generic sentences.
The generic property ascribed to an indefinite noun phrase holds
by virtue of class membership. Nunberg (1976) points out that there is a
restriction on the properties which are admitted in indefinite generic
sentences. He argues that indefinite generics may contain only such
properties as can be predicated of an object by virtue of class/kind
membership. The property may be essential (inherent) or accidental but
it is assigned to the individual by virtue of class membership, i.e. the
properties predicated are arrived at by deduction. Carlson (1989) argues
that such generic statements denote rules and are therefore normative.
The rules can be biological, physical, social, moral, etc. Compare the
example in (68):

(68) a.A unicorn has a single horn – essential property

b. A symphony has four movements – essential property
c. a baby-sitter gets $ 3 an hour – accidental property
d. A Rolls is expensive
e. ? A king is generous vs. a king is a generous ruler
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f. *A madrigal is popular vs. The madrigal is popular
g. A madrigal is a popular song

The pair of examples in (68f) is explained by Platteau (1980) along the

following lines: “popularity is a relative concept; there is always a
degree of measurement implied, and therefore some set ... If we say
that a madrigal is popular, then this means – or we mean – than the
madrigal is more popular than other sorts (i.e. kinds) of music, for
example the opera or the suite. Definite generics, on the other hand, are
kind denoting expressions and the sentence is well-formed since the
comparison set is made up of other kind denoting terms like the opera
or the suite. The use of the indefinite in this case is therefore
nonsensical since we cannot compare any random madrigal from the
set and say it is more popular than other madrigals that make up the
set”. They same account can be given to the example in (68e).
The examples above confirm the assumption put forth by
Cristopherson (1939) who argued that a singular indefinite generic still
involves a reference to one individual as opposed to the whole class,
but the very randomness or arbitrariness of the choice of individual
means that the referent can stand as a typical representative of its kind.
A similar view is proposed by Quirk et al. (1985) who argue
that the indefinite article tends to carry a general partitive implication
(such as that a means ‘any’) which may in certain contexts be merely
tantamount to a generic. The limitations can be seen in comparing the
following examples:

(69) a. Tigers run more gracefully than most animals.

b. A tiger runs more gracefully than most animals.
Vs.
(70) a. Tigers are becoming extinct.
b. * A tiger is becoming extinct.

The examples point to the fact that the generic use of the
indefinite article is not in its essence different from its referential (i.e.
specific) non-generic use, i.e. both generic and non-generic indefinites
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include only one object in their reference and the indefinite article
refers exclusively to only one member of the set denoted by the noun
phrase (Hawkins 1978).
Generic sentences with indefinite noun phrases also allow a
prescriptive interpretation (Nunberg 1976; Cornilescu 1986). Consider
the sentences in (71):

(71) a. A Christian is forgiving.

a’. *?Any Christian is forgiving.
b. A pork chop is tender.
b’. *?Any pork chop is tender.

The sentences in (71a) and (71b) tell us only how a Christian and a
chop pork are expected to be. The sentences in (71a’) and (71b’) are
descriptive and are ill-formed. The sentences in (72) are interpreted as
sentences that involve explicitly evaluative expressions. Such generic
sentences like those in (72) cannot be falsified in case it turns out that a
Christian proves to be non-forgiving in his acts. This is because this
type of generics acquires a prescriptive interpretation.

(72) a. A true Christian is forgiving.

b. A good pork chop is tender.

3.13 Practice

Activity 1

Which of the three predeterminers all, both, half could acceptably

replace X as predeterminers? Note that more than one answer may
be acceptable.

1. I have read X of this book already.

2. I have read X of these books already.
3. X the students were away.
4. X students were too ill to get up.
5. X had influenza.
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 6. They X had a high fever.
7. X of them had to go to hospital.
8. X the medicine they took was no use.
9. It X cost a lot of money.
10. They were X away for weeks.
11. Doctor Bland attended them X.
12. He visited X of them every day.
13. He was sometimes up X the night.
14. Once or twice he was up X night.
15. The patients have X recovered.

Activity 2

Rewrite the following sentences in correct English.

1. Much of the Holland is below sea level.

2. Not many of people know much about him.
3. Don’t hurry: we have little time left before we have to leave.
4. The most of people complain about the weather here.
5. A quite few people came to his party.
6. He’s had very much good luck in his life
7. I’ve been to visit him many the time.
8. We’ve put in good many hours to get this work finished.

Activity 3

Rewrite each sentence so that it contains the word given in capitals,

and so that the meaning stays the same. Do not change the word in
any way.

1. This is the only money I have left. ALL

2. There wasn’t anyone at the meeting. NO
3. Both singers had bad voices. NEITHER
4. All of the cups are dirty. NONE
5. Everyone was cheering loudly. ALL
6. You both deserve promotion. EACH
7. I read both books, but I liked neither of them. EITHER
8. Whenever I cross the channel by boat I feel seasick. EVERY
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 9. I only ate a sandwich for lunch. ALL
10. Both sides of the street have parking meters. EITHER

Activity 4

Put the most suitable word from the list into each space:

all, each, either, every, neither, no, none

1. Is ……… of you interested in working on Saturday this week?

2. I am afraid there are …………… vacancies in the company at
present.
3. I think we should be given at least £ 50.
4. ……… other Saturday we watch our local hockey team.
5. Let’s start now. There’s …… time like the present!
6. …………. you are interested in doing is going to the pub!
7. There are two beds. You can sleep in ……… one, it doesn’t
matter.
8. Sally gave a present to ………. and every one of us!
9. And the star of our show is ……. other than Dorothy Rogers!
10. My company has treated me well and given me …….. chance to
succeed.

Activity 5

Fill each gap with one the nouns listed below. In three sentences
you will need to add the definite article the somewhere in the
sentence.

poetry; chaos; progress; fortune; strength; dudgeon; beauty;

frustration; violence; advice

1. ....................is said to be skin-deep.

2. My uncle always gave me sound...........
3. Marta’s been known to dabble in lyrical........
4. My next-door neighbour feels............of not having worked for
three years.
5. Domestic ..........is a frightening concept.

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 6. The protest meeting ended in total........
7. John has proverbial ........of a lion.
8. Steady ........is being made.
9. At the concert Glen had good......to be sitting close to the stage.
10. The foreman stomped off in high ........

Activity 6

Write gen. or spec. to indicate whether the noun underlined has

generic or specific reference.

1. The pen is mightier than the sword.

2. The pen I bought yesterday has broken already.
3. There is a cat on the roof.
4. A cat is a small domestic animal.
5. Cats have been domesticated for centuries.
6. There were cats everywhere.
7. The Japanese work very hard.
8. The Japanese were listening patiently.
9. The Welsh love to sing in chorus.
10. The Welshmen were singing lustily.

Activity 7

Tick (√) the underlined alternative that best fits the meaning of
each sentence. Account for your choice

1. Accidents / The accident will happen, I’m afraid.

2. A tortoise is a / the sort of reptile.
3. My dog has hurt the / his leg.
4. Look me in the / my eye and tell me what you’re saying is true.
5. A / The liver is used to help purify the blood.
6. Can’t you think of anything else? You’ve got food on the / your
brain.
7. Have you ever considered taking up a / the musical instrument?
8. What on earth is a / the zip drive?
9. I used to play a / the trumpet when I was younger.
10. Frank Whittle invented a / the jet engine.

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Activity 8

Choose the most suitable phrase underlined.

1. I was under an impression/under the impression that you had

left.
2. I have to go. I’m in a hurry/in hurry.
3. I managed to sell the old painting at a profit/at profit.
4. I think I prefer the other restaurant on the whole/on whole.
5. How many hours do you work, on average/on the average,
every week?
6. I was in pain/in a pain after I twisted my ankle.
7. Jack recovered from his accident and is now out of danger/out
of the danger.
8. Excuse me, but you’re in the way/in a way.
9. Sue felt seasick on the cross-channel ferry/a cross the channel
ferry.
10. The burglar hit me on my back of the neck/the back of my neck

Activity 9

Write a, an, the or Ø (null determiner), according to which article

is required at the point indicated by the oblique stroke. If there are
two possible answers, give them both.

1. / men used to live in/ caves but/ few people make homes in
them now.
2. / beacon was / light or fire used as / signal to give warning of /
danger.
3. / beacons are now placed on / top of / mountains or on / rock in
/ sea to guide / planes or / ships.
4. To grow / corn, / farmers sow / seed in /spring. That is / season
when many trees are in / flower.
5. / fruit ripens in / autumn and then / leaves of / certain trees fall.
6. / winter is / coldest season, but / winter of 2015 was unusually
warm.
7. / chief occupation of / population of / India is / agriculture. /
India’s population is enormous, and / large part of it still works
in / fields.
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8. / last week we performed / experiment to see how / rust forms
on / metal. We dipped / pieces of / iron in / water and left them
for / half / hour. Then we examined them under / microscope.
After / few days, / rust had become quite thick.
9. / wild animals never kill for / sport. / man is / only animal to
whom / torture and / death of his fellow-creatures is amusing.
10. / half of / world cannot understand / pleasures of / other.
11. I want / information about / latest developments in / cancer
research.
12. / first article in / Journal of Semantics is interesting, / arguments
in it are sound, but / statements in / third paragraph are not
entirely accurate.
13. What would you like for / breakfast? / eggs and / bacon? / tea or
coffee?
14. I don’t eat much in / morning. If I have / big breakfast all I need
for / lunch is / salad and / glass of / milk.
15. If I have / big supper, I can’t sleep at / night.
16. Long before the birth of / Christopher Columbus, / people in /
Europe believed that / land of / plenty, with / perfect climate,
lay to / west across / Atlantic Ocean.
17. / Aswan Dam holds back / flood waters of / Blue Nile and /
Atbara.
18. / Japanese use / same kind of / writing as / Chinese.
19. / London University has / more students than / University of /
Oxford. Many of/ students at / former study at / home or in /
British Museum.
20. I believe / souls of / five hundred Sir Isaac Newtons would go to
/ making of / Shakespeare or / Milton.
21. / medicine can be unpleasant, even dangerous. / remedy can be
worse than / disease: it can cure / disease and kill / patient.
22. I am going to / town by / bus and coming back on / train. I’ll
come by / 2.15 train, I think.
23. We went on / board / Canton in / evening and sailed during /
night. We were then at / sea for six weeks: that is why we were
away at / Christmas and / New Year.
24. My brother has / very good job. He is / Director of / department
in / new factory down by / sea, with / seat on / board.

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Activity 10

Correct the errors in the following sentences. Some sentences are

error free.

1. It’s not a first-class accommodation unless it has a private

bathroom.
2. On this record twins play piano duet.
3. The halfway through meal we realized what waiter had said.
4. There is a wonderful scenery in eastern part of Turkey.
5. Cocker spaniel is one of most popular pet dogs.
6. There is going to be fog and a cold weather all the next week.
7. The burglaries are definitely on increase.
8. I spent very interesting holiday at the Lake Coniston in
England.
9. We are against war in general, so of course we are against war
like this between superpower and developing country.
10. If the Mrs Hillier phones, say I’m on trip.
11. The time you spend on the relaxing pastime is good for you.
12. Don’t you work in record shop in High Street?
13. A new campaign against the smoking is directed at the young
women.
14. The leader of the team is usually called captain.
15. A half the time I get phone call it’s wrong number.
16. I saw brilliant rock band perform at the Isle of Wight rock
festival.
17. Do you know what the difference there is between the stoat and
the weasel?
18. At the half-time the both teams seemed in a difficulty.
19. The earthquake could easily damage the Channel Tunnel.
20. A painting I like best is the one not for a sale.
21. Thank a goodnesss that she has escaped without a harm to a life
or a limb.
22. In the times gone by, the marriage was often a matter of the
luck.
23. It was a love at the first sight that brought the couple together.
24. A man has always struggled with the dichotomy of the security
of the permanence and the quest for the change.
25. Being on a duty for seventy hours certainly gives you a taste of
what the life as a doctor is like.
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 26. He gained his doctorate with a thesis on the seagull.
27. Some types of the seagull have red spots on the beak.
28. I’ve always wanted a seagull as a pet.
29. I used to play a piano in a jazz band.
30. A cor anglais is a sort of oboe.
31. I haven’t got his address to hand.
32. A bird in hand is worth two in bush.
33. They lived from hand to mouth.
34. They walked along hand in hand.
35. On other hand, perhaps he was right.

Activity 11

In each space put a/an, the or Ø (null determiner).

It has been announced that for (1) …. third consecutive month there has
been (2) …. rise in (3) ….. number of (4) …… unemployed, rather than
(5) ….. fall that had been predicted. (6) ….. rise was blamed on (7)
…… continuing uncertainty over (8) ….. government economic policy,
and couldn’t come at (9) …… worse time for (10) ….. Prime Minister,
who is facing (11) …… growing criticism over (12) ……way (13)
…… present crisis is being handled. (14) …… MPs are increasingly
voicing (15) …… fears that despite (16) …… recent devaluation of
(17) …… pound and cuts in (18) …… interest rates, (19) ……
government still expects (20) …… recovery of (21) ……. economy to
take three or even four years. To make (22) ….. matters worse, (23)
…… number of small business going into (24) ….. liquidation is still at
(25) ….. record level, and (26) …… housing market is showing no sign
of recovery. Some backbenchers expect (27) …….. general election
before (28)…… end of (29) ….. winter unless there is (30) ……. rapid
change of (31) …… fortune.

Activity 12

Fill in the blanks by using the appropriate article a/an or the:

South Africa became (1)……. first country to declare (2)……great

white shark (3)……..protected species when (4)……..hunting ban
within 200 miles of (5)……..coast was imposed yesterday.
(6)…….jawbone can fetch ₤4,000.
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 ‘If (7)…….thief is determined and professional, he’s going to
break into your house.’ This blunt assertion is all (8)…….more
alarming when uttered by PC Alan Husher, (9)………crime prevention
officer for (10)…….. Metropolitan Police. More than 500 crimes were
committed every hour in England and Wales last year, according to
(11)………latest figures. In (12)……..effort to persuade
(13)………public to play (14)……..greater role in tackling crime,
(15)………..Home Office has launched (16)……..₤ 4.5 million
nationwide advertising campaign. (17)………public’s general attitude,
according to PC Husher, is ‘It won’t happen to me’.
In his own part of London, many residents head for
(18)…….country at (19)…….weekend, leaving (20)……way free for
committed thieves. But he says that 94 per cent of crime against
property last year was largely preventable.

Activity 13

Most proper nouns are complete in themselves, but sometimes the

definite article the is an essential part of the name. Find out about
Scotland by inserting the wherever necessary.

Come to (1)…….spectacular Scotland for a perfect holiday! And first

to (2)……Edinburgh, (3)……Athens of the (4)…….North! Visit
(5)…….Edinburgh Castle, perched on its rock 443 feet above sea-level.
Admire (6)………Scott Monument, a memorial to
(7)……….Scotland’s most famous novelist, (8)………..Sir Walter
Scott. Wander down (9)……..Royal Mile, a series of narrow streets
linking the castle to (10)……….Holyrood House, or (11)………Palace
of (12)………..Holyrood House, to give it its full name. Begun by
(13)…….King James IV of (14)……..Scotland in 1501, but much
restored in the eighteenth century, (15)………….Holyrood House is
where (16)……..present Queen stays when she visits
(17)………..Scottish capital.
Also not to be missed is (18)…………Edinburgh New Town,
which sounds like a modern housing estate, but actually dates from the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
As a change from sightseeing, shop for souvenirs in
(19)……….bustling Princess Street. Pamper yourself by dining in
(20)……….Hilton Hotel. Seep yourself in the atmosphere by reading
that fine newspaper, (21)………..Scotsman.
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 If you are interested in art, (22)……National Gallery of
(23)………Scotland is a must. There’s also (24)………Royal Scottish
Academy, which holds an annual exhibition of work by living artists.
But the highlight of (25)……..Edinburgh year is (26)……….Edinburgh
International Festival held every year in (27)………August and
September.
But perhaps you want an away-from-it-all holiday. Then to you
(28)………..Highlands and Islands further north beckon. And how hard
to choose! Heading north-west you could drive through
(29)……….Pass of (30)………..Glencoe, see (31)………Scotland’s
highest mountain, (32)………..Ben Nevis, and take (33)………famous
Road to (34)………Isles. Or you could travel by train along
(35)………scenic West Highland line and cross to (36)……….Isle of
(37)……….Skye. Or you could take a boat to those remote islands,
(38)……..Outer Hebrides.
Visitors with a taste for active sports will find them in
(39)……..Highlands. (40)………..River Dee is famous for its salmon
fishing; (41)……..River Spey area is even more famous for its Scotch
whisky. Form the mountain resort of (42)…………Aviemore, you can
go skiing in winter in (43)……….Cairngorms, which boast the highest
restaurant in Britain.
Another sight not to be missed in (44)……….northern
Scotland, is (45)………Great Glen (a glen is a mountain valley)
stretching from (46)………Inverness on the east coast to
(47)………Fort William on the west. The Glen consists of a series of
lochs (lakes) linked by (48)…………..Caledonian Canal, said to be the
home of (49)………Loch Ness Monster, a vast prehistoric beast
surviving in the deep remote waters of this loch. Some people doubt the
very existence of this strange creature – others are certain that
(50)……. ‘Nessie’ is real.

Activity 14

Fill in the blanks by inserting a/an, the or Ø (zero) as necessary:

“Show me how you live, and I’ll tell you who you are”. Nowhere in the
world can this saying be more deceptive than in (1) ……. British Isles.
We are dealing with a region where anyone who can afford it can copy
(2) …….. lifestyle that is difficult to distinguish from (3) ………
original it is imitating. Not everyone has parents who can bequeath
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them (4) ......... country house full of (5) ......... antiques, but if you have
enough money at your disposal you can easily make up for this
shortcoming – that’s what (6) ........ real estate brokers, (7) ..........
antique dealers, and (8) ........... interior designers are there for, after all.
They help you find (9) ......... old house and furnish it in such a way that
it looks as if the new owner had inherited it from his ancestors
complete with all (10) .......... furniture. This is achieved by skilfully
mixing old and new, as well as old and old. So for example (11) ..........
living room is not furnished entirely in Early Georgian style, but rather
in (12) ........... conglomerate of Early Georgian, Edwardian, and Late
Victorian.
(13) .......... purity of style would betray the fact that (14) .........
ambitious interior designer, and not time, had assembled (15) ............
furniture, and this is exactly what should be avoided. (16) ......... art of
the interior decorator consists in producing that stylistic diversity that is
typical of (17) .......... genuinely inherited interiors. Perfection in
matching (18) ............ furniture would be detrimental to comfort;
collisions between (19) ........... colours, (20) .......... designs, and (21)
.......... styles are inevitable.
The predilection for (22) .......... old is not only prevalent among
(23) .......... rich: students, booksellers, and pensioners beautify their
homes with finds from (24) ......... flea markets, (25) ......... auctions, or
their favourite charity shops. What (26) ......... Hepplewhite bureau is to
(27) ......... millionaire, (28) ......... Victorian vase from Oxfam is to (29)
........... less well-heeled. Crucial to a convincing inherited look are
signs of use, which should on no account be repaired.
Thus (30) .......... armchair with completely threadbare
upholstery stands in (31) .......... entrance hall under (32) ......... Rubens,
and it never occurred to anyone to have it recovered. (33) .......... more
worn out, (34) .......... better – this impression is created when,
considering the state of some of (35) ........... upholstered furniture on
offer in the antique shops’ windows. (36) ........ inherited look also
dictates that you should not be overly careful with new pieces of
furniture. (37) ........... Splashes of tea or red wine cause as little
consternation as (38) ....... dog and cat hairs. If after ten years (39)
......... new sofa looks as though it has been in use for twice as long, you
have, as it were, quite by chance produced (40) ........ antique43.
43
The excerpt is taken from C. Piras and B. Roetzel, British Tradition and Interior
Design. Town and Country Living in the British Isles, Konemann, 2005, p. 12

178
Activity 15

Insert a/an, the or Ø (null determiner) as necessary:

Besides the fine country house, the cottage is the British house par
excellence. Much more than (1) ........ larger-scale mansion, it
symbolizes (2) ........ British place for residence that unites all classes
and is suitable for almost all social groups. (3) ........ cottage can be the
home of (4) ........ author, (5) ......... officer of the guard, (6) .......... stock
broker and his family, (7) ......... teacher, (8) ......... clergyman, (9) .........
professor, or (10) ......... actress. (11) .......... cottage is a special
manifestation of a group of buildings which can be brought together
under the term “vernacular architecture”. This term describes smaller
(12) ......... houses in (13) ......... variety of building styles, built between
the middle of the 14th century and the beginning of the 19th century.
“Vernacular” means native or peculiar to (14) ........ popular taste, and
(15) ......... architecture is marked by (16) ........ strong regional
character.
Originally (17) ......... cottages were simple (18) ...........
farmhouses. When a modern owner, on the other hand, speaks proudly
of his cottage, it is often (19) .......... understatement, for it is frequently
not (20) ........... modest house of (21) ........... simple man but (22)
.......... gem, furnished in the best manner possible. Thus for example
there are many farms, which were constantly enlarged over (23) ..........
generations until the 18th century, when they ended up as (24) .........
grand estates.
Vernacular houses are also a reflection of what (25) ........ nature
has provided as (26) ……. building materials in (27) .......... particular
region in the form of wood and stone. In (28) .......... county of
Lancashire or in West Yorkshire, for example, there houses built from
(29) ......... local millstone grit, a type of sandstone. In Somerset there is
locally extracted limestone and in Warwickshire and East Sussex you
can admire half-timbered houses. These romantic medieval facades
with their characteristic visible timbers were generally favoured in (30)
........... south and east of England, (31) ......... West Midlands, the
eastern part of Wales and the flat regions of Yorkshire and Lancashire.
It was not until (32) ......... turn of the 18th century that people changed
over to building with bricks here. In (33) ........ mountainous, relatively
unwooded regions of (34) ......... west and north of England and in large

179
parts of Scotland and Wales (35) ........ stone was the most usual
building material44.

Activity 16

Fill in the blanks by inserting a/an, the or Ø (null determiner) as

necessary:

The bedchamber was initially (1) …….. private place, though toward
the end of the 16th century it also began being used as (2) ……. elegant
living room. During (3) …….. following century, (4) …….. visitors
were even invited into (5) …….. bedchamber while (6) ……… host
was getting up or dressing; this reflected (7) ……. influence of (8)
…….. French court and (9) ……. daily rituals of the king, which were
adopted by (10) ……. English upper classes during (11) ……..
Baroque period.
Modern British bedrooms differ little from their 18th- and 19th-
century predecessors. Then, as now, they contained (12) …….. large
bed (with or without (13) ……. canopy), (14) …….. chest of drawers,
(15) …….. dressing table and of course (16) ……. seating, so that they
could also be used as (17) …… dressing room and (18) ……. living
room. But what aspects are typically British? One distinctive feature
you would not necessarily find in a French, German or Italian bedroom
is (19) …….. item of furniture at (20) ……. foot of the bed, such as
(21) …….. table, cabinet, or sofa.
Having seating in the bedroom is (22) …….. practice which
goes back to (23) …….. time when it also served as (24) …….
reception room. This was the case elsewhere in Europe until (25) ……..
situation changed in the 19th century and (26) ……. bedroom
increasingly became (27) ……. very intimate room purely for sleeping.
In (28) ……. Netherlands or Spain, no one would ever have dreamt for
receiving (29) …….. guests in the bedroom; it would simply have
caused embarrassment on both sides.
You might expect (30) ……. similar thing to have happened in
Britain, but here (31) ……. bedroom furnishings suggest otherwise. In
their collective unconscious, (32) …… British still seem to have (33)
……… vague memory of the time when bedrooms were also living
44
The excerpt is taken from C. Piras and B. Roetzel, British Tradition and Interior
Design. Town and Country Living in the British Isles, Konemann, 2005, p. 60

180
rooms. As recently as (34) ……. Victorian era, they were used for all
kinds of purposes other than sleep. People breakfasted in (35) ……..
bedroom, not necessarily in (36) ……… bed but often on (37) ……..
small table near (38) ……. fireplace. After this, they would use it as a
dressing room to prepare for (39) …….. morning’s events. Later, they
would return to change for (40) ……. lunch, and after this they would
have (41) ……. post-prandial nap on (42) …… bed or sofa. In (43)
…… early evening, they would go to the bedroom to read (44) ……..
books or write (45) ……. letters before changing again for (46) ……..
dinner.
The fact that (47) ……. bedrooms were used intensively
throughout (48) …….. day was reflected in their furniture: not just a
bed, bedside cabinet and chest of drawers, but also (49) …….. living
room furniture which could be used for such purposes as breakfasting,
reading, and writing.
For these reasons, British bedrooms are quite distinctive in
character. They are cozy, rustic, and in some cases designed to create
(50) ……. impression. And they are also (51) ……. ideal place in
which to curl up with (52) …….. good book and (53) …….. cup of tea
while (54) ……. gale rages outside (55) ……… window45.

Activity 17

Insert a/an, the or Ø (null determiner) as necessary:

(1)………..world wildlife is in (2)……danger. (3)………reasons are

complex – (4)……world’s population is expanding, and increasingly
(5)………man is destroying more and more of (6)………natural
environment. (7)………..last dodo in (8)………world died on
(9)……….island of Mauritius in (10)………late seventeenth century.
Today, (11)……..black rhino in Kenya could go (12)…….same way.
There is (13)………. world-wide trade – much of it illegal – in (14)
rare animals and birds. (15)……….particular favourite, and one
severely threatened with (16)………extinction through smuggling is
(17)……orang-utan, which only survives in (18)……..forests of
Borneo and Sumatra.
45
The excerpt is taken and adapted from C. Piras and B. Roetzel, British Tradition
and Interior Design. Town and Country Living in the British Isles, Konemann, 2005,
p. 196

181
 (19)……….fierce argument is now raging about how to protect
(20)…….most endangered species. Some people argue that
(21)……zoos, with their research work and breeding programmes,
offer (22)………best hope, and (23) ………protection from
international smugglers. But some of (24)……..older zoos have
(25)……..disadvantage of (26)………cramped city conditions, though
(27)………. zoo with (28)………wide spaces like Whipsnade Zoo in
(29)……..Bedfordshire countryside north of London is seen as offering
(30)……..pleasant natural habitat.
However, (31)…..public – at any rate in (32)……..West – is
less interested that they once were in looking at (33)……..captive
animals, so (34) ……….zoos, particularly traditional ones, lose
(35)……money.
Some zoos have sought (36)…….solution in modernizing. In
(37)…..recent years, (38)…….Bronx Zoo in New York, for example,
has increased (39)……attendances by introducing (40)………..natural
habitats – (41) ……..jungle world, (42)………Ethiopian mountain and
so on. But (43)……….increased attendances must be partly due to
(44)………fact that it opens free three days (45)……week.
Neither (48)……traditional zoos, nor (49)…….theme zoos
appeal to all animal lovers however. Some ‘conservationist’ would
apparently like to see all zoos abolished, and their inmates returned to
(50)……wild. But this could perhaps lead to some endangered species
becoming extinct.

Activity 18

Rewrite the following headlines as normal written sentences,

adding the definite article the as appropriate and making any other
suitable changes.

Example: TV corrupts young says Minister of Education

The Minister of Education has said that television corrupts the young.

1. Death of President leaves country in chaos.

2. Big business hit by inflation
3. United manager faces sack after latest defeat
4. COMPUTERS BLAMED FOR RECORD NUMBER OF JOB
LOSSES

182
5. Water people drink not fit for animals say
environmentalists
6. Level of unemployment highest since mid-nineteen-nineties

183
 Chapter 4

Gender

4.1 Preliminary remarks

The grammatical category of gender can be defined at the most basic

level as a system of noun classification “reflected in the behaviour of
associated words” (Hockett, quoted in Corbett 1991:1). A language has
the category of gender if grammatical forms with variable gender (e.g.,
adjectives, pronouns, numerals) regularly adopt forms to agree with
grammatical forms of invariable gender, usually nouns (Fodor 1959:2).
The core of the gender system in any language is the gender
assignment system, a set of rules according to which nouns are allotted
to various genders.
A language may have two or more such classes or genders.
Basically, there seem to be two major, sometimes competing systems
for assigning gender in languages throughout the world. On the one
hand, there are SEMANTIC SYSTEMS, “where semantic factors are
sufficient on their own to account for assignment” (Corbett 1991:8).
Various features, such as [ + animate ], [ + human], [ + male ], are used
as the basis for gender assignment in such systems. Systems where
masculine gender is attributed to male referents and feminine gender to
females are often referred to as natural gender systems (Corbett 1991:
9). Thus in natural gender systems the biological sex of the referent
matches grammar. Criteria for semantic gender assignment system are
widespread; the general division is one between human and non-
human, and humans are divided male and female in turn. However, the
dividing line can also be animate – inanimate. In this respect, English
is a case in point, as animals (particularly domestic animals) are usually
masculine or feminine according to sex (Corbett 1991:11-12).
On the other hand, there are FORMAL SYSTEMS, where formal
criteria are instrumental in assigning nouns to various gender classes.
Information about the form may in turn be of two types: word-
structure, comprising derivation and inflection, i.e. morphological and
sound-structure, i.e. phonological (cf. Corbett 1991:37ff).

184
 In particular this distinction between semantic and formal
gender assignment systems points to the traditional distinction between
those languages where gender is grammatical and those where gender
is ‘natural’. The distinction can be summed up as follows:
grammatical gender is formal whereas natural gender is semantic.
According to Jespersen (1933), the following divisions of gender can
be identified in Indo-European languages:

Nature Grammar
(sex) (gender)

male beings masculine words

female beings feminine words
sexless things neuter words

However, the traditional distinction between natural (i.e.

semantic) and grammatical gender (i.e. formal) is beset with problems.
Most of the world’s languages may use different combinations of these
factors and may allow varying numbers of exceptions. The Indo-
European languages generally combine the two, i.e. do not distinguish
one from the other so that in French, for example, la table ‘the table’
reflects feminine gender (purely grammatical) as does la femme ‘the
woman’ (combined natural and grammatical). Moreover, as Corbett
(1991: 63), in the most comprehensive cross-linguistic study of gender
systems to date, equitably concludes, even in formal systems, in which
the bulk of gender assignments rest on morphological and phonological
factors, “gender always has a basis in semantics”. In other words, noun
classification often corresponds to biological distinctions of sex.
Similarly, Dahl (1999:101) postulates as a universal property of gender
systems that there is a general semantic-based principle for assigning
gender to animate nouns. Thus, when conflicting rules apply, semantic
considerations normally take precedence (Corbett 1991:66).
Languages which distinguish either type of gender usually also
have an agreement system whereby adjectives modifying gendered
nouns must have an ending which reflects the gender of the noun they
modify. Verbs may also reflect the gender of their subject nouns and,
sometimes, their object nouns as well. The most common genders are
masculine and feminine but some languages have neuter as well.

185
4. 2 Gender in Present-day English

The gender system in Present-day English is clearly based on semantic

criteria, unlike its Indo-European ancestors. When gender distinctions
occur in English there is a close connection between the biological
category of sex and the grammatical category of gender to the extent to
which natural sex distinctions determine English gender distinctions. In
English, gender is marked on the noun. However, modifiers – such as
adjectives, articles and demonstratives – are not marked for gender.
Moreover, special suffixes are not generally used to mark gender
distinctions in English.
English gender distinctions are based on two different, and
sometimes conflicting, semantic criteria: human – non-human, further
divided into male- female and animate – inanimate. These criteria
manifest themselves in the use of two sets of pronouns. The first set is
concerned with the personal and possessive pronouns he/him/his,
she/her, it, the use of which is almost exclusively motivated by the
semantic parameters [ + human] and [ + male] (if we disregard the use
of she/her for ships and other vehicles, and, in some contexts, for
names of countries). Thus personal pronouns in English agree with
their antecedent noun in gender (and also in number if we take into
consideration the use of they/them/their) and reflect a triple-gender
system:

(1) a. The linguist <female> shot the albatross. Later, she regretted
shooting it.
b. The linguist <male> shot the albatross. Environmentalists criticised
him.
c. The albatross was shot by the linguist. It was later discovered by the
sailors.
d. The linguist shot the albatrosses. Later, he regretted shooting them.
e. The linguists shot the albatross. For this, they were criticised by
environmentalists.

The other set of pronominal substitutes determining gender concerns

the use of relative pronouns who/which and reflects a two-fold
distinction between the animate and the inanimate.
The question that arises is “How many genders are there in
English?” While many speakers and scholars have remarked on the
system’s superficial simplicity those who have tried to give an accurate
186
and detailed description of the system have been struck by its
complexity. As Erades (1956:2) points out, “the gender of English
nouns, far from being simple and clear, is complicated and obscure, and
the principles underlying it are baffling and elusive, no less, and
perhaps even more so, than in other languages.”
Although most nouns in Modern English follow the semantic
formulation of the system in which pronominal gender corresponds to
distinctions based on biological sex, nevertheless many nouns are
exceptions to the rule. The key to understanding the natural gender
system in Modern English lies in these exceptions: the inanimate nouns
that take the gendered pronouns he/she and the human and other
animate nouns that can be substituted for by it (Curzan 2003:20). These
exceptions do not prove the traditional rule of natural gender, but rather
they prove the rule wrong.
Describing the English gender system is beset with difficulties.
First, as Curzan (2003:20) points out, the traditional idea that gender is
a fixed property of the word must be abandoned, along with the idea
that, in general, all gender systems must operate in similar ways.
Second, in describing the English gender system one must rely on
features that are not immediately obvious to either speakers or linguists
because there are few formal clues. In English, gender is a covert
category46 generally marked when singular third-person pronouns and
the relative pronouns who/what/which are used to substitute for English
nouns (Curzan 2003:20). Despite this limited occurrence in the surface
structure of English syntax, gender is a grammatical category that
requires a systematic analysis with regard to the patterns of anaphoric
pronoun use because these patterns will provide us with clues about the
structure of the categories within the system.
The exceptional nouns, those that can flout the biological sex-
linguistic gender correlation, have traditionally been divided into two
basic groups: conventionalized references and emotive (or affective)
references. The conventional gender assignment of certain inanimate
nouns seems to hold irrespective of the attitude of the speaker and they
are fairly consistent within speech communities (e.g. ship as she).

46
Whorf (1956) draws the important distinction between overt and covert
grammatical categories. An overt category is one having a formal mark that is
present in every sentence containing a member of the category (e.g. English regular
plural). By contrast, a covert category includes members that are marked only in
certain types of sentences.

187
Proper names could be included in this category to the extent to which
their genders are conventional and they are learnt; moreover, they apply
even when used to refer to an inanimate entity (Whorf 1956:90-91). It
can be argued, following Whorf (1956), that English gender represents
a grammatical category because the distinctions it gives rise to are not
always natural, but they must instead be learnt.
The choice of pronoun depends greatly on the psychological
and sociological attitude of the speaker towards the referent, as well as
attributes of the referent. Much of the twentieth-century scholarship on
Modern English gender recognizes the dependence of English gender
on speaker attitudes (Svartengren 1927, Erades 1956, Joly 1975, Morris
1993), but the research comes to dramatically different conclusions
about the implications of this dependence, ranging from the assertion
that English has no system of gender to the formulation of multiple
formal gender classes.
English has three forms of the singular personal pronoun (he,
she and it) and two forms of the relative pronoun (who and which),
which distinguish between masculine, feminine, neuter, and personal
and non-personal nouns, respectively. The patterns of pronoun co-
reference for singular nouns give three consistent agreement patterns
in English (in the plural only the distinction between personal and non-
personal is preserved, i.e. they/who vs. they/which) (Corbett 1991:180):
who/he - masculine, who/she - feminine, and which/it - neuter.
Thus, structuralist approaches to Modern English gender
proposed various classification systems with categories based on the
personal and relative pronouns that can substituted for a given noun.
Strang (1970:95) proposes seven gender classes while Payne
(2006:713-714) outlines four: who/he - personal masculine, who/she -
personal feminine, which/it – non-personal neuter, and which/she –
non-personal feminine (for the so called ‘boat nouns’, e.g. ship; note,
however, that these can be analysed as hybrid nouns that trigger
different agreement forms depending partly on the type of target - see
Corbett 1991:180-184). And, at the extreme end, Quirk et al.
(1972:187) propose ten gender classes for singular nouns in English:
personal masculine (brother), personal feminine (sister), dual
(doctor), common (baby), collective (family), masculine higher
animal (bull), feminine higher animal (cow), higher organism (ship)
lower animal (ant), and inanimate (box). However, Joly (1975:234)
rejects these theories arguing that they are nothing more than a
“methodical arrangement of facts previously collected by traditional
188
grammarians”. According to Joly (1975), these theories cannot provide
a description of any larger systematic pattern.
Although structuralist approaches to English gender cannot
account for how or why nouns have been classified in this way,
nevertheless they are worth considering since they do account for
which pronouns are required by certain nouns. In what follows, the
discussion of gender in English concerns listing nouns that evince
semantic gender and grouping them in ten gender classes set up on the
basis of the combinations of gender-sensitive pronouns that substitute
for singular nouns. The description draws mainly on Quirk et al (1985).
This classification of English nouns in ten gender classes results from
an attempt to differentiate between all possible types of nouns which
have different agreement possibilities based on pronoun co-reference.

4.2.1 The structuralist approach

(1)/(2) Personal masculine/feminine nouns (who – he/she)

Personal masculine and personal feminine nouns are of two types. The
first type includes nouns which are morphologically unmarked for
gender. With nouns in the second type, on the other hand, the two
gender forms have a derivational relationship (i.e. one form is derived
from the other by means of suffixation).
Personal masculine nouns that are morphologically unmarked
for gender include:

bachelor king
brother man
father monk/friar
gentleman uncle

The corresponding personal feminine nouns that are morphologically

unmarked for gender include:

spinster queen
sister woman
mother nun
lady aunt

189
In addition to the masculine and feminine denotation, with some nouns
there is a special dual gender denotation:

Masculine Feminine Dual

father mother parent

husband wife spouse
brother sister sibling
king queen sovereign/monarch
son daughter child
boy girl child
man woman person/human
lad lass youth

In other cases such a denotation is lacking:

Masculine Feminine

uncle aunt
nephew niece
lord lady
actor actress
monk/friar nun
wizard witch

In others yet again, as we shall see below (gender class 3), only a dual
gender denotation is found: cousin/teacher/writer, etc.
Examples of personal masculine/feminine nouns that are
morphologically marked for gender by means of a gender-specific
derivational ending include:

Masculine Feminine

bridegroom bride
duke duchess
emperor empress
god goddess
hero heroine
host hostess
steward stewardess
190
waiter waitress
widower widow

As the examples above show, usually the feminine is derived from the
masculine. The reverse is also possible, but rare: widow-widower;
bride-bridegroom.
It should be pointed out that while –ess is unambiguously a
feminine marker, -or/-er is not always a masculine-only marker,
especially when there is no corresponding –ess form in common use
(e.g. doctor, teacher, etc). However, many nouns ending in –or/-er are
perceived as carrying strong masculine connotations (Biber et
al.1999:312).
In some cases the sound of the stem has been altered to such an
extent that the feminine can hardly be described as a derivative of the
masculine: abbot – abbess; duke – duchess; marquis – marchioness;
master –mistress; negro – negress. Feminine nouns with other suffixes
are few and some of them obsolete: chauffeur – chauffeuse; czar –
czarina; hero – heroine; aviator – aviatrix; executor - executrix.
At the semantic level, many of the nouns in masculine/feminine
word pairs (e.g. man – woman, gentleman – lady, bachelor – spinster,
boy – girl) are far from being equivalent. At closer examination, it
becomes apparent that in actual usage some of the nouns referring to
women have undergone a process of semantic derogation, thereby
denoting a lesser social role or achieving negative overtones, even
when the corresponding male terms designate the same state or
condition for men. This state of affairs can be seen as a consequence of
gender-related ideologies which assign women an inferior position in
society and which become manifest in language.
To begin with, let us consider the apparently neuter terms man
and woman. No insult is implied if one calls a woman an old man; to
call a man an old woman, however, is a decided insult. Female shop
assistants in Britain may be referred to as sales ladies, but there is no
such phrase as sales gentlemen in the English lexicon. Similarly,
ladies’ wear can be found alongside men’s wear. The connotations of
the word lady are therefore different from those of the word gentleman
So far as usage is concerned, lady, which originally had an aristocratic
designation, is no longer used for women of high rank exclusively and
is an equivalent to woman. Since many English speakers tell their
children that it is impolite to call or refer to someone as a woman (but
not a man), the term lady may be seen as a euphemism for woman.
191
Similarly, bachelor and spinster are by no means precise equivalents.
Although both are used to designate ‘unmarried adults’, the female
term has negative overtones to it. A spinster is not merely unmarried,
but she is more than that: she is beyond the expected marrying age and
therefore seen undesirable. This connotation points to the importance
society attaches to expectations about marriage and marriageable age as
far as women are concerned. For a woman to remain unmarried for the
rest of her life is seen as a deviation from the rules lay down by society.
For a man, however, no stigma is attached. Another case in point is the
pair girl and boy. Boy refers to a ‘young man’ and many people feel
uncomfortable about using it to refer to someone who is no longer in
his early teenage years and it is not very commonly used for individuals
aged over 20. Girl, on the other hand, can be used to refer to women
who are no longer in their teens. It is quite common to hear of a group
of people that consists of, say, three men and four girls. A British
newspaper carried the headline Girl Talk to describe a meeting between
Margaret Thatcher and Indira Gandhi when the two were Prime
Ministers in their respective countries. Girl can also be used to refer to
‘a female servant; a female employee’ or to one’s sweetheart or one’s
wife.
Closer examination of other pairs of gender-marked terms such
as lord/lady, baronet/dame, Sir/Madame, master/mistress, king/queen,
wizard/witch, etc. shows that even when the female terms started out on
equal footing, they have degraded over the years. Lord, baronet, king
and master, for instance, have still preserved their original meanings.
Their female equivalents, however, have acquired pejorative meanings.
Thus lady, as we have seen, is no longer used exclusively for women of
high rank; dame is used derogatorily, especially in American English;
queen has developed sexual connotations; mistress no longer refers to a
‘woman who has control over a household’, or to a ‘female instructor’,
but has developed sexual connotations, meaning ‘a concubine’.
Likewise, sir is still used as a title and form of respect, while its female
equivalent madam is used to refer to ‘a woman who runs a brothel’.

(3) Personal dual gender (he/she - who)

This is by far the largest gender class in English including nouns that
designate human beings and that do not contain gender information.
The same noun is used to denote both males and females. Consider the
following list:
192
artist guest professor
chairman inhabitant speaker
cook librarian student
criminal musician teacher
doctor neighbour writer
enemy novelist
foreigner parent
friend person

In order to express the masculine – feminine distinction recourse must

be made to various formal gender markers:

 Gender-specific premodification such as male/female;

boy/girl or man/woman:

(2)

boy friend - girl friend;

man servant - woman servant;
male student - female student;
a choir of men and women students;

 Gender-specific postmodification:

(3) Her collection of paintings includes works by many well-known

artists, men and women.

 Compounding with a gender-specific element:

(4) It was ironic that during an Irish debate an Englishman had

demonstrated such affection for a Scotsman.

(5) A policewoman discovered the blaze which occurred in the early

hours of yesterday.

 At the level of the sentence, through the use of personal,

reflexive or possessive pronouns.

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(6) The teacher praised her students.

 Sometimes gender can be signalled through the use of such

gender-specific adjectives as pregnant or buxom.

(7) By the gate the Patriarch’s buxom companion was still at work,
weeding a not particularly fertile-looking patch of edging.

(8) From the time of Barbie on, both the buxom Playboy types and the
brunette model types got thinner and thinner

(9) I thought my friend was too old to get pregnant.

The dual gender is now on the increase as more and more

positions in society are opened up to both sexes. Engineer and nurse,
for instance, are now dual gender, but were not formerly. With
reference to the marked sex, it is however, still necessary to use a
gender marker:

(10)
a male model -
a male nurse a nurse
an engineer a female engineer

Since a male nurse, a male model or a female engineer are still

perceived as violating gender stereotypes. The absence of female
nurse, man doctor and male engineer indicates that the apparently dual-
gender nurse, doctor and engineer are taken to be sex-specific by
English speakers. It is assumed, for instance, that a doctor is a man, and
therefore a woman who is a doctor must somehow be marked as such,
which carries the implication that she is not a ‘real’ doctor. This may
explain why there are instances when women resent being addressed as
‘lady doctor’.

(4) Common gender (who – he/she; which – it)

Common gender nouns are intermediate between personal and non-

personal. Common gender applies to nouns such as baby, infant, child,
which though referring to male or female human beings, make gender
so irrelevant that they can be replaced by the neuter pronoun it(s).
194
(11) The baby lost his parents when it was three weeks old.

This wide selection of pronouns (who – he/she; which – it)

should not be understood to mean that all these pronominal substitutes
are in free variation, i.e. all are possible in all contexts. Personal
reference (he/she – who) expresses greater familiarity or involvement.
Whereas non-personal reference (it – which) is more detached. Thus a
mother is not likely to refer to her baby as it. However the non-personal
pronominal substitute it would be quite possible for someone who is
emotionally unrelated to the child or is ignorant of or indifferent to its
sex.

(5) Collective nouns (which – it; who – they)

Unlike other nouns, these take as pronoun substitutes either singular (it)
or plural (they) without change of number in the noun. Consequently
the verb may be in the plural after a singular noun:

(12) The committee was discussing the proposal. It decided to reject the
proposal by a vote of five to two.

(13) The committee were discussing the proposal. They decided to

reject the proposal by a vote of five to two.

The singular and plural choices are by no means in free

variation. This distinction made within collective nouns appears to be
related to number rather than gender. Singular forms reflect a tendency
towards grammatical agreement rather notional concord. However, it
also involves gender, since the difference in substitution reflects a
difference in attitude: focus on the collectivity of the group (singular)
or on the individuals within the group (plural).
In present-day American and British English there seems to be a
tendency towards a more frequent use of singular forms. Marckwardt
(1985) claims that American English “has retained the older practice”
of using plural concord and that in the 1950s there were no indications
of change. Evidence from the second half of the twentieth century,
however, shows that American English is currently leading world
English in a change towards a more frequent use of singular concord.
Greenbaum and Quirk (1990: 216) identified the same pattern when
195
they argued that in American English “grammatically singular
collective nouns are generally treated as singular, especially when they
refer to governments and sports teams”.
Although British English does favour singular forms, it has not
been influenced by American English. The development within British
English must have taken place independently, because singular forms
were increasingly used in British English in the 1930s, a time when
influence from American English through mass media and increased
global mobility was less widespread than it is today (Bauer 1994: 61-
66). Data from the eighteenth and nineteenth century suggest that the
singular has always been a latent option in both British and American
English (Hundt 2009). Moreover, in both British English and American
English a mixture of the two agreement patterns mentioned above is
also possible: plural pronouns can be used to refer to morphologically
singular collective nouns even when the verb is singular, becoming thus
an alternative to it, as the following example in (14) shows:

(14) The committee has not yet decided how they should react to their
proposal.

(6)/(7) Masculine and feminine higher animals

These gender classes contain nouns denoting the range of animals and
birds in which human society takes a special interest, to the extent to
which these animals are involved in familiar experience either in the
context of farming or as domestic pets. Many of these nouns occur in
male and female pairs often with he ~ she as the reference pronouns
(alongside it) though usually with which as the relative pronoun.

Masculine Feminine

boar sow
buck doe
bull doe
cock hen
dog bitch
gander goose
lion lioness
stallion mare
stag hind/doe
196
tiger tigress
ram ewe
fox vixen

Despite such pairs as dog ~ bitch, either one of the two or an

item outside the pairing is used with dual gender reference. With
several of these nouns an item outside the pairing is used to dual
reference:

Masculine Feminine Dual

ram ewe sheep

boar sow pig/swine
stallion mare horse
stag hind/doe deer
cock hen fowl

With some nouns the masculine form is used with dual reference:

Masculine Feminine Dual

fox vixen fox

lion lioness lion
ruff reeve ruff

With others the feminine is used to designate either sex:

Masculine Feminine Dual

gander goose goose

drake duck duck

While still other nouns make use of compound nouns with proper
names to indicate sex differences:

Masculine Feminine Dual

tom-cat tabby-cat cat

jack-ass jenny-ass ass
197
(8) Higher organisms (it/she – which)

The class of higher organisms includes nouns denoting ships, countries

and other entities towards which the speaker expresses an affectionate
attitude. Thus the pronominal substitutes for these nouns are she (to
signal speaker’s involvement), it and the relative which.

(15) The Titanic sank on her maiden voyage; she hit an iceberg.

(16) My car wouldn’t start - I think she is ready for the scrap heap.

Names of countries have different gender depending on their use:

(a) as geographical units they are treated as neuter

(17) Looking at the map we see France here. It is one of the largest
countries in Europe.

(b) as political, economical and cultural units the names of countries

are feminine:

(18) Britain called on her allies to help fight the threat.

(19) France has been able to increase her exports by 10 per cent over
the last six months.

(c) names of countries used to denote sports teams are treated as

collective nouns and referred to as they. Consequently, they agree with
the verb in the plural.

(20) France have improved their chances of winning the Cup.

(9) Lower animals (it – which)

These nouns (e.g. ant, frog, herring, horsefly, roach, snake, etc) take as
pronoun substitutes it and which. Still the masculine – feminine
distinction may also be made explicit by formal gender markers if it is
felt to be relevant:

198
Masculine Feminine

male frog female frog

he-goat she-goat
dog-otter bitch-otter
cock-pheasant hen-pheasant
male-wasp female wasp
cock-pigeon hen-pigeon
he-bear she-bear
buck-hare/jack-hare doe-hare
buck-rabbit doe-rabbit

Gender can also be marked lexically, i.e. by different lexical items:

Masculine Feminine

drone bee-queen

(10) Inanimate nouns (it – which)

Apart from the nine animate gender classes mentioned so far, there are
also the inanimate nouns that make up the tenth gender class.
Inanimate nouns take as pronoun substitutes it and which.
Personification in creative use of language may lead to giving the
nouns of classes 9 and 10 the features [+human], [+animate],
accounting thus for the use of the pronominal substitutes he, she and
who.
A more updated approach to gender in English that supplements
rather than substitutes Quirk et al. (1972, 1985) is Longman’s
Grammar of Spoken and Written English (Biber et al. 1999),
incorporating, for the first time, as the title suggests data form spoken
language. The main gender classes according to Biber et al. (1999) are:

personal/human:

masculine e.g. Tom, a boy, the man he

feminine e.g. Sue, a girl, the woman she
dual e.g. a teacher, the doctor he, she
non-personal/neuter: e.g. a house, a bird it

199
(Biber et al. 1999:311)

Biber et al. (1993) warn against the problematic nature of

gender in present day English pointing out that “gender is not a simple
reflection of reality; rather it is to some extent a matter of convention
and speakers’ choice and special strategies may be used to avoid
gender-specific reference at all” (Biber et al. 1999:312). Of major
relevance for this chapter is the section on personal vs. non-personal
reference. The authors argue that personal reference connotes greater
familiarity or involvement, whereas non-personal reference signals
detachment on the part of the speaker. Items falling into the category
that offers a three-way choice (personal he, she; non-personal it) are
nouns denoting young children (infant, baby, child) and animals
(particularly nouns denoting animals that can be pets; cf. ibid: 318). An
exceptional status is attributed to nouns denoting countries and ships,
which offer a two-way choice (personal she, non-personal it). However,
they fail to account for this exceptional case.

4.2.2 English gender revisited

Leisi and Mair (1999:140) argue that gender in English has lost much
of its weight primarily because it was a purely grammatical category
without being grounded in reality. In their account of English gender
exceptional feminine and masculine nouns include names of countries
and “machines men have a close emotional relationship with” (e.g.
motorbike); these nouns are referred to as adopted natural
(psychological) gender47. Additionally, the class of allegorical gender
includes abstract nouns whose gender, according to the authors, is
largely based on the gender associated with noun in the original
classical language. Thus, love can be masculine (< Lat. amor), peace
feminine (< Lat. pax).
More recently, Brinton (2000:105f) follows the mainstream
view that modern English has natural gender as opposed to its earlier
grammatical gender. She states that English gender is generally a covert
category in nouns, while the related category of animacy based on the
oppositions animate vs. inanimate is expressed in personal,
interrogative and relative pronouns (what vs. who; which vs. who).

47
This category is traditionally known as metaphorical gender (cf. Kortmann
1999:83).
200
Interestingly, her account postulates an animacy-based classification:
humans and higher animals, on the one hand, lower animal and
inanimates, on the other. Animals thus appear on both sides of the
scale. The cut-off point can vary on all levels of lectal variation (dia- ,
socio-, idiolect), depending on the speech event, context, speaker
attitude, addressee, etc.
The most recent significant contribution to gender in modern
English is Huddleston and Pullum’s Cambridge Grammar of the
English Language (2002). The authors’ line of argument48 is very much
in Corbett’s vein: since agreement is the defining criterion of gender
and since English does show agreement, though in a very restricted
way, it follows that English has gender, though it is not an inflectional
category and not as strongly grammaticalized as in other language
(Huddleston and Pullum 2002:485).
Typical wording can be found in the actual distributional
properties of masculine he, feminine she, and neuter it. He and she
referring to males and females respectively, it referring to “entities
which are neither male nor female” are identified as the core uses of
the pronouns he, she, and it. As this definition of it excludes its use
with animal and human antecedents, there is an extra section on these
exceptional uses. With regard to non-human antecedents (nouns
referring to animals), Huddleston and Pullum state the following:

 It is generally used when the sex of the referent is unknown;

 He and she are “more likely with pets, domestic animals, and
creatures ranked high in the kingdom of wild animals” (e.g.
lions, tigers, etc.);
 The use of he and she “indicates a somewhat greater degree of
interest in or empathy with the referent than does it”

Huddleston and Pullum (2002:489)

It is the third factor that is remarkable and merits special attention, as

this is what every native speaker would say in an impressionistic
account and what has been the focus of socio-pragmatic approaches to

48
Gender is treated in chapter 5 “Noun and noun phrases” by John Payne and Rodney
Huddleston, to whom “the authors” will refer in the remainder of the subsection that
discusses Huddleston and Pullum’s Cambridge Grammar of the English Language
(2002).
201
gender for some decades (Mathiot and Roberts 1979, Morris 1991), but
what has not been taken up in prescriptive grammars so far 49 . With
regard to use of it for human antecedents, the authors combine a
traditional commonplace (it can be used to refer to babies) with an
approach based on speaker’s attitudes: used in such a manner, it tends
to signal resentment and antipathy on the part of the speaker. Another
special case they mention concerns the use of she with inanimate non-
female referents. According to the authors, such usage is possible with
two classes of nouns: (i) nouns denoting countries, when considered as
political, but not as geographical entities, and (ii) nouns denoting ships
“and the like”

Ships represent the classical case of this extended use of she, but it is
found with other kinds of inanimates, such as cars. There is
considerable variation among speakers as to how widely they make use
of this kind of personification. It is often found with non-anaphoric
uses of she: Here she is at last (referring to a ship or bus, perhaps),
Down she comes (with she referring, say, to a tree that is being felled).

Huddleston and Pullum (2002:484)

The extent to which personification is involved will be discussed in a

later section. For the moment, it suffices to say that, in the absence of a
referent, we can hardly be dealing with personification, as the pronoun
is not used anaphorically. Personification cannot be involved when
reference is made to an abstract idea or situation (as this is what most
of the instances of she in their examples seem to refer to). Payne and
Huddleston do approximate the actual situation by not trying to provide
a grid or table that lists gender classes, a modern approach which
makes it clear that almost 20 years have passed since the structuralist
approach of Quirk et al. (1985).

49
Biber et al. (1999) argue along the same limes, though not as consistently as Payne
and Huddleston.

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4.3 Pronominal substitutes with dual gender

4.3.1 Androcentric generics

As English has no neuter third person singular pronoun (i.e. one that
expresses the common meaning of he and she), referring to such nouns
of dual gender as friend, individual, journalist, teacher, student, etc.
and to pronouns such as everyone, everybody, someone, somebody,
anyone, anybody, no one, nobody is beset with problems when the sex
of the referent is unknown or irrelevant, or reference is made to both
sexes. Traditionally, prescriptive English grammars imposed the use of
masculine pronouns, a tendency characteristic of formal English. This
formal equivalent, though increasingly ignored, is illustrated by the
sentences in (21) and (22).

(21) Each novelist aims to make a single novel of the material he has
been given.

(22) Everyone thinks he knows the answer.

Even though such masculine pronouns may be intended to have dual

reference, empirical research has shown that speakers often perceive
their referent to be male. For instance undergraduate students at
Harvard University were asked to draw pictures to go with sentences
such as:

(23) a. An unhappy person could still have a smile on his face.

b. An unhappy person could still have a smile on their face.
c. An unhappy person could still have a smile on his or her face.

The findings showed that there were more male images than female
ones (cf. Khosroshashi F. 1989). Similarly, MacKay and Fulkerson
(1979) showed that the use of generic he frequently leads to a male-
referent interpretation of antecedents such as student, dancer or
musician.

4.3.2 Coordinated masculine and feminine pronominal forms

The use of androcentric generics has come in for a great deal of

criticism and various strategies have been proposed to avoid gender-
203
specific pronouns. Various grammatical devices can be used as
alternatives to masculine forms with dual or generic reference. One
option for avoiding the use of he as the unmarked form when the
gender is not determined is to conjoin both masculine and feminine
pronouns:

(24) Every student has to hand in his or her paper by the end of the
week.

(25) Thus the user acts on his/her responsibility when executing

his/her functions within his/her task domain.

(26) Anyone with English as his or her native language does not need
other languages.

4.3.3 Plural pronominal forms used as singular forms

The pronoun they is commonly used as a 3rd person singular pronoun

that is neuter between masculine and feminine. At one time restricted to
informal usage, the use of they with dual gender reference is now
increasingly accepted even in formal usage, especially in American
English:

(27) Everybody remembers where they were when JFK was shot.

(28) Nobody likes to admit that they entertain very little, or that they
rarely enjoy it when they do.

One way of avoiding not only the gender problem but also the
difference in number between co-referent forms is to rephrase the
sentence so as the subject occurs in the plural:

(29) All students have to hand in their paper by the end of the week.

(30) a. Now they expect responsible customers to pay for their folly.
b. A similar strategy can be employed for indefinite pronouns as well:

(31) All of them think they have the answer.

204
 The use of coordinated masculine and feminine forms is
particularly preferred in academic discourse (Biber et al. 1999:317).
This preference is in line with the features of academic style which
favours exactness. By contrast any use of plural pronouns to substitute
for singular nouns violates prescriptive rules of grammar. Consequently
this option is unlikely to be adopted in academic writing, a register very
much concerned with correctness. Coordination, on the other hand,
involves a length which might make it dispreferred in journalistic style
and a degree of clumsiness which might make it less preferred in other
registers, such as conversational or literary discourse.

4.4 The socio-pragmatic approach

Faced with speaker-based variation in gender, some linguists have

dismissed the concept of gender in English and argued that, although
“alive” in the language use, English gender cannot be regarded as a
system (Erades 1956, Markus 1988). “Can we speak of gender in a
language where the same may at one moment be masculine, at another
feminine or neuter, and, let us mark it well, in the language of the same
speaker and sometimes in one and the same sentence?” (Erades
1956:9). Erades concludes that English has no gender, unless the term
is reinterpreted “beyond recognition”. What Erades suggests is that the
“system” amounts to variation in pronominal substitutes according to
the mood, temper, frame of mind, and psychological attitude of the
speaker: “The old schoolbook rule to the effect that a male being is a
he, a female being a she and a thing an it applies when the speaker is
emotionally neutral to the subject referred to; as soon as his language
becomes affectively coloured, a living being may become an it, this or
what and a thing a he or she” (Erades 1956:10).
Erades (1956) rightly emphasizes speaker attitudes and
variability inherent in the English gender system, but he too sweepingly
abandons its systematic nature in favour of speaker whims.
Contemporary sociolinguistic research has shown that speech patterns
within communities are often systematic and explicable given
information about extra-linguistic factors. In other words, speaker-
based theories are not inherently irregular.
The recognition of its variability is a component that is
instrumental in understanding Modern English gender. However, it is
equally important not to overemphasize unpredictability. Although
biological sex is not absolutely predictive, there are regular, identifiable
205
patterns that are both semantic and sociolinguistic. As Vachek (1976)
has pointed out, if “all factors that co-operate in determining the
pronominal reference are duly considered and if their hierarchy is
carefully established, the apparent confusion becomes clarified and the
knotty relations disentangled. In other words, if the situation of the
speaker and his approach to the extra-lingual reality he is handling are
satisfactorily stated, his pronominal reference to this reality should be
perfectly predictable” (Vachek 1976:389). There must be a system of
gender, he concludes, if it can be so systematically manipulated; the
gender category may not be strictly grammatical but it is lexico-stylistic
(by which he seems to mean semantic and affective).
Attempts to predict the semantic and extra-linguistic factors
determining English pronoun reference, most of which postulate
emotional involvement on the part of the speaker, have met with
limited success. Various studies aiming to identify the factors
determining emotive gender reference have proposed that masculine
and feminine references to inanimate objects reflect speakers’ negative
and/or positive attitudes towards the referent. Noting that exceptional
gendered associations cluster around some typical invariants and have
social values, Vachek (1976) formulates a scale with a neutral,
unmarked reference between two polar extremes for positive and
negative feelings towards the facts of any given reality. With regard to
these marked uses he states:

The reason why the feminine set was chosen to refer to the
positive kind of approach (signalling the thing referred to as
amiable, intimately known, delicate, etc), while the masculine
set serves to denote the opposite, negative kind of approach
(signalling, in its turn, the concerned thing as huge, strong,
unwieldy or generally unpleasant) is too obvious to need
detailed specification – it reflects the common conception of the
feminine vs. masculine features regarded as typical of each of
the two sexes.

(Vachek 1976: 388)

Other linguists (Traugott 1972) concur with this model of the

affective gender system arguing that the correlation between feminine
and positive, on the one hand, and masculine and negative, on the
other, is transparent. As far as animate nouns are concerned, the
206
consensus is that the masculine and feminine are both unmarked.
Speakers can express their negative feelings towards an animate
referent by downgrading him or her to it.
The correlations between feminine and positive, masculine and
negative are, however, far from obvious. Apart from conveying the
speaker’s positive attitudes towards the referent, feminine references
may also reflect negative attitudes such as frailty or weakness;
similarly, masculine references can be positive when size and strength
are considered50.
Combining a structuralist approach and speaker involvement,
Joly (1975) downplays the role of biological sex distinction in his
account of the English gender system. He proposes a model in which
animacy and humanity are the top two parameters for determining
gender, a reflection of fundamental distinctions in Indo-European,
which are revealed once the language “did away with” morphological
gender (Joly 1975:248). To account for gender-related fluctuations,
Joly relies on speaker attitudes and perceptions of the referent:

My contention here is that Modern English reproduces very

consistently at least part of the Indo-European pattern of
gender, viz. the basic opposition animate-powerful vs.
inanimate-powerless. In English, whenever the speaker feels
that an object or any inanimate notion possesses some kind of
power, the neuter anaphoric pronoun it may be replaced by one
of the two animate pronouns he or she pertaining to the sphere
of humanity which is the proper sphere of power
(Ibid.:254).

The opposite applies as well, when a human being is deprived of power

and/or personality the anaphoric animate pronouns he and she are
replaced by the neuter pronoun it. Joly further distinguishes two
degrees of power: major power (masculine) and minor power
(feminine). Thus, the choice of a gendered pronoun for an inanimate is
not based, according to Joly, on biological sex distinctions but on
power distinctions. Moreover, he argues that there is the tendency to
use the lower power first for an inanimate (it is closer to its original no-

50
The polar positive/negative distinction is far from being as neat and sharp as these
scholars suggest. For a more detailed study of referential gender that blurs this
dichotomy, see Mathiot (1979).

207
power status) unless compelled to do otherwise. This vacillation in
gender assignment reflects speakers’ emotional attitudes, ranging from
emotional involvement to contempt.
It is impossible to identify the factors instrumental in gender
assignment, although it is possible to recognize patterns. On the other
hand, postulating a dichotomy between natural (unmarked) gender and
affective gender in English would mean treating the fluctuations as
exceptional and thus excluding them from the base or unmarked
system. More productive would be to devise a system that incorporates
‘unmarked’ and ‘marked’, ‘neutral’ and ‘emotive’, ‘natural’ and
‘unnatural’ gender references (cf. Baron 1971, Curzan 2003). Such a
system for English gender can still described as be semantic, though, as
Curzan (2003) points out, not all of semantics can be broken down into
componential binaries. This is in line with Corbett’s (1991:32)
reminder that in all semantic systems “it is important to bear in mind
that the world view of speakers determines the categories involved, and
that the criteria may not be immediately obvious to an outsider
observer.”

4.4.1 Personification of inanimate entities

In the course of this chapter, it has been mentioned repeatedly that

nouns which trigger gendered pronouns deserve a special status. The
two major categories to be discussed in what follows are instances of
personification and references to animals. Additionally, a specific use
of feminine pronouns merits a closer investigation. This specific use
will be labelled non-referential she.
Personification can be defined as the figure of speech which
attributes human qualities to non-humans and things (animals, plants,
elements of nature, and abstract ideas). The entry for personification in
The New Fowler’s Modern English Usage (Burchfield and Fowler
1998) links the loss of grammatical gender with the rise of
personification, citing examples from the OED:

Personification arises partly as a natural or rhetorical phenomenon and

partly as a result of the loss of grammatical gender at the end of the
Anglo-Saxon period. In Old English a pronoun used in place of a
masculine noun was invariably he, in place of a feminine noun heo (=
she), and in place of a neuter noun hit (= it). When the system broke up
and the old grammatical cases disappeared, the obvious result was the
208
narrowing down of he to a male person or animal, she to a female
person or animal, and it to nearly all remaining nouns. At the point of
loss of grammatical gender, however, he began to be applied
‘illogically’ to some things personified as masculine (mountains, rivers,
oak-trees, etc., as the Oxford English Dictionary has it), and she to
some things personified as feminine (ships, boats, carriages, utensils,
etc.). For example, the Oxford English Dictionary cites examples of he
used of the world (14c.), the philosopher’s stone (14c.), a fire (15c.), an
argument (15c.), the sun (16c.), etc.; and examples of she used of a ship
(14c.), a door (14c.), a fire (16c.), a cannon (17c.), a kettle (19c.), and
so on. At the present time such personification is comparatively rare,
but examples can still be found: e.g. Great Britain is renowned for her
stiff upper lip approach to adversity; I bought that yacht last year: she
rides the water beautifully; (in Australia and NZ) she’s right; she’s
jake; she’s a big country, etc.

(The New Fowler’s Modern English Usage)

A distinction should be drawn between personification in its own right

and personification as a sub-component of metaphor (as in the mouth
of the river). While the latter use occurs frequently in everyday speech,
particularly in idioms and proverbs, we are concerned here with the
former use only – which is, according to the New Fowler’s Modern
English Usage rare.
Personification is more common in literary discourse where
abstract nouns frequently take as pronominal substitutes he or she (i.e.
they are personified) (cf. Stefanescu 1988). The process of referring to
a non-human entity as he or she (instead of the normative it) is known
as upgrading51. A speaker makes use of upgrading to connote various
degrees of positive involvement towards the referent.
Nouns such as church, crime, fate, liberty, life, music, nature,
science, wisdom are feminine. Consider the following illustrations
below:

51
The reverse process whereby the personal pronoun it is used to refer to persons is
also possible. This process is known as downgrading and it connotes various degrees
of negative involvement on the part of speaker, as in the following examples: I can
understand why they took the silverware. But why did it take my piggy bank?

209
(32) I love wisdom more than she loves me.

(33) Crime....she was not the child of solitude.

(34) Music with her silver sound.

(35) Science has failed because she has attempted an impossible task.

(36) Maupassant strips life of the few poor rags that still cover her.

In fiction names of towns may be treated as feminine:

(37) In the third place, it is obvious that no very close or instructive

analogy can be established between Rome in her relations with the
provinces....

(38) Paris was herself again.

(39) Oxford taught as much Greek and Latin as she could.

(Stefanescu 1988:177)

Names of celestial bodies can be masculine or feminine. Mars and

Jupiter are masculine while Venus is feminine. Sun is masculine and so
is time and year. Moon is feminine like the names of the seasons. In
many cases the gender of nouns used in literary discourse depends on
the nouns’ corresponding gender in Latin (Kruisinga 1931).
In a corpus-based study on personification, MacKay and
Konishi (1980) investigated the use of what they call “human
pronouns” (i.e. he, she and their dative-accusative and genitive forms
him, her, his, hers, respectively) to refer to non-human antecedents.
The authors based their analysis on a database of approximately 35,000
pronouns collected from an anthology of children’s literature. They
distinguished three large classes of antecedents: animals (including
real, imaginary, and toy animals), fantasy creatures (including
imaginary beings such as fairies, ghosts, giants, and trolls) and things
(including abstractions such as thought and time) (MacKay and Konishi
1980:151). Though designed as a study dealing with personification it
soon turned out that personification played only a minor role when
deviations from the prescriptive patterns occurred.
210
 Their findings are highly unexpected in light of prescriptive
grammarians’ eyes: of the approximately 450 pronominal references to
animals, more than 80% were masculine and feminine (with the
masculine outnumbering the feminine by 3 to 1) while the neuter
pronoun it occurred in only 18% of the examples. Next MacKay and
Konishi classified the pronouns according to whether or not the
antecedent was personified, assuming that personification would play a
significant role in triggering non-neuter pronouns. Although, in general,
this was found to be the case, the figures for the non-personified
antecedents were surprising and unexpectedly high, as the Table 1
shows.
Within the class of nouns denoting animals, personification
could account for the use of a human pronoun in approximately half of
the cases (234 of 452). In the non-personified cases, as shown in Table
4.1, a “human pronoun” was recorded in more than two thirds (69%) of
the examples. This figure clearly shows how rare it is actually used to
refer to animals. These figures for the animal class, however, stand in
marked contrast to the figures for the classes including nouns referring
to fantasy creatures and things which clearly follow the expected norm.
All examples of fantasy creatures being referred to as he or she are
instances of personification, and in only six cases did speakers use a
“human” pronoun to refer to things.

Pronoun used
Total he she it
Nature of N N % N %
antecedent
Animals 218 150 69 68 31
Fantasy 0 0 0 0 0
creatures
Things 26 6 23 20 77
Total 246 156 64 88 36

Table 4.1 The use of he and she vs. it for non-personified antecedents
(based on MacKay and Konishi 1980:152)

Corpus-based studies of everyday use of spoken English, on

the other hand, show that personification is generally restricted to the
telling of myths and legends (Wagner 2003). Borderline cases between
proper personification and dialect use of English include references to
211
the phenomenon known also as ignis fatuus and jack-o’-lantern which
can be seen at night as a pale, flickering light in meadows and marshy
places and around which many popular superstitions cluster 52 . This
phosphorescent light flitting at night over swampy ground is sometimes
called “jack-o’-lantern or “Jackie the lantern” and referred to
anaphorically as it or he.
It would be inappropriate to claim that personification is
involved when a watchmaker refers to one of his watches as he or when
the anaphoric pronoun he is used by a cider maker when referring to an
apple. As Wagner (2003:120) argues in her corpus-based analysis of
referential gender in English, these examples are typical of true dialect
use deriving from a linguistic system that has nothing to do with
personification. Her claim is supported by the provenance of masculine
pronouns in these domains and the fact that personification has been
associated with feminine forms, as can be seen from the following
quote and the standard system described in the previous section:

Many nouns are given variable gender, depending on whether

they are thought of in an intimate way. Vehicles and countries
are often called she as well as it (She can reach 60 in 5 seconds;
France has increased her exports). Pets are often he or she. A
crying baby may become it.
It is not obvious why some entities are readily personified while
others are not. Nor is it obvious why most entities are given
female personifications. It is not simply a matter of feminine
stereotypes, for she is used in aggressive and angry situations as
well as in affectionate ones: guns, tanks and trucks which won’t
go remain she.
(Crystal 1995:209)

The representation of ships as female is generally interpreted as

personification, probably on the basis of the imagery of a ship as a
womb-like container (cf. among others, McArthur 1992; Wales 2002).

52
These eerie lights have given rise to many superstitions. Tradition varies as to their
nature. Formerly these lights were supposed to haunt desolate and moorlands for the
purpose of misleading travelers and drawing them to their death. Another superstition
says that they are the spirits of those who have been drowned in the bogs, and yet
another says that they are the souls of unbaptized infants. Science now attributes these
ignes fatui to spontaneous combustion of gases emitted by rotting organic matter.

212
This interpretation is beset with problems, especially in dialect use of
English. A corpus-based analysis of Newfoundland English, for
instance, shows that fishermen would never use it to refer to their ships.
It is therefore highly unlikely that personification is used in 100% of
the cases (Wagner 2003:121). Wales (2002:333) argues similarly:
“personification is obvious too general a label to cover what seem to be
quite complex analogical or metaphorical hierarchies of salience
according to such value(s) as occupation, local environment and
climate and general relevance to human needs, as well as subtle forms
of gender symbolism”.

4.4.2 Animal referents

Another class of nouns that deserves special attention with regard to the
degree of personification involved in gender assignment is that of
nouns referring to animals. As we have already seen in the previous
section, according to most grammars of modern and early stages of
English the appropriate pronoun that should be used when referring to
an animal is it, except for cases where the sex of the animal is known53.
As we will see in this section, actual language use, however, cannot be
more remote from this prescriptive statement. Even a cursory
examination of speakers’ linguistic behaviour shows that occurrences
of he and she by far outnumber instances of prescribed it in everyday
spoken discourse. In what follows we will discuss the findings of
several corpus-based studies that addressed the issues of gender
assignment and pronominal substitutes with nouns referring to animals.
Premature as it may seem, the first conclusion from these
studies can be drawn here already: while hundreds of masculine and
feminine pronouns referring to animals can be found, there is only a
handful of neuter forms. Surprising as it may seem, a detailed
investigation of additional dealing with this issue reveals that the
observed pattern is the rule rather than the exception (cf. among others
Marcoux 1973; Morris 1991; MacKay and Konishi 1980; Wagner
2003).
In a corpus-based study of students’ use of personal pronouns
in tag questions, Marcoux (1973) examined nouns referring to

53
When the sex of the animal is known, the pronouns he and she can be used
alternatively.

213
countries, ships, animals and humans. He found surprisingly high
occurrences of [+ human] pronouns used to refer to animals of
unknown sex, which would be against the prescriptive pattern that
imposes the pronoun it as the appropriate pronoun that should be used
when referring to an animal whose sex is unknown. Some of the
sentences he used in his study are cited below, together with the
pronominal forms that were recorded in the tags:

(40) My dog will eat anything.

(he 88, it 5, she 3, aberrant 12)

(41) That cat looks hungry.

(it 46, he 43, she 9, he/she 2, aberrant 8)

(42) This canary sings beautifully.

(it 69, he 23, she 7, he/she/it 1, aberrant 8)

(43)Tweety, my parakeet, is sick.

(she 42, he 40, it 14, he/she 2, aberrant 10)

The analysis leads Marcoux to the following conclusions. First, “the

presence of a proper noun seems to encourage the use of either a
masculine or a feminine pronoun rather than the neuter form”
(Marcoux 1973:104). Second, the masculine pronoun is highly
favoured over the feminine one54. This latter tendency is corroborated
by other empirical studies as well (cf. Morris 1991).
A cursory analysis of personal pronouns referring to animal
antecedents in the spoken section of the BNC reveals the same pattern:
the great majority of pronominal substitutes referring to such nouns as
dog and cat were marked, as shown in Tables 4.2 and 4.3. Although
slightly different from Marcoux’s findings, these surprisingly similar
results support the expected pattern: masculine pronouns are the
unmarked choice in spoken English when referring to a pet such as a
dog or a cat.

54
It is unclear why the results for the two birds (canary and parakeet) differ to such a
large extent. A possible explanation could be that a parakeet is more readily perceived
as a pet; in other words, it is more prototypical category than a canary.

214
 N %
masculine form 162 56.6
feminine form 23 8
neuter form 101 35.3
total 286 99.9

Table 4.2 Pronouns for antecedent dog in the spoken sample of BNC

N %
masculine form 88 52.7
feminine form 38 22.7
neuter form 41 24.6
total 167 100

Table 4.3 Pronouns for antecedent cat in the spoken sample of BNC

While it can be assumed that most of the instances of feminine

pronouns referring to dogs are used by speakers who know that the dog
in question is actually female, cats, as Table 4.3 shows, are more likely
to be referred to as she generically, presumably due to the prescriptive
biological-semantic pattern: dog is neuter or [+ male] (as opposed to
the feminine bitch); cat is neuter and [+female] (as opposed to the
masculine tom-cat).
Pronoun switches are frequent and various emotive factors play
a significant role in the choice of pronouns when referring to animals.
An analysis of the BNC has shown that the owners of a cat are very
likely to refer to the dog that chased their cat as it rather than he or she.
This pronominal choice will enable them to signal not only their
intimacy and involvement with their cat, but also distance towards the
dog. The reverse pattern, on the other hand, holds for owners of dogs.
The following examples from (43/44) to (45/46) taken from BNC are
representative of this pattern. In (35/36) a police officer is being
questioned about dogs on the force. The fact that he himself has never
owned such a dog and the rather formal nature of the speech event
would account for his four uses of the neuter pronoun it. Once he gets
emotionally involved though, talking about a dog becoming a member
of the family of the leading officer, he switches to he in the two final
references.

215
(44) a. ….Alright? Next question. Yes young man.
b. [PS000]: What was it like when you had your police dog?
c. [PS1SF]: I never had a police dog. I’ve never had, never been on er
the special force. A lot of people like it because basically the er when
you look after a police dog it becomes your pet as well, you take it
home with you and you take it to work with you, and you will have a
police dog for sort of like its working life of seven or eight years, so
basically you’re gonna have him for seven to eight years and he
becomes a fa- like a family pet.
FM7(257)

In (44/45), a farmer is talking about fox hunting. Although reporting a

rather general procedure, the speaker obviously has one specific dog in
mind, which will explain why he uses she in all instances.

(45) [PS2VX]: Aye. Aye. And erm say the fox had been in the ground,
and the […] and the the young cubs, for about three or four days. And
we used to hear somebody saying there was a vixen there and some and
some young ones. […] we went up there with the dogs and let them in
in to the burrow. Block everywhere, let them into the burrow. One dog
would go in, and she’d just shake her tail and come back, you couldn’t
get her in afterwards because she knew that they’d cleared off.
HER (217)

In (46), the owner of the cat (PS1D1) uses masculine pronouns

exclusively, while her friend (PS1CX) uses only neuter pronouns.

(46)

[PS1D1]: Come on puss, shh, shh, shh

[PS1CX]: Where’s it gone Rebecca? Where’s pussy cat?
[PS1D1]: puss, puss, puss puss
[PS1CX]: [laughing] Where’s it gone?
[PS1D1]: Is he there? Can you see him? Can you see him?
[PS1CX]: Go out, out cat [shooing away]
KB (10840)

Pets are more likely to be referred to as he rather than she or it

when their sex is unknown. Thus the masculine pronoun still serves as

216
generic. Generally, researchers agree that personal involvement seems
to be the most relevant factor in pronoun choice.

The use of he and she seems to signal personal involvement or empathy

for the referent in the case of […] an owner of an animal, someone who
is emotionally attached or values the referent, […] or someone attached
to a specific animal. By the way of contrast, the use of it seems to
signal lack of involvement or empathy with the referent in the case of
[…] [a speaker] who is not personally attached to the referent or wishes
to devalue it, an entity which is acted upon, and finally a nonspecific
animal or class of animals with which personal involvement is out of
the question.

(MacKay and Konishi 1980:155)

The cut-off point within the class of animals differs from speaker to
speaker, depending on various factors such as profession, environment,
etc. For someone who grew up in a large city and has hardly lived in
the countryside, it is probable that only pets, or even just dogs and cats,
can be referred to as she or he, whereas wild animals such as badgers,
bears or foxes will be referred to as it. On the other hand, it is
extremely likely that a farmer will refer to the animals on his farm as he
or she or that a hunter will refer to a hunted animal and a fisherman to
the fish in his catch as he.
To conclude this section, it should be pointed out that the
prescriptive rules in grammar concerning the anaphoric use of pronouns
referring to animals are hardly followed in everyday conversations. As
some degree of personal involvement is usually present when speakers
talk about animals, neutral pronouns are the least expected forms. Pets
will hardly be referred to as it, unless they are talked about in a
derogatory or detached manner. Other factors that may influence
pronoun choice are saliency of the animal in the discourse (i.e.
centrality in MacKay and Konishi’s terms, 1980:155), size (the bigger
the animal, the more likely the use of it), and various real or supposed
attributes (‘brave’, ‘wise’ = male; ‘weak’, ‘passive’ = female, etc. see
also the section on Mathiot and Roberts, 1979).

217
4.4.3 Non-referential she

A closer analysis of samples of both spoken and written English reveals

an interesting pattern which is generally not mentioned in prescriptive
grammars. This pattern is illustrated by the following examples:

(47) Watch out! Here she comes! (speaker is sea-sick)

(48) Here she comes!

(Paddock 1991: 30, referring to an approaching weather front)

(49) She’s fine; she’s cool; she’ll be joe

(synonyms of ‘It doesn’t matter’; Orsman 1997:717 )

(50) Well..it rolled in at my feet and he’d pulled t’ pin out! I got out o’
that hole faster than I went in, and up she went!
Middlesborough 027 (MidSL); explosion caused by a grenade (referred
to as it)

In the examples (47) – (50) the referent of the personal pronoun she is
either difficult to identify or, more frequently, it refers to a general or
concrete situation. This pattern can be found in all varieties of English,
thereby pointing to the fact that it is not restricted to regional or social
language use.
As the examples from (47) to (50) show, one of the major
characteristics is the word order. More often than not, extraposition
results in an output of the form X-S-V instead of S-V-X. X is usually
realized by a spatial adverb such as here or there. Alternatively, the
preposition of a prepositional verb is extraposed giving rise to patterns
such as up she V or down she V. An analysis in terms of theme/rheme
or given/new information is inappropriate in most cases. The fronted
element, though usually containing new information, is generally not
the topic of the utterance in question. Matters are further complicated
by variations of this pattern such as here/there PP she V which seem to
assume an almost idiomatic meaning, making it impossible to attribute
any type of information status such as theme/rheme or topic/comment
to the individual elements at all. On the other hand, the pattern cannot
be interpreted as signalling some feminine characteristics either. It is
probable true that most people who use non-referential she are not

218
aware of it. The construction seems to have found its place among all
the uses of empty it that are common in everyday English conversation.

4.5 Gender in American English

4.5.1 The sociological view

In an influential article published in 1979 Mathiot and Roberts

investigate the use of referential gender in American English.
Adopting a sociological rather than purely linguistic approach to the
category of gender, they use attitudes and mental representations to
explain language use. They argue that speakers’ choice of pronominal
substitutes is based on specific sex roles that are manifested in
language. Their data, collected over a period of 10 years, were grouped
into two subsets: one illustrating the Los Angeles area and the other
one, the Buffalo area. Their examples are taken from face-to-face
conversations (Mathiot and Roberts 1979:5)55.
Mathiot and Roberts identify two patterns of referential gender:
standard and intimate. The latter accounts for the use of he or she for
an inanimate referent or the use of it for a human being. Their data
revealed that while the normative pattern predicts consistent use of one
pronominal form, “in the intimate pattern, the same entity may be
referred to with either one of the three pronominal forms by the same
speaker” (Mathiot and Roberts 1979:7).

The intimate pattern

As in the standard pattern, the intimate pattern evinces two basic

oppositions in the choice of pronominal substitutes: he and she vs. it,
on the one hand, and within this opposition, he vs. she, on the other
hand. According to Mathiot and Roberts, the first contrast can be
attributed to semantic upgrading (if he or she is used instead of it) or
downgrading (if it is used instead of he or she). While the authors’
assertion that upgrading in general corresponds to personification is
debatable, their association of “positive involvement on the part of the
speaker” seems an appropriate way to tackle the issue. Similarly,
55
The authors do not specify whether the examples were elicited or they were taken
from naturally occurring conversation. Moreover, the authors speak of “off” and “on”
data collecting, meaning that they were not primarily concerned with systematicity.

219
downgrading stems from speaker’s negative involvement and applies to
those cases of previously upgraded items as well (i.e. return to the
standard pattern). Their analysis of the data revealed an unexpected
high frequency of the intimate pattern which made them over-
generalize when they argue that “it seems that any non-human entity
can be referred to as either he or she, i.e. upgraded, without regard to its
nature” (Mathiot and Roberts 1979:11).
While the contrast between it, on the one hand, and he and she,
on the other, is relatively straightforward, much more variation occurs
within the intimate pattern when it comes to the he vs. she opposition.
The authors differentiate between men’s and women’s usage as they
assume that differences in mental representation manifest themselves in
the intimate pattern.

‘she’ ‘he’
Men’s mental Men’s attitudes Men’s attitudes Men’s mental
image of women towards or towards or image of
feelings about feelings about themselves
women themselves
Prized possession Appreciation
Challenge to Eagerness, Respect Brave, gallant
one’s manhood resentment,
frustration

Good-natured,
Warm affection A regular
fellow
Reward Pride
Sensual pleasure
Beautiful Admiration Self-depreciation Ugly
Incompetent Contempt Self-esteem Competent (not
(emotional, emotional,
unintelligent, intelligent,
weak) strong)

Table 4.4 Meanings manifested in men’s usage of she and he within

the intimate pattern (from Mathiot and Roberts 1979: 14)

Tables 4.4 and 4.5 illustrate the meanings of he and she for men and
women as they emerged from the authors’ analysis. Items in bold
220
indicate areas where men and women differ in their attributed
meanings, while they agree on all the other attributes. With regard to
the shared meanings, the authors argue that “it is clear from even a
casual knowledge of American culture that these meanings originate
from men rather than from women” (Mathiot and Roberts 1979: 15).
To give an example of shared meanings consider the following
example from Mathiot (1975:19); the example deals with the evaluative
system of appearance and is based on the opposition ugly/beautiful.
The notion of being beautiful corresponds to the feminine form she, the
notion of being ugly corresponds to the masculine form he. The notion
of being beautiful is manifested in a range of attributes such as ‘dainty’,
‘delicate’, ‘slim’, ‘trim’, ‘sleek’, ‘graceful’, ‘elegant’, ‘young’, ‘clean’,
‘white’, etc. The notion of being ugly is manifested in a range of
attributes such as ‘ungraceful’, ‘slow’, ‘awkward’, ‘bulky’, ‘large’,
‘loud’. The stereotypic attribution of beauty to women and ugliness to
men is conspicuous in the following exchange between two girl room-
mates:

(51) a. What are the names of the other plants?

b. They don’t have names.
c. Not even this one? (about a cactus in bloom)
d. No. He’s is just a spindly thing.
e. And Elisabeth? (about a violet)
f. Oh, but she’s lovely

(Mathiot 1975:20)

An example of differentiated usage involving again the

evaluation system applied this time to achievement shows that men’s
perception of their role in society is that of competent agent as opposed
to women who are seen, by men, as incompetent. Women, on the other
hand, conceive of themselves as mature, able to take care of
themselves, while they regard men as infantile, even inconsequential.
Mathiot and Roberts’s analysis is beset with problems.
Although they provide many examples to illustrate all the categories
they identified, it seems that no clear-cut system of pronominal use can
be developed, but rather an interpretation of more and less incidental
facts. Moreover, it is unclear how many instances of the intimate
pattern they found in their data.

221
 ‘she’ ‘he’
Women’s Women’s Women’s Women’s mental
mental image of attitudes attitudes towards image of men
themselves towards or or feelings about
feelings about men
themselves
Mature Self-esteem Cuddly affection Cute little fellow *
Mild Unconsequential
disparagement *
Pity Helpless *
Exasperation A pain in the ass *

Prized Appreciation
possession

Challenge to Eagerness,
one’s manhood resentment,
frustration

Reward Pride
Sensual
pleasure
Beautiful Admiration Self-depreciation Ugly
Incompetent Contempt Self-esteem Competent (not
(emotional, emotional,
unintelligent, intelligent, strong)
weak)

Table 4.5 Meanings manifested in women’s usage of she and he within

the intimate pattern (from Mathiot and Roberts 1979: 16)

The examples given in the analysis itself add up to

approximately 130, with masculine and feminine distributed fairly
evenly. Taking into account the examples provided and the relevant
forms included in the appendices (excluding the animals), the following
picture emerges: men use she or her about 40 times to refer to an
inanimate entity, while not a single use of a masculine pronoun is
222
mentioned; women, on the other hand, use masculine pronouns about
60 times to refer to an inanimate entity; additionally there are also
approximately 10 instances of women using feminine pronouns to refer
to inanimate entities. If these examples and figures can be taken as
representative of male and female usage, an interesting conclusion can
be drawn: when it comes to referring to inanimate entities, pronominal
use in the intimate pattern depends on the sex of the speaker – where
men prefer feminine pronouns, women will generally use masculine
ones. However, despite this pattern in the use of non-neuter pronouns,
this use is by no means systematic. Mathiot and Roberts provide
numerous examples of spoken English in which speakers switch
pronouns without any observable pattern within the same spate of talk:

(52) Do you realise how many times I have picked him up? He keeps
slipping of the shelf. Next time this happens I’m going to leave it on
the floor. See haw he likes it.
[referring to towel]

(53) What the hell is the matter with this thing? It just won’t work for
me! He usually isn’t like that.
[referring to typewriter]

Mathiot and Roberts (1979:33) interpret the shifts in the examples

above as instances of attaching negative attributes to entities that have
been previously upgraded. However, their assumption is relatively
limited in its explanatory power, as it does not apply in all contexts. In
the examples above the speaker’s irritation is obvious, thus the use of it
in all slots would have been consistent with the theory proposed by
Mathiot and Roberts. The switch back to he is rather unexpected and
inconsistent with their theory.
The pattern identified by Mathiot and Roberts in everyday
language use in Los Angeles and Buffalo in the 1970s is by no means
regional and related to this time span alone. This pattern can be
extended to other areas of the United States as well as the following
examples taken from modern American fiction and movies or
overheard in naturally-occurring conversation among Newfoundladers
show:

223
(54) Ok, crack ’er up! - from the movie Titanic USA (1997); the
speaker is an American male, referring to the safe being brought up
from the ocean floor

(55) Where is she? If she will give us the pleasure... there she is! - from
the movie The red violin; the speaker is a male auctioneer, presumably
Canadian, talking about a violin that is going to be auctioned; the
turntable is not working properly, so the audience has to wait a bit for
the violin

(56) Up she comes – picture subtitle taken from The Early Shopper,
14/10/96; the pronoun she refers to the roof.

Mathiot and Roberts’ observation regarding the intimate pattern

of pronominal use is similar to patterns identified by other linguists
such as Svartengren in fiction in the 1930s, Morris in Canadian English
in the 1990s and even Pawley in Tasmanian Vernacular English in the
1970s. Thus we can safely assume that this pattern of pronominal use is
rather prototypical of non-standard spoken English in general rather
than a pattern restricted to a regional linguistic variety56.

4.5.2 The vernacular view

In three essays very similar in content, Svartengren (1927, 1928, 1954),

one of the earliest scholars to study Modern English gender variation in
detail, investigated exceptional uses of feminine pronouns for
inanimate referents. He based his study on works of American fiction.
His database included 79 texts of contemporary American authors,
among them such well-known names as Jack London and Mark Twain.
His analysis revealed that there is a tendency for American fiction
writers and the characters they portray to use feminine forms when
referring to inanimate entities. Interestingly enough, a similar
phenomenon does not occur for the masculine counterparts. A possible
explanation for this state of affairs might be that he did not encounter
strange masculine forms or, at least, they were far fewer than the
feminine ones and thus they did not deserve any comment. The non-

56
For an analysis of gender-related patterns of pronominal use in West Country and
Newfoundland dialect corpora, see Wagner (2003).

224
existence, or at least the extreme scarcity, of masculine pronouns
referring to inanimate entities in American fiction is in line with the
pattern described above and supported by various dialectal studies
according to which the average speaker of American English the
gendered pronoun of choice is feminine.
It is worth noting that all of the instances of feminine pronouns
used to denote inanimate referents stems from males, either in direct
speech or some sort of internal dialogue, or simply because the author
is a man. Additionally, another noteworthy feature about Svartengren’s
study is that novels dealing with upper and middle class life contributed
very little to his database. For him the phenomenon is clearly not
geographically restricted but, at the same time, vernacular and rural
in nature, opposing thus literary language. Thus his findings need to be
treated with some caution. Svartengren himself is aware of the bias of
his database when he argues that:

Examples show clearly that it is a distinct colloquialism at chiefly

among men familiar with the stern realities of life and whose speech is
uninfluenced by literature – this practically all over the United States
and Canada. Most of the material [....] hails from the fur, the timber, the
miming, and the cow countries, which may, or may not, represent the
actual state of things, for we must add, works describing life in the
industrial centers have been drawn upon only to a limited extent.

(Svartengren 1927:113; my emphasis)

Svartengren (1927, 1928) lists several classes of nouns that take the
anaphoric feminine pronoun and that, due to the diversity of referent
nouns, should more appropriately be seen as a collection of nouns
which often share no more than one semantic feature. Svartengren
(1927:110) himself is well aware of this: “every attempt to confine to
certain categories of nouns the instances when the feminine is to be
used must be abortive”. Working from the premise that the use of the
feminine for inanimate objects is an American phenomenon that has
influenced British English, he identifies the following classes of objects
that can take the feminine:

1. Concrete things made or worked upon by man

a) Machinery, industrial plants

225
 b) Hollow things, receptacles
i. Rooms, houses, and their uses
ii. Musical instruments
c) Other things made, created, worked or worked upon by man
i. Various small object not
ii. Large scale undertakings
iii. Picture, film, newspaper
iv. Clothing, wooden leg
v. Food and drink
vi. Coins, money, amount of money, amount
generally
vii. Organized body
viii. Districts
ix. Road, trail, distance
x. Natural resources exploited by man

2. Actions, abstract ideas

a) Actions
i. Expressions containing an imperative
ii. Other expressions denoting actions
b) Abstract ideas
i. Pronoun referring to substantive mentioned
ii. No substantival propword

3. Nature and natural objects not worked upon by man

a) Nature
b) Celestial bodies
c) Geographical appellations
d) Material nouns
e) Seasons, periods
f) Fire, temperature, weather conditions, ice, snow
g) Human body and its parts

The feature that unifies these three categories is that the use of
she reflects emotional interest on the part of the speaker, a bond of
living and working together. Svartengren concludes that “the emotional
character is the distinguishing feature of the phenomenon.
Consequently, she (her) does not so much mark the gender of a more or
226
less fanciful personification – though there are more than traces of such
a thing – as denote the object of an emotion” (Svartengren 1927:109).
At this point one issue deserves particular attention. As we have
already seen in the previous section, some of Svartengren’s categories
include items which are capable of triggering feminine pronouns even
in the standard language (e.g. nature, celestial bodies, cities, etc).
Svartengren supplies many examples illustrating the classes
listed above, some of which are cited below:

(57) Start her off! (referring to making pancakes)

(58) Watch out! Here she comes! (speaker is sea-sick)

(59) “How do you like it, Tim?” “She’s is alright.”

Fill ’er up! (refuelling a vehicle)

After having dismissed possible influence by foreign languages,

the explanation Svartengren offers for the choices regarding the use of
anaphoric gendered pronouns in spoken American English is grounded
in the influence of other regional varieties. Svartengren argues that,
although this phenomenon may have its origins in Great Britain, it is
now American at heart “and is, no doubt, rather slowly invading British
English as well, aided possibly by northern dialectal influence”
(Svartengren 1927: 113).
Although Svartengren associates the choices of anaphoric
pronouns outlined above with lower (working) classes, he does not
dismiss them as wrong or a result of poor learning. Rather, he assumes
that the “emotional character is the distinguishing feature of the
phenomenon” (Svartengren 1928:51) and subsumes it under the more
general label of personification. He argues that emotional interest is
“mirrored by the feminine gender” (Svartengren 1927:110) and the use
of the personal pronoun she instead of it to refer to various classes of
inanimate entities, such as tools, instruments, machinery, etc., can be
accounted for in terms of the “familiarity and the feeling of
companionship between the artisan and his tools” (ibid.). Svartengren’s
“emotional interest” amounts in fact to some form of personal
involvement rather than personification in its strict sense.

227
4.6 Gender in Canadian English

In her doctoral thesis, Morris (1991) investigates the category of gender

in modern Canadian English, drawing on both spoken and written data.
Although her study is not corpus-based, it deserves consideration since
it addresses all possible types of referents, from human to animals and
inanimates, and it also includes personification and other relevant
factors that may influence pronominal usage.

4.6.1 Animal denotata

Morris’ criteria for assigning gender are very much in line with the
factors that have been identified as crucial in previous research.
Animals playing a particular role in discourse will be referred to as he
or she rather than it. Tabel 4.6 shows the categories that Morris
distinguishes.

it background, non-individual; generally accepted behaviour of

species
he foreground, specific; individual; behaviour different from
expected norm/peculiar
she behaviour typical of species

Table 4.6 Gender assignment for animal denotata according to Morris

(1991)

Table 4.6 highlights two major traits that occur in studies

investigated the catagorization of animal references according to
gender:

 The major distinction between animate and inanimate is

reflected in the use of it vs. he/she
 The factor responsible for a change in the gender assignment
pattern is pragmatic rather than grammatical: an animal that is
foregrounded as the topic of a conversation will very likely be
referred to as he or she.

In her data he rather than she is the most frequently used

anaphoric pronoun to substitute for nouns denoting animals. Moreover,
Morris relates the choice between he or she to the behaviour of the
228
animal in question. The data Morris uses for her analysis shows that
feminine pronouns referring to animals are rare in Canadian English.
Figure 4.1 shows the hierarchical system for assigning gender to nouns
denoting animals according to Morris (1991:125):

clearly animate inanimate

he it

+ female - female (neutral)

she he

Figure 4.1 Gender assignment for nouns denoting animals in Morris

(1991)

4.6.2 Inanimate denotata

Morris’ data show that, unlike the use of anaphoric pronouns referring
to animals, inanimate pronominalization predicts the use of she rather
than he. In her opinion, “speaker familiarity” is responsible for many
of the instances of the feminine pronoun she used to refer to inanimate
entities.
Very often, the feminine pronoun occurs in imperative
sentences. Morris argues that the use of it would convey the sentence
the illocutionary force of an order. The feminine pronoun she, on the
other hand, has an inviting, “attenuating effect” (Morris 1991: 159).
Such an attenuating effect can easily be assumed as an explanatory
factor for the occurrences of non-referential feminine forms in general.
Additionally, Morris contrasts the use of feminine and neuter
pronominal forms along another dimension:

229
she particular denotatum, particular impressions of a given
denotatum
it concept/norm of that type of denotatum

What plays an important role in choosing the pronominal substitute is

the prototypicality of a given referent. While a prototypical denotatum
will generally be referred to as it, the speaker has the tendency to shift
to a feminine form as soon as attention is called to anything peculiar or
noteworthy about the referent.
Unlike the use of pronominal substitutes for animate denotata
identified in Morris’ data, masculine pronouns are basically non-
existent for inanimate referents. She points out that “while masculine
reference to any type of inanimate denotatum is extremely rare, no
examples at all were found in which a native English speaker used he to
represent an intangible, difficult-to-identify type of denotatum” (Morris
1991:164; my emphasis).
Based on the few examples of masculine pronouns referring to
inanimate entities that she was able to collect57, Morris establishes the
following contrasts between the uses of she and he:

she familiarity, well-known; predictable, foreseeable

he maintains features of the unknown; less familiar,
unpredictable, more individualistic

According to Morris (1991:175), “the primary function of

pronoun gender” is “to represent and express the manner in which a
speaker has formed his mental image of the denotatum”. Overall,
pronoun choice is thus largely based on discourse-pragmatic factors,
and in Morris’ system, generalizations or predictions are difficult, if not
impossible, to make as it is predominantly the speaker’s world view
that influences the choice of a pronominal form.

57
Morris’ database for this category is rather small in comparison to other categories.
Of the approximately 1,500 examples which make up her overall database, only 80
instances of masculine pronominalization are used to refer to inanimate entities.
These include 15 instances of personification and about 30 examples taken from other
authors’ studies (cf. Morris 1991:166).

230
4.7 Conclusions

Much of the current work on Modern English gender shows that

gendered references depend on the context and register of discourse as
well as the attitudes of speakers, all of which are affected and in many
ways determined by social concepts of sex and gender. The way in
which English language users make distinctions between male and
female and between masculine and feminine in their culture will be
reflected in the distinctions they make between masculine and feminine
in their language, as long as the gender system is a semantic one. Like
gender in society, gender in the English language represents a set of
constructed categories, categories whose boundaries will change over
time, reflecting the evolution of ideas about sex and gender.
Instances of gendered anaphoric pronouns that cross biological
lines are not exceptions to an underlying “real” or “unmarked” system
of natural gender; they are part of a natural gender system which is
natural because it corresponds to speakers’ ideas about constructions of
gender in the world about which they speak.
Sections 4.4, 4.5 and 4.6 clarified a number of issues. Although
the varieties and methodologies investigated could not have been more
different, these studies have come to very similar conclusions. In
everyday, casual spoken English, possibly world-wide, the pronoun of
choice when referring to an inanimate noun and wishing to convey
extra-linguistic information is a form of the feminine pronoun she58.
Moreover, this extra-linguistic information has been identified as
connoting some sort of emotional involvement, either positive or
negative. In contrast, the pronoun signifying non-involvement or
simply disinterest is the neuter pronoun it which is reserved in
prescriptive grammars for inanimate referents.
The corpus-based studies reviewed in sections 4.4, 4.5 and 4.6
revealed another interesting feature that has been ignored by
prescriptive grammars. The sex of the speaker may influence the choice
of the pronominal substitute to the extent to which women are more
likely to use masculine forms in a number of contexts where male
speakers prefer their feminine counterparts, particularly in domains
associated with gender-related behaviour (e.g. cars, tools, etc.).
Although concrete nouns receive gendered reference more often than

58
This choice is by no means a new development, as Svartengren’s data indicate
(1927, 1928, 1954).
231
the abstract ones, there seems to be no restrictions, semantic or
otherwise, on the type of noun that can take a feminine form in
anaphoric reference.
Another interesting feature of non-dialectal spoken English is
the use of the feminine pronoun she to refer to a hard-to-identify
referent or to an entire situation, a usage shared by male and female
speakers alike59. This usage has been identified in basically all major
varieties of English60.

4.8 Practice

Activity 1

Replace X in the following sentences by either who or which, Y by

either he, she or it, and Z by either his, her, its or their. If two (or
more) answers are possible, give them both (or all):

1. I know a man X could help you. Y is very kind.

2. I have a friend X could help you. Y is very kind.
3. I have an aunt X could help you, but Y is rather a bore.
4. My neighbour, X is an expert on such matters, will tell you, but
Y is out at the moment.
5. The Committee, X meets every Wednesday, has not yet made
up Z mind.
6. The Committee, X are very sympathetic, are giving the matter Z
careful consideration.
7. The group X dominated society then was then was the family. Y
continued to do so for centuries.
8. The family, X were seriously worried, met to discuss the
scandal. Y decided to try to hush it up.
9. The baby, X had fallen out of perambulator, continued to
scream as loudly as Y could.

59
This pattern of pronoun choice identified in the spoken Standard described in
sections 3 to 5 stands in sharp contrast to the dialect systems of Southwest England
and Newfoundland, where the masculine pronoun he and its corresponding dative-
accusative forms occur in a large percentage in the slots filled by the feminine
pronoun (cf. Wagner 2003).
60
In the Australian and New Zealand English systems this usage has been reported to
be on the increase (Pawley 1995a, b, 2002).
232
 10. The poor bitch, with Z five puppies, lay shivering in the corner.
Y showed no inclination to move.
11. The majority, X are in favour of the new measures, want to
make Z voices heard.
12. Japan, X was isolated from the rest of the world for nearly three
hundred years, has now taken Z place as a member of the world
community.
13. The teacher praised Z students.
14. They asked me to send them to the author if I should know who
Y was.
15. The bride was not pretty nor was she very young.
16. A ship is classed according to Z tonnage.

Activity 2

Supply the feminine counterpart for each of the following nouns:

bridegroom, duke, emperor, god, hero, host, steward, waiter, widower,

lad, uncle, nephew, lord, actor, monk, wizard, bachelor, friar

Activity

Supply the masculine counterpart for each of the following nouns:

doe, hen, bitch, goose, mare, ewe, vixen, sow, hind, duck, tabby-cat,
jenny-ass, bee-queen

Activity 3

For each of the following nouns, supply the appropriate gender

marker to make explicit the masculine – feminine distinction:

frog, goat, otter, pheasant, wasp, pigeon, bear, hare, rabbit

Activity 4

Comment on the use of the pronominal substitutes in the following

excerpts taken from naturally-occurring conversation:

233
 1. Do you realize how many times I have picked him up? He
keeps slipping off the shelf. Next time this happens I’m going to
leave it on the floor. See how he likes! [towel]

2. This one has been around long enough. I say, get rid of it! He is
a season (out of fashion), get read or it! [bedspread]

3. What the hell is the matter with this thing? It just won’t work
for me! He usually isn’t like this! [typewriter]

4. A: Come on puss, shh, shh, shh

B: Where’s it gone Rebecca? Where’s pussy cat?
A: puss, puss, puss puss
B: [laughing] Where’s it gone?
A: Is he there? Can you see him? Can you see him?
B: Go out, out cat [shooing away]

Activity 5

Consider the following two excerpts from American modern

fiction. Comment on the use of pronominal substitutes from the
point of view of the attachment-detachment debate.

Excerpt a

….before she […] leapt on the industrial gray shell of the computer.
“Mine. It’s mine.” [female (1)]
“Yes, sir, Lieutenant sir. She’s all yours.” [male (1) who is to install the
new PC]
[…]
“I requisitioned it two goddamn years ago.”[female (1)] “Yeah. Well.”
He smiled hopefully. “Here she is. I was just hooking her in the
mainframe. You want I should finish?” [male (1)]
[….]
She looked over, snorted at the foot-high box. “I know how it works. I
have this model at home.” [female (1)]
“It’s a good machine.” [male (1)]
[…]
“What happens to my old equipment?” [female (1)]
“I can haul it for you, take it down to recycle.” [male (1)]
234
“Fine – no. No, I want it. I want to take it home.” She’d perform a
ritual extermination, she decided. She hoped it suffered. [female (1)]
[…]
“Whoa.” Peabody came in, circled around. “Whoa squared. It’s
beautiful.” [female (2)] “Yeah. It’s mine. Tomjohn Lewis, my new best
friend, hooked it up for me. It listens to me, Peabody. It does what I tell
it to do.”
(from: J.D. Robb, Witness in Death, 2000, 98-99)

Excerpt b

The referent is a new computer. The participants are two males: A is

the head of the company that developed the unit, and B is a police
officer (and computer geek) who works with these units:

A: “How would you like to test one of the prototypes for me? Put it
through its paces, give your opinion?”
[…]
B: “I’ll every ounce of weight that’s in me if she does what you say.
When can I have her?”
(from: J.D. Robb, Betrayal in Death, 2001, 220

235
 Chapter 5

Case

5.1 Preliminary remarks

Following Blake (2001:1), we shall define case as “a system of

marking dependent nouns for the types of relationship they bear to their
heads”. This definition is based on a number of assumptions about
which element is the head, the modifier or the dependent. The verb is
taken to be the head of the clause since it generally determines what
dependents can occur in a clause. For instance, give is a three-place
verb that takes three arguments: a giver (expressed by the subject in the
nominative case), a gift (expressed by the direct object in the
accusative case) and a recipient (expressed by the indirect object in the
dative case). Consider as an illustration the following example:

(1) John gave Mary a book.

A verb may have other dependents expressing, for instance, time,

location, frequency. Although such dependents are generally not
licensed by a particular verb, they are nevertheless modifiers of the
verb.
The term case is also used to denote the phenomenon of having
a case system. A language with a case system is referred to as a case
language.
A distinction should be made between cases (nominative,
genitive, dative, accusative, etc.) and the case markers or case forms
through which the cases are realised. A case marker is an affix
attached to the stem, while a case form is a complete word. In some
languages (e.g. Turkish) the case affixes can be separated from the
stem, while in other languages it is not possible to isolate a case suffix.
In the latter situation it is necessary to talk in terms of the various word
forms that express the cases of the stem. These are case forms (cf.
Seidel 1988:36).
Moreover, it is essential to draw a further distinction between
the cases and the case relations or grammatical relations they
236
express. These terms refer to purely syntactic relations such as subject,
direct object and indirect object, each of which encompasses more than
one semantic role. These terms also refer to semantic roles such as
source or location, where these are not subsumed by a syntactic
relation and where they are separable according to some formal criteria.
In this chapter the concept grammatical relations will be adopted as
the term for the set of widely accepted relations that includes subject,
object and indirect object, whereas the case relations will be confined
to the particular relations posited in such frameworks as Localist Case
Grammar61 and Lexicase62.
In old English there were four cases distinguished by
inflections: nominative, genitive, dative and accusative. However, in
present day English inflections have been considerably reduced and
their role as syntactic markers has to a large extent been taken over by
word order and function words, such as preposition. The only
remaining case inflection for nouns is the genitive inflection.

5.2 Nominative

Traditional grammars tend to associate case inflections with semantic

values. Thus nominative case inflection (if any) is attached the sense
of designating the actor of an action and is also associated with the
feature [+ animate] of the subject:

(2) a. John is swimming.

b. The dog is barking.
c. Mary wrote a letter.
d. Tom left.

However, many examples do not show these characteristics, as shown

in (3) below:

(3) a. The envelope contains the letter.

b. He owes you ten pounds.
c. John had a shock.

61
See Anderson (1971),(1977), (1997).
62
See Starosta (1971), (1988).
237
Consequently, in order to attain some generalization, the semantic
characterization is supplemented with a description in terms of
syntactic functions of nouns phrases. Nominative case inflection is
characteristic of the subject of a sentence, of a predicative noun
phrase, and of appositive noun phrases:

(4) a. The country now faces an economic crisis.

b. John is a doctor.
c. This book is by Austin, the philosopher of language.

5.3. Accusative

Accusative case inflection (if any) is traditionally described as

designating the person or thing on which the action of the verb is
performed. The noun in the accusative case has the syntactic function
of a direct object and occurs after a transitive verb:

(5) a. John broke the window.

b. Tom beats John.
c. The dog is chasing the cat.

However, the semantic characterization fails again to acquire

generality. In a sentence such as The boy fears his father, The boy, i.e.
the subject in the nominative case, is the entity affected by the action
denoted by the verb, while his father, i.e. the direct object in the
accusative case, is the cause of the fear and not the entity on which the
action of the verb is performed.

5.4 Dative

In present-day English dative case is marked by word order and the

prepositions to and for.

(6) a. John gave flowers to Mary.

b. John gave Mary flowers.
c. I bought a book for John.
d. I bought John a book.

The syntactic function of nouns in the dative case is that of indirect

object.
238
 In Middle English dative case inflection disappeared and it was
replaced by the preposition to which acquired an abstract locative sense
also associated with a ‘change of possession’ meaning. Compare the
two sentences below:

(7) a. John sent a book parcel to London.

b. John sent a book parcel to his aunt.

In (7a) the prepositional phrase to London designates location, i.e., the

destination point, while in (7b) the animate object to his aunt
designates the person who will come into possession of the parcel, i.e.
the recipient. This semantic difference has a syntactic correlate: only in
(7b) can the indirect object invert with the direct object in a
grammatically correct sentence (see 8b) while in (7a) it cannot:

(8) a. *John sent London a book parcel.

b. John sent his aunt a book parcel.

The same applies to indirect objects with the preposition for.

Consider the sentences in (9):

(9) a. I’ve found a place for the magnolia tree.

b. I’ve found a place for Mr Jones.

Although the examples in (9) seem to be equivalent sentences, only

(9b) can be transformed into a sentence with indirect object, as shown
in (10b):

(10) a. *I’ve found the magnolia tree a place.

b. I’ve found Mr Jones a place.

This is because the magnolia tree in (10a) does not have the feature [+
animate] and does not invert with the direct object in a well formed
sentence.
Dative case is assigned to noun phrases alone or by the
prepositions to or for. Not all verbs that assign dative case can occur in
both constructions (i.e. one in which dative case is marked by word
order and another one in which the preposition is used). Some verbs
occur only in prepositional dative constructions while others accept
only prepositionless dative constructions. For instance, verbs such as
239
donate, transfer, select, mention, describe, explain, propose occur in
dative constructions, as examples from (11) to (14) show:

(11) a. We donated $ 100 to UNICEF.

b. * We donated UNICEF $ 100.

(12) a. We transferred some money to Mary.

b. * We transferred Mary some money.

(13) a. The waiter selected a French wine for us.

b. *The waiter selected us a French wine.

(14) a. We mentioned the secret to Mary.

b. *We mentioned Mary the secret.

On the other hand, give, send, or choose accept both constructions:

(15) a. We gave $ 100 to UNICEF.

b. We gave UNICEF $ 100.

(16) a. We sent some money to Mary.

b. We sent Mary some money.

(17) a. The waiter chose a French wine for us.

b. The waiter chose us a French wine.

Furthermore, when verbs such as give or allow occur in expressions

such as allow somebody a peek, give someone a punch in the nose, give
someone a pain in the neck, give somebody a cold, give somebody a
kiss, etc, they do not take prepositional indirect object. Consider the
examples below:

(18) a. Mary allowed his brother a peek.

b. *Mary allowed a pick to his brother.

(19) a. Bill gave Sue a kiss/a little pinch.

b. *Bill gave a kiss/little pinch to Sue.

(20) a. Don’t come too close - I don’t want you to give me your cold!
b. *Don’t come too close - I don’t want you to give your cold to me!
240
 The examples considered so far show that dative case in
Modern English can be a structural case (when it is prepositional) or a
lexical case (when it is assigned by various lexical verbs).

5.5 Genitive

While traditional grammar considers ’s to be a case inflection, it is

usually analyzed as a clitic 63 by linguists. The English possessive
ending, however, does originate in a genitive case. In Old English, a
common singular genitive ending was -es. The apostrophe in the
modern possessive marker is in fact an indicator of the -e- that is
missing.
What is referred to in traditional grammars as the genitive
inflection is phonologically identical with the regular plural inflection.
Consequently, with regular nouns genitive case distinctions are
neutralized in the plural.

(21)

The girl was playing. The girls were playing.

The girl’s toys were new. The girls’ toys were new.

With irregular nouns, where no such neutralization can occur, a

fourfold distinction always obtains:

(22)

The child was watching. The children were watching.

The child’s toys were new. The children’s toys were new.

Orthographically a fourfold distinction always obtains, since the

genitive inflection is always spelled with an apostrophe: before the

63
A clitic is a grammatically independent and phonologically dependent word. It is
pronounced like an affix, but works at the phrase level. In the phrase the girl next
door’s cat, -’s is phonologically attached to the preceding word door while
grammatically it combines with the phrase the girl next door, the possessor. Clitics
may belong to any grammatical category, though they are commonly pronouns,
determiners, or adpositions.
241
inflection if the noun is in the singular, after it if the noun is in the
plural.

5.5.1 Categorization of genitive meanings

Although the central meaning conveyed by the genitive is possession,

other meanings can be expressed by both the inflected and the
prepositional genitive. For instance, if a store has the name children’s
shoes the meaning of the genitive expression is not that the store sells
shoes that are owned by children, but rather that these shoes are made
to be worn by children. Thus, it is possible to divide genitive tokens
into categories depending on what meaning they express.
Quirk et al. (1985:321-322) divide the inflected genitive and the
prepositional genitive into eight semantic categories distinguished
through “sentential or phrasal analogues” (Quirk et al. 1985:321).
Shown with some of the examples given in Quirk et al. (ibid.) these are:

Possessive genitives
My wife’s father – My wife has a father.
The gravity of the earth – The earth has (a certain) gravity.
Subjective genitives
The boy’s application – The boy applied for [something].
The decline of trade – Trade declined.
Objective genitives
The boy’s release – (...) released the boy.
A statement of the facts – (...) stated the facts.
Genitives of origin
The general’s letter – The general wrote a letter.
The wines of France – France produces wines.
Descriptive genitives
A women’s college – a college for women
The degree of doctor – a doctoral degree, a doctorate
Genitives of measure
ten days’ absence – The absence lasted ten days.
an absence of ten days – The absence lasted ten days.
Genitives of attribute
The victim’s courage – The victim had courage / was courageous.
The policy of the party – The party has a (certain) policy.
Partitive genitives
the baby’s eyes – The baby has (blue) eyes.
242
the surface of the earth – The earth has a (rough) surface.

Shumaker (1975) also aims at sorting genitives into categories

of meaning. The categories she proposes are differentiated on the basis
of sample tokens, phrasal analogues and possessive pronouns.

Zunser’s hymn ‘the hymn that Zunser produced’

Their advice ‘they advised’
Her amazement ‘someone amazed her’
Her tormentors ‘the ones who torment her’
Their Hebrew lesson ‘the Hebrew lesson that they study’
His abruptness ‘he is abrupt’
Miss Taylor’s coffee break ‘the break Miss Taylor spent drinking
coffee’
Halsey’s grocery ‘the grocery that Halsey owns’
Her patient’s closet ‘the closet that her patient uses’
Hazel’s head ‘the head is a part of Hazel’
Your PTA ‘the PTA of which you are a member’
Esteban’s doctor ‘the doctor of whom Esteban is a patient’
Detroit’s long cold streets ‘the long cold streets in Detroit’
Miscellaneous ´The X that Y exhibits’

(Shumaker 1975:73-80)

Kreyer (2003:178) points out that “the most obvious weakness

of Quirk et al.’s system is that different genitive types have the same
paraphrase [...] possessive, attributive and partitive genitives are all
paraphrased by ‘X has Y’”. He divides genitive meanings into nine
categories. His categorization of genitive meanings is based on both
Shumaker (1975) and Quirk et al.’s (1985). Kreyer’s (2003) nine
categories are listed below:

X is kin to Y (Kinship)
Peter’s father – Peter is kin to his father
X has (a/..) Y (Possessive)
Peter’s car – Peter has a car
Y is part of X (Partitive)
Hazel’s head – The head is a part of Hazel
X Verb (Y) (Subjective)
Her parents’ consent – Her parents consented
243
[someone] Verb (Y) X (Objective)
The boy’s release – [someone] released the boy
X has Y at their disposal, X makes use of Y (Disposal)
Peter’s doctor – Peter has the doctor at his disposal
(the) Y in X, (the Y for X), ... (Time & Space)
Detroit’s cold streets – the cold streets in Detroit
Tomorrow’s weather – the weather for tomorrow
X is Adj (Y) (Attribute)
The victim’s courage – the victim is courageous
X produces/tells/writes... Y (Origin)
The general’s letter – the general wrote a letter

(Kreyer 2003:178)

Kreyer’s (2003) categorisation model makes categorisation easier than

other models do, mainly due to the formulae expressed (e.g. X Verb
(Y) for the subjective category) along with descriptions. Thus, the
categorization model proposed by Kreyer (2003) can be in the study of
regional differences in their distribution according to the semantic
categories.

5.5.2 The choice between the inflected genitive and the

prepositional genitive

The genitive case is generally paraphrased as meaning ‘belonging to’,

‘related to’, associated with’. The genitive case in English is realized as
inflected genitive or synthetic genitive ’s. However, we frequently
find a choice between using the inflected genitive or a postmodifying
prepositional phrase with of. The similarity in meaning and function
has caused the latter to be called by some the prepositional genitive or
the periphrastic genitive. Compare the examples in (23):

(23) a. There were strong objections from the island’s inhabitants.

b. There were strong objections from the inhabitants of the island.

But although both variants in (23) are equally acceptable in,

with a choice determined largely by preferred focus, for the most part

244
either inflected genitive or the prepositional genitive 64 should be
selected, as shown in (24):

(24)

a. These are father’s trousers.

*These are the trousers of father.

b. Let’s go to the front of the house.

*Let’s go to the house’s front.

Thus, what is of particular interest to us is under what

conditions one of the two forms is preferred and the cases in which
only one of them is acceptable. Selection of the inflected genitive can
best be described in relation to the gender classes proposed by Quirk et
al. (1985). The inflectional genitive is favoured by the classes that are
highest on the gender scale. Consequently, it tends to be associated
with those classes of animate gender, especially with those having
personal reference.
The following four noun classes of animate nouns normally
take the genitive inflection, but the construction with the preposition of
is also possible in most cases:

(a) Personal names: George Washington’s statue

(b) Personal nouns: my sister’s pencil

(c) Collective nouns: the Administration’s policy, the majority’s

platform, the party’s elder leader, the company’s working capital, the
Government’s delaying tactics. These nouns take the genitive inflection
particularly when the idea of the persons in questions is to the fore. On
the other hand, if these nouns are used without this connotation of
individuals, the inflected genitive is not common. Compare the family’s
only concern with the great men of the family.

64
Although the preposition of has become conventionalized as the main preposition
of the so-called periphrastic or prepositional genitive, other prepositions can be used
with a similar function: the secretary of the Ambassador; the secretary to the
Ambassador; the door of his dressing-room; the door to his dressing-room.
245
(d) Higher animals: the horse’s neck, the farm dog’s bark, the lion’s
tail.

Remark

Nouns denoting lower animals generally take the prepositional

genitive: a cocoon of a silkworm, the egg of a sparrow, the wings of a
butterfly, etc (cf. the use of he and she as opposed to it).

The inflected genitive is also used with certain kinds of

inanimate nouns:

(a) Geographical names

Nouns denoting geographical regions such as continents, countries,

states, cities, towns, etc. take the genitive inflection especially when
they are used to imply human collectivity:

(25)

Italy’s policy (rather than Italy’s rivers)

Europe’s future
China’s development
the United States’ attitude
Maryland’s Democratic Senator
Minnesota’s immigrants
Hollywood’s studios
Radio City Music Hall is one of New York’s most famous theatres.

(b) Locative nouns

These nouns denote regions, heavenly bodies, institutions. They take

the genitive inflection when they are used with relevance to human
activities:

(26)

the hotel’s occupants rather than the hotel’s furniture

the town’s taxpayers
the hotel’s entrance
246
the country’s population
the club’s pianist
Harvard’s Linguistics Department

(c) Temporal nouns

Expressions of measurement (particularly of time) generally take the

inflectional genitive construction:

(27)

an hour’s work in two years’ time

a moment’s thought a moment’s regret
a week’s holiday a three days’ trip
two or three minutes’ hunting a pound’s weight
two shillings’ of apples a five miles’ distance

The same applies to adverbial denotations of time used substantively:

(28)

the decade’s events this year’s sales

the day’s work today’s business
next year’s difficulties today’s traffic problem
last night’s fall of snow this month’s edition

There is often a difference in meaning between the inflected genitive

and the corresponding prepositional genitive. Compare (29a) with
(29b):

(29)

a. yesterday’s newspaper
b. an invention of yesterday (i.e. ‘a recent invention’)

(d) Nouns of ‘special interest to human activity’

(30)

the brain’s total solid weight

247
the mind’s general development
the game’s history
the concerto’s final movement
the body’s needs
my life’s aim
science’s influence on our society
in freedom’s name
the strike’s end
the treaty’s ratification
the novel’s structure
the wine’s character

With nouns expressing part-whole relationships, inflectional

genitive is the usual unmarked form: John’s arm, Mary’s green eyes,
etc.
The following idiomatic constructions can also take the
genitive inflection, though some of them allow the prepositional
genitive as well

(31)

(a)

edge: the water’s edge – the edge of the water

the river’s edge
end: at his journey’s end – at the end of his journey
surface: the water’s surface
for…sake: for her country’s sake – for the sake of her country
for God’s sake - *for the sake of the God

(b)

length: at arm’s length

reach: within arm’s reach
throw: at a stone’s throw
worth: their money’s worth

The constructions in (31b) have become idioms and do not permit the
prepositional genitive.

248
 The construction with the preposition of, on the other hand, is
chiefly used with nouns that belong to the bottom part of the gender
scale proposed by Quirk et al. (1985), i.e. with nouns denoting lower
animals and with inanimate nouns. Inanimate nouns regularly take the
prepositional genitive, but as we have seen a great many take the
genitive inflection ’s when they can be characterized as ‘being of
special interest to human activity’, i.e. when denoting parts of the body,
cultural activities or means of transport.

The prepositional genitive

The prepositional genitive, and not the inflected genitive, is used in the
following situations:

 With abstract nouns and with nouns denoting inanimate entities:

(32) a. I’ve been studying the philosophy of language.

b. We set up our base camp at the bottom of the mountain.

 When the noun is followed by a verb phrase or clause which

defines it:

(33) a. The players ignored the jeers of the women standing in

the front row.
b. The players ignored the jeers of the women who were
standing in the front row.

 When we refer to a specific date:

(34) The cathedral was destroyed in the fire of 1666

 With long and complex phrases, even when the possessive

structure refers to people:

(35) A man was sentenced to death for the murder of an English

tourist, Monica Cantwell

 When proper names are coordinated or the noun phrase is

complex the of-construction is the rule:

249
 (36) the reign of James the second
the Collected Works of William Shakespeare (compare with He
took down a copy of Wordsworth's collected poems)

 Personal adjectival heads cannot be used in the inflectional

genitive. Thus, they take the prepositional genitive: the spiritual
welfare of the poor, the language of the deaf-and-dumb.

 Uncountable nouns with generic reference do not normally take

the genitive inflection: the humidity of air. However, in
combination with for ...... sake inflectional genitive is also
found in such cases: for honesty’s sake, for decency’s sake.

 When the noun phrase is preceded by the indefinite article the

only possibility is the prepositional genitive: She is a great
admirer of Henry James.

(37) She is a great admirer of Henry James.

 Certain fixed expressions and titles take the prepositional

genitive, even though reference is made to people:

(38) He’s the President of United States.

The Prince of Wales is to visit Iceland.

 When the noun phrase is preceded by the definite article both

constructions are possible, but the prepositional genitive is
perceived as more emphatic. Contrast (39a) with (39b):

(39) a. Illness prevented him from attending his uncle’s funeral.

b. The death of his uncle was a shock to him.

 While a string of prepositional genitives is common, e.g. the

meeting of the sub-committee of the Non-intervention
Committee, a corresponding series of inflectional genitive forms
is rarely found: my cousin’s wife’s first husband. Usually a
mixture of these possibilities is employed, particularly in formal
English: an important handful of the Government’s supporters.

250
5.5.3 The group genitive

This is the name given to a construction where the genitive inflection ’s

is added to the last element of a noun phrase consisting of a
postmodified or coordinated noun head:

(40)

in a month or two’s time

the Museum of Modern Art’s Director
the Duke of York’s eldest son

In formal English the group genitive occurs mainly in established

phrases such as those in (40).
With coordinated NPs, a distinction is made between
coordinated genitives (e.g. John’s and Mary’s books – ‘some books
are John’s and some are Mary’s’) and the group genitive (e.g. John
and Mary’s books – ‘all books are jointly owned’).
Nouns in apposition take the group genitive when the
complement of the genitive is stated as in:

(41) at Smith, the bookseller’s office

However, if the complement is omitted, the genitive suffix may also be

attached to the first element or to both:

(42) at Smith’s, the bookseller / at Smith’s, the bookseller’s / at Smith,

the bookseller’s

5.5.4 The elliptic genitive

It is common to ellipt the noun following the genitive if the reference is

clear from the context:

(43) a. That isn’t my handwriting. It’s Mary’s (i.e. Mary’s

handwriting)
b. Jennifer’s is the only face I recognize here (i.e. Jennifer’s face)
c. He has a devotion to work like his father’s (i.e. his father’s devotion
to work)

251
 With the prepositional genitive, the demonstratives that or those
usually replace the corresponding item:

(44) The wines of France are more expensive than those of California
(i.e. the wines of California)

5.5.5 The local genitive

The construction referred to as the local genitive is a special case of the

elliptic/independent genitive. It occurs when the unexpressed item
refers to homes or shops, companies and, in general, places that provide
a service. The local genitive is used in the following three cases:

(A) to refer to somebody’s residence

(45) a. When I arrived at Fred’s, I found I’d come on the wrong day.
b. We’ll be at my aunt’s soon.

(B) with names of institutions such as public buildings (where the

genitive is usually a saint’s name): St Paul’s (i.e. St Paul’s Cathedral),
St James’s (St James’s Palace), etc.

(C) with names of shops, companies and people/places where business

is conducted such as the butcher’s, the grocer’s, the chemist’s, the
dentist’s, the optician’s, etc.

(46) a. My grocer’s stays open late on Fridays (i.e. the grocer’s shop)
b. Was anything nice at the butcher’s this morning? (i.e., the butcher’s
shop)
c. I’m getting my Christmas shopping at Macy’s (i.e. Macy’s
department store)

5.5.6 The implicit genitive

Nouns such as Lady Chapel, student hostel, doctor degree, afternoon

tea are examples of an implicit genitive construction (i.e. genitive
constructions without a distinctive genitive inflection). By analogy with
such implicit genitives, many nouns dropped their genitive ending. The
process is particularly productive in journalese (Crainiceanu 2007). The
252
implicit genitive constructions favoured the development of noun
phrases in which the genitive inflection is deleted together with nouns
such as shop, store and town. For instance, Harrods, Longmans, Cooks,
St. Albans, St. Ives are derived from Harrod’s shop, Longman’s shop,
Cook’s shop, St. Alban’s town, St. Ive’s town. Thus, what begins as a
local genitive develops into a plural, often so spelled and observing
plural agreement:

(47) a. Harrod’s is a vast store – local genitive

b. Harrods are offering great bargains this season – implicit genitive

5.5.7 The double genitive

The double genitive consists of the combined inflected genitive and

prepositional genitive (i.e. the so called ‘periphrastic genitive’), usually
with a partitive meaning. The postmodifier must be definite and
personal: a work of Milton’s (i.e. one of Milton’s works), a friend of his
father’s (one of his father’s friends), several students of mine (i.e.
several of my students).

(48) a. Any friend of John’s is a friend of mine.

b. a picture of the king's (i.e., a picture owned by the king, as
distinguished from a picture of the king, one in which the king is
portrayed)

5.5.8 The appositive genitive

The appositive genitive is rarely used. The following lines taken from
the popular song “Molly Malone” (which has become the unofficial
anthem of Dublin City) include an illustration of this structure:

(49)

“In Dublin’s fair city,

where girls are so pretty
I first set my eyes on sweet Molly Malone”

The more usual usage is “the fair city of Dublin”

253
5.5.9 A quantitative analysis of the English genitive

Historically, the inflected genitive was the main variant, whereas the
the of-construction “was primarily restricted to certain adverbial uses”
(Altenberg 1982:12). During the latter part of the Old English period,
however, two processes triggered changes in the relationship between
the two forms. Inflections were reduced while the word-order became
stricter. Consequently, functional elements such as prepositions started
to play a more significant role in the language, and a general reduction
of the case system followed. Altenberg (1982:13) argues that the
process went to the point where the inflected genitive was on the verge
of extinction. However, this did not happen since the two forms were
distinct in function; the inflected genitive acted as a premodifier, while
the of-construction acted as a postmodifier. Still, this function-related
distinction did not become solid but and the two linguistic variants
retained a certain degree of flexibility in functions in both Middle and
Present-day English.
Quirk et al. (1985:318) point out that it is debatable whether if
the genitive should be regarded as a grammatical case in present-day
English but rather as a remnant of the case-system. However, this issue
is beyond the scope of the current section, since the main focus is on
the regional variation in the use of the two realizations.
Many linguists have drawn attention to the fact that, in present-
day English, the inflected genitive has been spreading at the expense of
the prepositional genitive. This process of ongoing language change is
assumed to have been taking place due to a supposed constraint on the
use of the s-marker with inanimate nouns has been weakened. In the
earlier twentieth century, Otto Jespersen was one the first linguists to
call attention to this trend arguing that:

During the last few decades the genitive of lifeless things has been
gaining ground in writing (especially among journalists); in instances
like the following the of-construction would be more natural and
colloquially the only one possible. (1909-49: VII, 327f.)

Among the examples which illustrate this trend he mentions the

following genitive constructions: the sea’s rage, the rapidity of the
heart’s action, or the room’s atmosphere.

254
Jespersen’s views have been corroborated by more recent research in
language change in progress in twentieth-century English (Barber 1964,
Potter 1975).

Denison (1998: 119) argues that “the ranges and relative frequencies of
the competing constructions have varied over the course of time, with
genitives of inanimates perhaps on the increase”. However, the issue is
still debatable and the phenomenon needs further empirical research
before an uncontroversial conclusion can be drawn.
Available evidence from corpora (e.g. Raab-Fischer 1995;
Hinrichs and Szmrecsanyi 2007) shows that any increase in the
frequency of the inflected genitive due to its use with inanimate nouns
is difficult to demonstrate. For Hinrichs and Szmrecsanyi, working on
categories A and B of the four corpora, the effect is found in AmE, but
not in BrE. As sections 5.5.9.1 and 5.5.9.2 will show there is a
noticeable language change in progress regarding the use of the
inflected and prepositional genitives, but no single factor can account
for it.

5.5.9.1 A quantitative analysis of the inflected genitive in BrE and

AmE

Rosenbach’s (2002: 3) empirical research confirms the trend identified

by Jesperson in the earlier twentieth century that ‘the s-genitive is
currently increasing, and this increase is more advanced in American
than in British English’. The trend is confirmed by the analysis of the
empirical data from the Brown, Frown, LOB and F-LOB corpora 65 .
Figure 5.1 shows the increasing frequency in the use of the inflectional
genitive in the four corpora. This rise is of c. 43% in AmE and of c.
25% in BrE. The greatest changes in usage are found in the

65
The quantitative analysis reported in sections 5.5.9.1 and 5.5.9.2 is based on the
following corpora, unless otherwise indicated: LOB (the Lancaster–Oslo/Bergen
corpus of British English, 1961); F-LOB (the Freiburg–Lancaster–Oslo/Bergen
corpus of British English, 1991); Brown (the Brown corpus of American English,
1961); Frown (the Freiburg–Brown corpus (American English, 1992). The web
addresses of these two corpus resource agencies are as follows: http://icame.uib. no/
and http://ota.ahds.ac.uk/.

255
information-oriented Press and Learned subcorpora, showing
remarkable rises of 44%and 91% in AmE and 36% and 35 % in BrE,
respectively (Leech et. al 2009). Moreover, the empirical data show
that Press writing particularly favours the inflectional genitive, and the
increase (unlike that of N+N sequences) shows no sign of approaching
a ‘saturation point’. Fiction writing, on the other hand, shows the
lowest increase of genitives (virtually nil in AmE).

12000

10000

8000 Press

6000 Gen Prose

Learned
4000
Fiction
2000

0
Brown Frown LOB F-LOB

Figure 5.1 Increase in frequency of inflected genitives 1961 - 1991/2 in

Brown, Frown, LOB and F-LOB (frequencies pmw) (AmE automatic)
(Based on Leech et al. 2009)

5.5.9.2 A quantitative analysis of the prepositional genitive in BrE

and AmE

A distinction should be made between the terms of-phrase (which refers

to all prepositional phrases introduced by of) and the prepositional
genitive which is realized by a prepositional phrase introduced by of
but which shares the same genitive function with the inflectional
genitive as an alternative way of expressing the same meanings.
In present-day English, both the inflectional and prepositional
genitives are increasingly being used particularly in Press as a result of
their effect of concentrating information density in the noun phrase. In
256
a historical perspective, however, their growing popularity can be seen
as a continuation of a trend centuries old (Hundt 1998:47). The
prepositional genitive was rarely attested in OE, while it underwent a
considerable extension of its range in ME. In ME, however, it suffered
decline due to the resurgence of the inflectional genitive. According to
Rosenbach’s (2002: 177- 234) historical account, the OE genitive
inflection underwent a decline in ME up to c. 1400, when it turned into
a clitic. The revived and expanding use of the inflectional genitive from
EModE onward has presumably been continuing up to present-day
English66.
This pattern is confirmed by Leech et al. (2009) whose analysis
based on the hand-checked set of prepositional genitives (i.e. all of-
phrases which are judged semantically and formally interchangeable
with the inflectional genitive) from a 2% sample from each corpus. The
empirical data from the four AmE and BrE corpora show a very similar
decline of c.24%, and it is reasonable to assume that the close parallel,
in both varieties, regarding the upward trend of the inflectional genitive
and the downward trend of the prepositional genitive is more than
coincidental. Empirical research on the use of the two genitive
constructions (Altenberg 1982; Leech et al. 1994; Rosenbach 2002,
2003; Hinrichs and Szmrecsanyi, 2007) has shown that a number of
factors, syntactic, semantic, pragmatic, even phonological, are
instrumental in determining the preference for one construction or the
other. However, it should be pointed out that the inflectional and the
prepositional genitives should not be considered in free variation. For
example, Rosenbach (2002: 33-74) identifies the following three
factors, listed here in order of importance: animacy, topicality, and the
possessive relation.
As Figure 5.2 shows, the data from the Brown, Frown, LOB
and F-LOB corpora suggest that the inflectional genitive has overtaken
the prepositional genitive in frequency in both AmE and BrE. British
English is following the American lead in increasing use of the
inflectional genitive (which is more frequent in Brown, and even more

66
Altenberg (1982) provides a detailed account of the variation between the
inflectional genitive and prepositional genitive in EModE.

257
frequent in Frown, than the British equivalents). Moreover, BrE is itself
in the lead in the decline of prepositional genitives67.

100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50% s-genitive
40% of-genitive
30%
20%
10%
0%
Brown Frown LOB F-LOB

Figure 5.2 Change of frequency of the prepositional genitive in relation

to the inflected genitive between 1961 and 1991/2, expressed as a
percentage of all ‘genitives’ (AmE automatic) (Based on Leech et al.
2009)

5.6 Abstract case: structural case

At the beginning of this chapter, case was defined as a system for

marking dependent nouns for the type of relationship they bear to their
heads. So far, we have pointed out that the term case traditionally refers
to inflectional marking, but can also be extended to cover prepositions
and postpositions. Other means of signalling the type of relationship
dependent nouns bear with their heads, such as word order, are
generally referred to as ‘competing mechanisms’ (Blake 2004). Recent
theories proposed the view that all these mechanisms can be used to
signal case, that case is abstract and universal and it exists
independently of the means of expression (see Section 5.6).
While the focus of attention has been what constitutes the
expression side of case, even more attention has been paid to the
relations that cases express. It has been proposed that there are a small

67
Note that the frequencies for the prepositional genitive are scaled up from a small
2% sample, and cannot therefore be regarded as more than approximations.

258
number of universal semantic roles such as agent, experiencer, patient
and instrument (see Section 5.7). Furthermore, another prominent issue
of the recent literature has been the notion of the hierarchy. Case
markings, cases, semantic roles and grammatical relations can all be
arranged hierarchically (see Section 5.8).
Even in languages with inflectional case systems, case is
generally abstract to the extent to which it is not always realised by a
distinctive inflectional form or marker. In English, for instance, the
inflectional case system is confined to personal pronouns (I/me/mine,
he/him/his, they/them/their(s), etc) and relative pronouns
(who/whom/whose). One can argue that all nominals in English take
case, but English case is realised morphologically only on personal
pronouns and to a limited extent on relative pronouns. Under this view,
the abstract nature of case becomes apparent because only a subclass of
nominals shows any marking. Consequently, all the other means of
indicating the relationship of dependent nouns to their heads (e.g.
prepositions, word order) can be taken as potential markers of case.
Abstract case is found in a number of recent theories, the most
influential of which is Chomsky’s Government and Binding model case
theory. In this theory a distinction is drawn between structural case
and inherent case. Structural case (conventionally written as Case – i.e.
with capital C) is assigned to noun phrases according to their position
in a structural configuration. If, initially, the basic clause structure of
the sentence (S) consists of noun phrase (NP) functioning as subject
and a verb phrase (VP) functioning as predicate, in the Government and
Binding model (Chomsky 1981) the structure of a clause is
considerably more elaborated. An Inflectional Phrase is introduced.
The head of this phrase hosts tense and modality. The verb phrase is its
complement or inner modifier and the subject its specifier or outer
modifier. This is illustrated in Figure 3.3 with the sentence They will
eat apples. Note that I (Infl) and its complement (VP) form a
constituent labelled I' within an IP (Infl P). In a sentence such as They
will eat apples the auxiliary will occupies the Infl position.
The verb assigns accusative case to the NP it governs, i.e. the
object NP. This assignment of structural case can be manifest in
morphological accusative marking in some languages but not all
languages. Infl, if finite, assigns structural nominative case to the
subject NP. In most languages the subject will be unmarked or bear the
nominative morphological case.

259
 IP

They I'

I VP
(will)

eat apples

Figure 5.3 Clause structure in Government and Binding Theory

Verbs and adpositions generally assign case, but rarely receive

it68. Adjectives and nouns regularly receive case, but do not assign it in
all languages. The following hierarchy of case assigners has been
proposed:

verb > preposition > adjectives > nouns

It has been argued that case assigners lower on the hierarchy are more
likely to assign a case nearer to the oblique end of the hierarchy of
cases. When adjectives and nouns assign case, it is typically the dative
or genitive rather than the accusative (Van Riemsdijk 1983:249).
Nouns and adjectives are generally not considered to be
structural case assigners. The sentence in (50) is ungrammatical
because the noun phrase John has not been assigned case:

(50) *Dad is proud John

68
This is in line with the case resistance principle proposed by Stowell (1981)
according to which word classes that assign case cannot receive it.

260
All noun phrases must be assigned case. The ill-formed sentence in
(50) can be saved by the insertion of of to yield:

(51)Dad is proud of John

Of is regarded as a meaningless case marker for the abstract genitive

case. However, the preposition of, like all other prepositions in English,
governs the accusative morphological case as shown in (52) below:

(52) Dad is proud of him (and not *Dad is proud of his)

The genitive case in English is inherent rather than structural.

Consider the example in (53):

(53) *Dad is proud [John to be the winner]

The example in (53) cannot be turned into a well-formed English

sentence through the insertion of the marker of. If of is inserted in the
example in (53), what is obtained is still grammatically incorrect:

(54) *Dad is proud of John to be the winner

Intuitively the reason is apparent. Dad is not said to be proud of John,

but of the content of the proposition [John to be the winner]. In English,
the adjective is an inherent case assigner rather than a structural case
assigner. A structural case assigner is sensitive only to structure,
whereas an inherent case assigner is sensitive to semantic roles (called
theta roles in Government and Binding Theory) as well. An inherent
case assigner can assign case only when it assigns a semantic role. In
(53) the role for the complement of proud applies to clause enclosed
within brackets, not just to the noun phrase John.
In Government and Binding Theory, an infinitive is unable to
assign case to its subject. Thus, a sentence such as (55a) is
ungrammatical since the infinitive have cannot assign case to her. (55a)
can be turned into a grammatically correct sentence if a preposition is
inserted, as in (55b) where the preposition for assigns accusative case
to her:

261
(55)

a. *[[Her to have to have to carry the heavy bucket] was too much]
b. [[For her to have to have to carry the heavy bucket] was too much]

When an infinitival clause functions as a complement, a noun phrase

like him in (56) is analyzable as the subject of the infinitive and as
being assigned its accusative case from the finite governing verb69.

(56)They believed [him to be the burglar]

The sentences in (55b) and (56) are examples of exceptional case

marking to the extent to which case is assigned outside the normal
scope of government. In other words, case is assigned across what is
normally taken to be a boundary, in these instances the boundary of an
infinitival clause signalled by bracketing in (55a), (55b) and (56).

5.7 Case as a conceptual notion: case grammar

5.7.1 General remarks on semantic roles

Since the late 1960s, a number of theories have been advanced

claiming that the semantic relationships borne by nominal dependents
on their governors make up a small, universal set. These theories
include Fillmore’s proposal for “case grammar” (‘The Case for Case’ –
1968; ‘The Case for Case Reopened’ - 1977), Anderson’s Localist Case
Grammar (1971, 1977, 1997), Dik’s Functional Grammar (1978),
among others.
Despite a great deal of variation between languages as to the
number of cases and adpositions, and despite the confusing variation in
the terminology70 , all these modern theories allow for some kind of
semantic relations that are not always reflected directly in the
morphosyntax. It has been pointed out that case grammar, as one the

69
Noun phrases like him can also be analyzed as having been raised into the higher
clause and as being the direct object of the higher clause.
70
Initially Fillmore posited a universal set of relations with traditional case-labels
such as agentive, instrumental, dative, factitive, objective (1968:24-5), but later
switched to agent, experience, instrument, object, source, goal, place and time,
which are more semantically transparent.
262
earlier version was called, is a “model of understanding”, i.e. a theory
about the way language users categorize experience and comprehend
discourses (cf. Carlson and Tannenhouse 1988). What is going on
around us in the physical world is categorized as
events/states/processes with a certain participant structure. For instance,
the same physical occurrence (i.e. the same event, state or process) can
be reported by using either of the sentences in (57) or (58):

(57) a. John borrowed some money from the girl.

b. The girl lent some money to John.

(58) a. I pushed against the table.

b. I pushed the table.

Thus, the physical occurrence in (57) above is understood and

categorized as an act borrowing or lending depending on the choice of
a particular verb. Choosing the verb is the major ingredient in “putting
an event in perspective” (Fillmore 1977). Another major factor in the
interpretation of an event is the choice of certain participants as fillers
of the major grammatical functions: subject, object. This is illustrated
in (58). (58a) is a “two-participant scene with a one-place perspective”
(Cornilescu 2006:134), which makes the Agent’s action the central one,
whereas in (58b) both participants – the Agent and the locative phrase,
a Goal – are in perspective. Thus, the locative constituent is salient
enough to become direct object and, unlike (58a), (58b) implies
movement of the Goal.
Fillmore called these syntactic-semantic relations 71 cases and
his conception of grammar came to be referred to as case grammar
(1968:19). Over the last decades, Fillmorean-type cases have been
called deep cases, whereas traditional grammar cases have been
referred to as surface cases (Blake 2004). The most widespread terms
for purely semantic relations are semantic roles, case roles, thematic
roles (Lexical-Functional Grammar) and theta roles (in Government
and Binding).
These semantic roles should be distinguished from grammatical
relations. Grammatical relations can be isolated on the basis of formal

71
The notion of a set of syntactic – semantic relations that have some independence
from noun-phrase marking is not entirely new. Relations of this type are found in the
ancient Indian grammarian Panini.
263
distinctions made in case, agreement, word order, adposition and the
like. Some of these relations are purely syntactic: subject, object,
indirect object, ergative and absolutive, each of which subsuming a
number of semantic roles. Other relations are semantically
homogeneous. For instance, in some languages locative and
instrumental are demarcated by case. In this situation, grammatical
relation and semantic role coincide.
The theory of semantic/thematic relations is relevant to the
following areas of morpho-syntactic investigation:

a) the principles of subject or object selection, i.e. the principles that

determine the choice of particular role as subject or as direct object
especially when several syntactic construction are available to a
particular predicate (e.g. Four people can sleep in my tent vs. My tent
sleeps four people). More generally, of particular relevance are the
ways in which “case frames are pinned on subcategorization frames”; a
related issue is the identification of role-assigning categories in a
language and the direction of role-assignment as well as the distinction
that can be drawn between syntactic positions that can be assigned roles
(argument positions) and non-argument positions (Cornilescu
2006:134).

b) the regularities (e.g. regularities in the use of prepositions) that go

beyond syntax can only be accounted for in terms of case concepts
(Cornilescu 2006:134).

5.7.2 Fillmore’s Case Grammar

It is Fillmore who deserves credit for bringing to the fore the notion
that there is a set of universal semantic roles. In his seminal paper ‘The
Case for Case’, published in 1968, he proposed a set of six ‘cases’,
which he later revised and extended to eight. These cases were deep-
structure cases which he described as being “underlying syntactic-
semantic relationships”. He distinguished them from case forms which
comprise the means of expressing cases: suffixes, suppletion,
adpositions, etc. (Fillmore 1968:21ff).
To establish a universal set of semantic roles is not an easy task.
Although some roles are demarcated by case or by adpositions in some
languages, on many occasions they have to be isolated by semantic
tests. There are no agreed criteria and there is no consensus on the
264
universal inventory. To a certain extent establishing roles and ascribing
particular arguments to roles involves an extra-linguistic classification
of relationships holding between entities in the physical world. There
tends to be agreement on such roles as agent, patient, instrument and
source, which are viewed as salient manifestations. However, problems
arise with the classification of relationships that fall between the salient
ones. The following list of semantic roles is offered as a checklist of
roles that have been identified in the literature and have been found to
be relevant in verb classification.

Agent

The Agent is typically the animate participant who initiates or performs

the action. The Agent must be capable of volition (desire) or deliberate
action and is generally responsible for the action. The role of Agent
may correspond to the syntactic function (i.e. grammatical relation) of
subject.

(59) a. John hit Tom.

b. A falling rock hit Emily.
c. Mary accidentally broke the glass.
d. Without meaning, George insulted his friend.
e. He deliberately walked out before the end of the seminar.
f. The crowd applauded.

John is an Agent in (59a), a falling rock, which is inanimate, is not an

Agent. An Agent does not necessarily have to intend to perform the
action, as shown in (59c and 59d). An Agent role requires the capacity
of volition, intention, responsibility, as in (59a and 59c-f). Adverbs
such as willingly, deliberately, intentionally count as typical identifiers
of Agents.

Experiencer

The role of experience is assigned to an animate being experiencing an

emotion or perception (e.g. the subject of love, hate, the direct object of
surprise, aware, frighten, etc.).

(60) a. They love music.

b. It seems to me that you are twisting my words.
265
c. He surprised me with his theory.
d. Computers used to frighten me.

Perceiver

Some linguists distinguish the perceiver or cogniser of verbs like see,

hear or know from the experiencer of verbs like love or hate.

(61)They see everything

Patient

Almost all inventories of semantic relations include a role that covers

the following:

i. an entity viewed as existing in a state or undergoing change:

a. The sky is blue.

b. The flame grew bright.
c. The door opened.

ii. an entity viewed as located or moving:

a. The lion is in the cave.

b. He moved the stone.
c. The stone moved.

iii. An entity viewed as affected (i.e. it suffers the action denoted

by the verb) or effected by another entity:

a. The bird ate the worm.

b. The bird sang a song.
c. The president fired the treasurer.
d. The arrow hit the apple.

Fillmore called this role object and later he switched to objective,

whereas Gruber (1965) called it theme; others have called it patient.
The labels ‘object’ and ‘objective’ are unsatisfactory since they can be
easily confused with a case label or a label for a grammatical relation
respectively. Similarly, the label ‘theme’ can be confused with the term
266
established in Prague School linguistics for a discourse-pragmatic
function. Nevertheless, the term is used by some linguists as a default
semantic role, the label being given when no other label seems
appropriate (Cornilescu 2006).
The label patient is the most widely used of the various
alternatives that have been proposed. However, it is not always
appropriate for all the examples to which it applies (consider, for
instance, the sentences in (i) and (ii a-b)). Consequently, some linguists
draw a distinction between theme and patient, using theme for (i) and
(ii) and patient for (iii). Others combine the two roles under the label
patient/theme. Still, others distinguish between affected patient,
effected patient and neutral patient.

Percept

This term has been used by some linguists to designate the entity which
is perceived or experienced:

(62) a. Mary saw the monster.

b. It seemed to John that there would not be enough food.
c. The stories frightened the children.

Instrument

This concept is clearer: it designates the means by which an activity or

change of state is carried out.

(63) a. He cut the meat with a knife.

b. I was impressed by his speech.
c. This key will open the door.
d. The avalanche destroyed several houses.
e. She squashed the spider with a slipper.

Location

This role designates the place where the entity is positioned or the place
where something takes place:

(64) a. The vase is on/under/near the table.

b. He was lying on the grass.
267
c. She sat in the armchair.
d. The kitchen reeked of tobacco.
e. The path was swarming with ants.

Some linguists take the view that the locative role refers to location in
time as well (Blake 2004).

(65) Australia Day fell on a Tuesday.

Source

This role denotes the point from which an entity moves or derives:

(66) a. They got news from home.

b. Since August the situation has improved.

Path

This role denotes the trajectory that an entity follows:

(67) a. He walked along the streets.

b. The dog chased the cat along the path and then through the
conservatory.
c. They managed to survive through the drought.
d. He rolled the ball down the hill.

Goal

It denotes the point to or towards which an entity moves or is oriented:

(68) a. He turned to the altar and walked towards it.

b. The plane flies to London in an hour.
c. He removed the book from the shelf.
d. She slept till dawn.

The terms direction and destination are alternatives. The meaning of

the former, however, is less transparent.

268
Recipient

It denotes a sentient destination:

(69) She gave her spare change to the collectors.

Purpose

This semantic role denotes the purpose of an activity:

(70) He went to the Red Rooster for some take-away.

Beneficiary/Benefactive

This role denotes the animate entity on whose behalf an activity is

carried out:

(71) a. He did the shopping for his mother.

b. I cooked him dinner.
c. I cooked dinner for him.

Manner

This role designates the way in which an activity is done or the way in
which a change of state takes place.

(72) He did it with great skill.

Extent

The role denotes the distance, area or time over which an activity is
carried out or over which a state holds:

(73) a. It lasted the winter.

b. He ran (for) three miles.

Possessor

This semantic role denotes the entity that possesses another entity:

269
(74) I saw John’s new car.

Some linguists refer to the possessed item as the ‘possessum’. It can be

equated with the neutral patient (theme).

Although there is no consensus on the universal inventory of

semantic roles or terminology, linguists tend to adhere to a common set
of practices in ascribing roles:

a) the inventory is kept small

b) a semantic role can be assigned only once in a clause
c) no dependent can bear more than one semantic role
d) semantic roles remain constant under paraphrase

Keeping the inventory small

All the inventories of semantic roles that have been proposed are fairly
small, usually approximating the number of cases found in a language,
i.e. between six and ten or so. The combination of roles with a given
predicate is called the role-structure or the argument structure of the
predicate. The verb hit implies a ‘hitter’ and a ‘hittee’, the verb scrape
implies a ‘scraper’ and a ‘scrape’, and so on. However, ‘hitter’ and
‘scraper’ are not treated as separate roles, but rather the notion of agent
is abstracted from the relationship holding between the meaning of the
verb and the role of its arguments. The same is true of ‘hitee’ and
‘scrapee’: no one suggests taking them to be separate roles; one
abstracts the notion of patient.
The problem that arises is to determine how broad the roles can
be. Consider the verb watch in the following sentence:

(75) The cat watched the bird.

The cat can be described as an agent, but the bird is not a patient in the
sense of an ‘entity that is affected by an activity’ (contrast with the
mouse in The cat ate the mouse or the apple in The arrow hit the
apple). Thus, some would describe it as bearing the role of theme.
However, the affected patient of verbs such as hit or eat and the
unaffected or neutral patient of watch do not contrast syntagmatically
nor are they opposed paradigmatically. Consequently, they can be
treated as sharing the same role, i.e. patient.
270
 If an exploration of syntactic relations raises questions of how
many distinctions are needed, an examination of adpositions (i.e.
prepositions and postpositions) raises the opposite issue of how few are
required. In many languages the number of adpositions amounts to
forty or so. Most of these forms are local, expressing such notions as
‘above’, ‘below’, ‘near’, ‘on’, etc. If these were analyzed as expressing
separate semantic roles, the inventory would be significantly larger
than it typically is. Thus, all these local forms cannot be taken to
represent separate roles, if we want to maintain the notion of atomic
roles. These local forms are generally analyzed in terms of the notions
of source, location, path and destination (Blake 2004).

Once per clause

Generally, one semantic role can be assigned only once per clause.
However, this specification should be interpreted as allowing co-
ordination (as in 75/76a) and multiple specification of a particular
location (see 75/76b) (Blake 2004).

(76) a. John and Mary went up the hill.

b It is on the desk, to the left, behind the picture frame.

When nominals stand in apposition they are co-referent, so only one

referent is understood as bearing the assigned role.

No dependent bears more than one role

The principle that each dependent bears only one role to its governor is
generally agreed. However, verbs such as buy and sell have been
discussed as providing a challenge. Consider the following assignment
of roles:

(77)
Fred bought the book from John.
AGENT PATIENT SOURCE

(78)
John sold the book to Fred
AGENT PATIENT DESTINATION

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In (77) Fred is an agent in that he initiates or is responsible for an
activity; the book is a patient in that it is affected by the activity
denoted by the verb, thereby passing from the possession of John to
Fred; John is marked as the source from whom the book passes. In (78)
John is an agent since he initiates an activity, the book is a patient, and
Fred is marked as a destination. However, it has been pointed out that
Fred is a destination in (77) in because he receives the book, and John
is a source in (78) because the book passes from him. Moreover, if one
takes this view, one would have to consider the passage of money in
the opposite direction. On the other hand, extracting such roles which
are entailed in the meanings of the two verbs would only confuse the
issue. The ascription of the role of agent to the subject and patient to
the object links buy and sell to the large class of activity verbs.
Linguists working within the framework of Role and Reference
Grammar proposed two macro-roles, Actor and Undergoer (Foley and
Van Valin 1984, Van Valin 1993). Actor and Undergoer are held to be
sufficient to describe the orientation of predicate:

(79)
He misses you very much
ACTOR UNDERGOER

More specific roles such as agent, experience, patient, etc are

predictable from the semantics of the verb.

Roles constant under paraphrase

In the generally accepted tradition, semantic roles can be identified

across paraphrases and across translational equivalents, which makes
roles independent of expression (cf. Agud 1980:456). Consider the
sentences below:

(80)

John opened the door with the key.

AGENT PACIENT INSTRUMENT
NOM ACC ACC

272
The door was opened by John with a key.
PACIENT AGENT INSTRUMENT
NOM ACC ACC

The key opened the door.

INSTRUMENT PACIENT
NOM ACC

(81)

Mary gave a book to Martha.

AGENT PACIENT RECIPIENT
NOM ACC ACC

Mary gave Martha a book.

AGENT RECIPIENT PACIENT
NOM ACC ACC

Thus examples (80) and (81) show that once semantic roles are
assigned to arguments by the verb they are preserved irrespective of the
syntactic configuration in which arguments occur.
However, there is a range of examples which is beset with
problems. One type, recognised by Fillmore as problematic (1968:48-
9), involves alternatives with different choices of object. Given a
situation in which an (John) moves an object (a smoking pipe) and
causes it to come into light contact with another object (a wall), this can
be conveyed in English by either (82a) or (82b):

(82) a. John tapped the wall with his pipe.

b. John tapped his pipe on the wall.

In Case grammar deep cases (i.e. semantic roles) remain constant under
paraphrase. Either we consider that the wall in (82a) is a patient and
the pipe an instrument and transfer these roles to (82b), or we take the
pipe in (82b) to be the patient and the wall to be locative and transfer
these roles to (82a). Obviously, we cannot do both and maintain that
roles remain constant under paraphrase. A solution to this problem
would be to analyze (82a) and (82b) as representing different encodings
273
of the same physical event. (82a) is likely to be chosen if John is seen
‘to be tapping the wall with his pipe to see if the wall is hollow’. Thus,
‘the wall’ is seen as a patient and ‘his pipe’ an instrument. The sentence
in (82b) is likely to be chosen if John is seen ‘to be tapping his pipe on
the wall to dislodge some wet tobacco from the pipe’. Under this latter
interpretation, ‘his pipe’ is seen as a patient and ‘the wall’ as a location.

5.8 Hierarchies

It has been shown that grammatical relations can be ordered

hierarchically. The various types of case markings (e.g. adpositions,
affixes) can be ordered in terms of their formal properties. These
formal properties vary “with the hierarchical ordering of cases and
grammatical relations” (Blake 2004:86). Moreover, as Blake (2004)
points out, semantic roles can be ordered hierarchically with respect to
grammatical relations. As we shall see in what follows, this order can
be shown to be relevant to the acceptability of such constructions as
reflexives and passives.

5.8.1 Grammatical relations

Relational Grammar, a theory developed by Perlmuter and Postal in the

early 1970s, is of particular relevance to the study of case since it
concerns itself almost exclusively with grammatical relations. Within
this theoretical framework, grammatical relations are taken as
undefined primitives. A distinction is drawn between the grammatical
relations (e.g. subject, direct object, indirect object), which are
collectively known as terms, and the obliques (e. g. locative,
benefactive, instrumental). The terms are pure syntactic relation
whereas the obliques are semantic. The grammatical relations form the
following hierarchy, as shown in (83):

(83)

1. subject
2. direct object
3. indirect object
4. obliques (locative, instrumental, etc.)
274
The hierarchy manifests itself in various ways. In some languages the
unmarked word order follows the hierarchy. This applies to English and
French (clitic pronouns apart), for instance. The hierarchy manifests
itself in issues of relativisation. English can relativise subjects (the man
who left), objects (the man I saw) and oblique relations (the gun with
which he shot the burglar). However, some languages can relativise
only subjects, some only subjects and direct objects, some only
subjects, direct objects and indirect objects (cf. Keenan and Comrie
1977).
Most languages allow for some verbal derivations that change
the valency of the verb. The passive is a case in point. If we take into
account the hierarchy of grammatical relations given in (83), such
verbal derivations have been analyzed in terms of the advancement (or
promotion) and demotion. Thus, the passive involves the advancement
of the direct object to subject position and the demotion of the subject
to a peripheral relation. Blake (2004:89) points out that regardless of
the organisation of the core grammar the advancement displaces the
patient/theme argument.

5.8.2 Case

Inflectional case systems have been shown to build up in a particular

order, giving thus rise to the hierarchy in (84)):

(84)

nom acc/erg gen dat loc abl/inst others

(Blake 2004:155

This hierarchy should be interpreted as follows. If a language has a case

included in the hierarchy, it will generally have at least one case from
each slot listed to the left. For instance, if a language has a dative case,
it will have a genitive, an accusative or ergative (or both), and a
nominative. In a system that includes a small number of cases (between
two and five cases), the lowest ranked case will usually have a large
range of functions, i.e. it will function as a kind of ‘elsewhere case’.
This hierarchy of grammatical relations is an elaboration of the
Relational Grammar hierarchy given in (83).

275
 Pinkster (1985:167) has demonstrated that cases can be
arranged hierarchically, the highest raked cases are more likely to
encode arguments of a predicate rather than adjuncts. In Latin, for
instance, the hierarchy is as follows (Pinkster 1985:167):

(85)

nom > acc > dat > abl > gen

5.8.3. Marking

Several generalizations can be made about the distribution of

morphologically unmarked forms, about synthetic and analytic marking
and about head versus dependent marking.
If a language has an unmarked case, and it usually has, this case
is normally nominative 72 encoding SA (subject) in accusative
languages and SP (absolutive) in ergative languages.
A clear correlation can be established between the type of
marking employed for a grammatical relation and the position of that
relation in the hierarchy. Analytic case markers (adpositions) are more
likely for the noncore peripheral relations, especially the obliques (e.g.
locative, benefactive, instrumental, etc.) which are semantic relations.
Conversely, synthetic markers (inflections) are more likely for the
purely grammatical relations, especially the core ones (e.g. subject,
direct object). English illustrates this correlation to the extent to which
it has suppletive accusative inflection with pronouns and a genitive
marker ’s with nouns, but prepositions for most other functions. The
status of the genitive ’s is unusual in that its scope is phrasal: the man
over there’s dog or the Duke of York’s son.
Head marking (attaching markers to the head of a construction
rather than to the dependents) is confined to the purely grammatical
relations. In some languages there is no marking for core functions,
either on the noun phrase or on the verb, though there is marking for
peripheral functions. In such language the subject/object distinction is
made via word order, usually subject–verb–object order.

72
There a few languages, such as Wappo (Penutian), in which the accusative rather
than the nominative is the unmarked case for all nominals (Li and Thompson 1981).

276
5.8.4 Semantic roles

Fillmore (1968:33) has not only advanced the notion of semantic roles
independent of the morpho-syntax, but he also proposed the idea of a
subject-choice hierarchy. Most modern theories incorporate such a
hierarchy, some even adding an object-choice hierarchy. The
following example is taken from Dik’s (1978: 74f) Functional
Grammar (with ‘patient’ substituted for ‘goal’ for the sake of
consistency with the description and labelling of semantic roles in
section 5.7.2):

(86)

agent > patient > recipient > beneficiary > instrument > location >
temporal

The example in (86) represents a hierarchy of accessibility to subject.

Agent is the most accessible semantic role to be assigned to a subject,
patient next most accessible and so on. (87) represents a hierarchy of
accessibility to direct object:

(87)

patient > recipient > beneficiary > instrument > location > temporal

According to Dik (1978), a continuous segment of the hierarchy has

access to subject and another continuous segment has accessibility to
direct object. Assignments of lower roles to subject and object are less.
Such lower roles are generally subject to lexical constraints and they
typically involve marked constructions. For instance, in English, agent
is the first choice for subject in unmarked constructions (e.g. active
voice), patient is the next choice, as in (88a) and (88b) respectively:

(88) a. He shouted.
b. Mary fell.

However, a marked construction (the passive) should be used if an

agent argument is to be displaced:

(89) He got shot by the burglar.

277
 A recipient of the verb give may displace a patient in the choice
for direct object. Contrast the sentences in (90):

(90)

(a) I gave the book to him.

AGENT PACIENT RECIPIENT

(b) I gave him the book.

AGENT RECIPIENT PATIENT

The double-object construction (90b) is considered marked with respect

to the construction with a prepositional phrase (90a) which is generally
more common across English verbs. The recipient can be promoted to
subject through passivization. It should be pointed out, on the other
hand, that the advancement of a recipient to direct object position is not
possible with all three-place verbs. Consider the following examples:

(91) a. He donated $1,000 to cancer research.

b. *He donated cancer research $1,000.

The advancement of a beneficiary direct object is possible with some

verbs (e.g. build), but not with others (e.g. construct). Compare the
sentences in (92) with those in (93):

(92) a. He built a house for me.

b. He built me a house.

(93) a. He constructed a house for me.

b. *He constructed me a house.

It is difficult to find acceptable examples of passives with beneficiaries

as subject.
English is unusual in allowing roles ranked lower on the
hierarchy to be encoded as subject, at least with some verbs. The
sentences in (94) illustrate the assignment of the locative to the subject:

278
(94) a. The first chapter includes the definitions.
b. The kitchen reeked of tobacco.
c. The path was swarming with aunts.

The same applies to ‘temporal’ subjects:

(95) a. The war years saw a reduction in the crime rate.

b. Tomorrow is a holiday.

It should be pointed out that Dik (1978) does not recognise an

experiencer role. If we take into account this role (i.e. experience), it
would probably outrank the patient, since it is more often expressed as
subject than the neutral patient is (I like/hate/fear him). In a number of
role hierarchies not only is the experiencer placed above the patient, but
several other roles are as well (cf. Jackendoff 1972, Foley and Van
Valin 1984). Jackendoff introduces the hierarchy in (96) and uses it as a
basis for the Thematic Hierarchy Condition on passives and reflexives.
According to Jackendoff (1972: 43, 148), in a passive construction the
agent is supposed to be higher than the derived subject and in reflexives
the reflexivised argument may not be higher than its antecedent.

(96)

1. Agent
2. Location, Source, Goal
3. Theme

The Thematic Hierarchy Condition could be invoked to show why the

sentences in (96/97) do not have passives. In both, the subject is a
neutral patient or theme and the other argument is an experiencer which
Jackendoff analyzes as an abstract goal.

(98) a. That girl matters to me.

b. The reason escapes me.

279
5.9 Practice

Activity 1

Write the possessive form (i.e. the inflected genitive or the

prepositional genitive) which could be related to the following
sentences. If two forms are possible, give them both. The first has
been done as an example.

1. John has a brother. Genitive: John’s brother

2. Thomas has a sister.
3. Shakespeare wrote plays.
4. Keats wrote poetry.
5. The cow gives milk.
6. The captain made an error.
7. The ship has a siren.
8. The siren made a noise.
9. Something has a name.
10. The school has a history.
11. The world has problems.
12. Europe has art treasures.
13. The holiday lasted a week.
14. The work took a year.
15. My brother-in-law has a house.
16. My parents gave their consent.
17. The man over there has a name.
18. This book has pages.
19. The newspaper has been published this evening.

Activity 2

Make up a sentence with double genitive, if one can be made up

acceptably, from the following material:

1. John is one of my friends.

2. One of Doctor Brown’s patient has died.
3. That dog – Jack’s dog – has torn my trousers.
4. Where is that key, the one you have?
5. Where is the key, the one you have?

280
 6. Those new shoes, I mean yours, look very smart.
7. This is Doctor Brown’s secretary.
8. This book, John Christie’s, is very amusing.
9. That is a tale told by an idiot.
10. These exercises you set are quite easy.

Activity 3

Eighteen of the following sentences contain mistakes. Tick (√) the

correct sentences then find the mistakes and correct them.

1. Did you notice that greasy stain on a side of our sofa?

……………………………………………………
2. Dave’s company has been awarded a contract to repair all the buses’
engines.
……………………………………………………
3. People in this street are very proud of their’s manicured front lawns.
……………………………………………………
4. Isn’t she your secretary’s brother’s boss?
……………………………………………………
5. These gloves look familiar; I think they’re Joe’s.
……………………………………………………
6. The villa we’re borrowing belongs to my sister’s-in-law’s.
……………………………………………………
7. I adore Lennon’s and McCartney’s music, especially the early stuff.
……………………………………………………
8. This is Mario, he’s a colleague of Professor Grigson.
……………………………………………………
9. I might be able to get you an interview; the owner’s friend of me.
……………………………………………………
10. Is that the new car of Hillary?
……………………………………………………
11. Elizabeth’s the youngest daughter of Mr Granger.
……………………………………………………
12. Jem saw a fantastic article in the local paper of today.
……………………………………………………
13. Galileo was NASA’s biggest project.
……………………………………………………
14. It’s in a great location, only five minutes’ walk from the
supermarket.
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……………………………………………………
15. Could you give me a dollar’s worth of those bananas, please?
……………………………………………………
16. How about all of us going back to the house of my brother for some
coffee?
……………………………………………………
17. Did you manage to get an appointment at the doctor’s?
……………………………………………………
18. Oh, for the sake of heaven, can’t you get a move on?
……………………………………………………
19. He’s doing some research for his dissertation on anthropology’s
history.
……………………………………………………
20. The celebrities acknowledged the crowd’s cheers who lined the
street.
……………………………………………………
21. Astronomers predict an eclipse of the sun on April the thirteenth’s
morning.
……………………………………………………
22. Inspector Walters achieved fame with the famous serial killer’s
arrest.
……………………………………………………
23. Commentators have been stunned by the scale of the scandal.
……………………………………………………
24. The processor is the computer’s main component, wouldn’t you
agree?
……………………………………………………
25. This term the class will be reading the short stories’ collection of
Graham Greene.
……………………………………………………
26. Everyone’s been admiring my expensive wife’s car.
……………………………………………………
27. If there’s one thing I can’t stand it’s fussy children’s clothes.
……………………………………………………
28. There’s a beautiful old house for sale at the local estate’s agent’s.
……………………………………………………
29. If you want a really unique wedding dress, you need to find a good
maker of dresses.
……………………………………………………
30. Great news – the college is going to give me a one-year-sabbatical.
282
……………………………………………………

Activity 4

Rewrite the following sentences using genitive forms.

1. I’m sure this bag belongs to somebody.

2. Let’s go to the shop the girls own.
3. That is the hotel belonging to MR Hollis.
4. I love the operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan.
5. It’s the fault of nobody.
6. They had respect for the opinions of each other.
7. The dog belonging to my next-door neighbor never stops
barking.
8. I’m fed up with the hopeless inefficiency of the secretary of my
boss.
9. The personality of my mother and the personality of my father
are very alike.
10. These aren’t my keys, they are the keys belonging to my flat
mate.
11. The new Act of Parliament will protect the right of everyone to
privacy.
12. The toilet for men is over there on the right.
13. I’ve just inherited the house belonging to the brother of my
grandmother.
14. The opinions of residents of sink estates are rarely taken into
consideration.
15. The dance routines of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers are
legendary.

Activity 5

Choose the correct alternative, A or B. In some cases both options

are correct.

1. What did you do………………………..

A at the course’s end?
B at the end of the course?
2. Have you met…………………………
A Sam’s new girlfriend?
283
 B the new girlfriend of Sam?
3. ………..is a constant source of inspiration.
A Barcelona’s architecture
B The architecture of Barcelona
4. I need to visit……………………..
A the doctor’s surgery.
B the surgery of the doctor.
5. Some debris got caught under………………….
A the conveyor belt’s wheels
B the wheels of the conveyor belt.
6. Our organization strives towards…………………
A poverty’s elimination.
B the elimination of poverty.
7. The ninth Symphony is arguably ………………
A Beethoven’s greatest work.
B the greatest work of Beethoven.
8. ………..is the search for personal fulfillment in a hostile world.
A The novel’s theme
B The theme of the novel
9. He’s taking …………… from his job at the university
A a year’s sabbatical
B a sabbatical of a year
10. ………… sometimes drives me up the wall.
A My husband’s impatience
B The impatience of my husband
11. Throughout the flight we had to put up with……………
A the children sitting in the back row’s antics
B the antics of the children sitting in the back row.
12. The most senior clergyman in the Church of England is
…………
A Canterbury’s Archbishop.
B. the Archbishop of Canterbury
13. Researchers have been amazed by the…..to mutate when
attacked.
A. virus’s ability
B. ability of the virus
14. The vet wasn’t very pleased with……….
A. Fido’s progress.
B. the progress of Fido.
15. Why can’t you just hand in your notice…...
284
 A. for heaven’s sake!
B. for the sake of heaven!
16. ….are generating a lot of excitement at the Paris fashion shows.
A. Galliano’s latest designs.
B. The latest designs of Galliano

Activity 6

Say whether the verbs in the following sentences are expressed by

intensive, intransitive, monotransitive, ditransitive or complex
transitive verbs; indicate the syntactic pattern of each of the
following sentences (i.e. SV, SVA, SVC, SVO, SVOO, SVOC,
SVOA) and then specify the semantic/theta roles of the functional
elements.

1. She’s happy.
2. He was at school.
3. He became a man.
4. He sat tight.
5. He kept out of trouble.
6. He turned traitor.
7. The Sahara is hot.
8. He was working.
9. Last night was warm.
10. It’s windy.
11. The curtains disappeared.
12. It’s raining.
13. He caught the ball.
14. He declared me a criminal.
15. He placed it on the shelf.
16. I bought her a gift.
17. She gave her hair a brushing.
18. The stone hit me.
19. He has a car.
20. We rewarded John.
21. The will benefits us all.
22. He climbed a mountain.
23. I made her my secretary.
24. The bus seats thirty.
25. The sun dries it yellow.
285
 26. I took a bite.
27. I gave a gasp.
28. A car knocked it down.
29. I prefer them on toast.
30. I found it strange.
31. I took a swim naked.

Activity 7

For each of the following sentences indicate the syntactic pattern

(i.e. SV, SVA, SVC, SVO, SVOO, SVOC, SVOA) and then specify
the semantic/theta roles of the functional elements.

1. He opened the window.

2. The girl sold flowers to George.
3. Mary is writing a letter to John.
4. Judith hit Emily.
5. A falling rock hit Emily.
6. George accidentally broke the glass.
7. The window opened.
8. Yesterday was my day off.
9. He walked before the end of the lecture.
10. Alan loves Mary.
11. I cooked him dinner.
12. The kitchen smells of onions.
13. The glass shattered.
14. John shattered the glass.
15. The wind shattered the glass.
16. He removed the book from the shelf.
17. The cat died.
18. The ball is on the sand.
19. The dog hit the child.
20. The arrow hit the apple.
21. The glass broke.
22. The president fired the treasurer.
23. We cut the meat with the knife.
24. My tent sleeps four.
25. John likes love stories.
26. The policeman arrested the suspect.
27. I was impressed by his speech.
286
28. Mother is cooking the potatoes.
29. Everybody laughed.
30. John is taking a nap.
31. His speech impressed me.
32. This key will open the door.
33. Tomorrow is his birthday.
34. John passed my house.
35. As John was passing my house he fell.
36. You surprised me with your theory.
37. Your theory surprised me.

287
Appendix I

Classes of nouns
Mass nouns

The following list includes some common mass nouns:

absence cotton
access courage
adhesive curry
advertising damage
advice death
age democracy
agriculture deodorant
ammunition depression
anger design
assistance detergent
atmosphere disinfectant
baggage duty
beauty dye
brandy earth
behaviour education
cake electricity
cancer employment
capacity energy
cheese environment
childhood equipment
china evil
claret existence
cloth experience
clothing fabric
coal failure
coffee faith
cognac fashion
coke fear
comfort fertilizer
concern finance
conduct fire
confidence flesh
288
food luggage
fortune machinery
freedom magic
fuel marketing
fun marriage
fur meat
furniture medicine
glue mercy
ground metal
growth milk
hair money
happiness music
harm nature
health news
help oil
history ointment
homework ore
ice paint
independence paper
industry patience
information peace
ink perfume
insurance permission
insecticide pesticide
intelligence philosophy
importance plastic
iron pleasure
jam poison
jelly policy
joy poverty
juice power
justice preservative
knowledge pride
labour progress
lager protection
liqueur publicity
loneliness purity
lotion rain
love reduction
luck reality
289
relief trade
research traffic
respect training
ribbon transport
safety travel
salad trust
salt truth
sand value
sauce violence
security underwear
scenery waste
sherry water
silence wealth
sleep weaponry
soap weather
soil welfare
soup whisky
strength wind
snow wine
spaghetti wood
spite wool
status work
steel worth
stuff worth
sugar yam
tea yoghurt
teaching youth
technology
time

Collective nouns

The following list includes some common collective nouns:

aristocracy cast
army clan
association class
audience club
board college
brood commission
290
committee community institute
company jury
corporation majority
council minority
couple ministry
crew minority
crowd navy
department nobility
enemy opposition
family party
federation population
firm press
flock proletariat
gang staff
generation team
government university
group
herd

Compound nouns

The following list includes some common uncountable compound

nouns:

air conditioning fast-food

air-traffic control first-aid
barbed wire food-poisoning
birth control further education
blood pressure general knowledge
bubble bath hay fever
capital punishment heart failure
central heating higher education
chewing gum hire purchase
common sense income tax
cotton wool junk food
data processing law and order
do-it-yourself lost property
dry-cleaning mail order
family planning make-up
fancy dress mineral water
291
nail varnish stainless steel
natural history table tennis
old age talcum powder
pocket money toilet paper
remote control turn-over
science fiction unemployment benefit
show business value added tax
show jumping washing powder
sign language washing-up liquid
social security writing paper
social work water-skiing

The following list includes some common singular compound nouns

age of consent mother tongue

arms race open air
brain drain private sector
colour bar public sector
cost of living rank and file
death penalty
diplomatic corps
dress circle
drying-up
fire brigade
general public
greenhouse effect
human race
labour force
labour market
long jump
solar system
sound barrier
space age
welfare state
women’s movement

The following list includes some common plural compound nouns

armed forces
baked beans
292
civil rights
current affairs
french fries
grass roots
high heels
human rights
industrial relations
inverted commas
licensing laws
luxury goods
modern languages
natural resources
race relations
road works
social services
social studies
swimming trunks
vocal cords
winter sports
yellow pages

293
Appendix II
Partitives

Partitives and concrete mass nouns

a suit of armour
a ball of flames
a slice of bacon/bread/cheese
a slice/rasher of bacon/ham
a loaf of bread
a slice of cake
a stick of chalk
a bar of chocolate
a bar of soap
a lump of coal
an article of furniture
a set of furniture
a blade of grass
a block of ice
a strip of land
a roast of meat
a sheet of paper
a grain of rice/sand/salt
a heap of rubbish
a hunk of meat/cheese/bread
a lump of sugar
a cube of sugar/ice
a pinch of salt
a dollop of honey/jam/cream
a fall of snow
a stack of hay
a cake of soap
a skein of wool
a ball of wool
a wad/fistful of cash
a speck of dust
a squeeze of lemon
a roll of toilet paper
a reel of thread/wire/film
294
a clod of earth/clay
a lump of earth/clay
a grain of wheat
a sheaf of wheat/corn
a scrap of paper
a pile of washing
a spot of rain
a portion of chicken
a segment of orange
a stick of dynamite
a drop of milk
a pool of blood
a gush of blood
a jet of water
a flock of sheep
a school of fish
a gang of youths/hooligans/thieves
a bottle of beer
a packet of cigarettes
an article of clothing
a piece of cloth
a family of mice
a selection of the newspaper
a gust of wind
a blob of glue
mountains/piles of washing
a spell of bad weather
a stream of people
a handful of people

Partitives and abstract mass nouns

a word of abuse
a torrent of abuse
a word of advice
an item/a bit of business
a pang of jealousy
a item of information
a stroke of luck
an item of news
295
a bit of work
a piece/a shred of evidence
an attack of fever
a fit of passion
a piece of research
a flutter of excitement
an act of kindness/love /justice
a scrap of evidence
a shred of evidence
a grain of truth
a mountain of work
a ray of hope
a wall of silence
a touch of flu
a crumb of comfort
piles of homework
stacks of replies
loads of time
a bit of fun
a dash of realism
a dollop of gratitude

296
Appendix III
Nationalities, countries and regions

Referring to a nation or region and its affairs normally requires four

words:

 The name of the country or region:

Sweden, Japan, France, Venezuela, Asia

 The adjective:
Swedish, Japanese, French, Venezuelan, Asian

 The singular nouns used to refer to a person from the country or

region:
a Swede, a Japanese, a Frenchman/woman, a Venezuelan, an
Asian

 The definite noun phrase used to refer to the population

generically:
the Swedes, the Japanese, the French, the Venezuelans, the
Asians

Noun Adjective Noun Noun

denoting the referring to a referring
country or person from to the
region the country population
or region as a whole
America American an American the
Americans
Belgium Belgian a Belgian the
Belgians
Brazil Brazilian a Brazilian the
Brazilians
Britain British a British the British
man/woman/
person (more
formally a
Briton)
China Chinese a Chinese the Chinese

297
The Congo Congolese a Congolese the
Congolese
Denmark Danish a Dane the Danes
England English an the English
Englishman/
woman/person
Europe European a European the
Europeans
Finland Finnish a Finn the Finns
France French a Frenchman/ The French
woman/person
Greece Greek a Greek the Greeks
Holland/ Dutch a the Dutch
The Dutchwoman/
Netherlands man/person
Hungary Hungarian a Hungarian the
Hungarians
Iraq Iraqi an Iraqi the Iraqis
Ireland Irish an the Irish
Irishman/wom
an/person
Israel Israeli an Israeli the Israelis
Italy Italian an Italian the Italians
Kenya Kenyan a Kenyan the
Kenyans
Morocco Moroccan A Moroccan the
Moroccans
New New a New the New
Zealand Zealand Zealander Zealanders
Norway Norwegian a Norwegian the
Norwegian
s
Poland Polish a Pole the Poles
Portugal Portuguese a Portuguese the
Portuguese
Russia Russian a Russian the
Russians
Scotland Scottish a Scot the Scots
Spain Spanish a Spaniard the Spanish
Sweden Swedish a Swede the Swedes
Switzerland Swiss a Swiss the Swiss
Thailand Thai a Thai the Thais

298
Turkey Turkish a Turk the Turks
Wales Welsh a Welshman/ the Welsh
woman/person

Remarks

1. English referring to population is not the same as British; it is

not used for Scottish or Welsh or Irish people.

2. The noun Briton is rarely used except in newspaper headlines

(e.g. TWELVE BRITONS INJURED IN COACH COLLISION). The noun
Brit (the Brits) is sometimes used informally. Most British
people call themselves Scottish, Welsh or English.

3. The Scots themselves prefer the adjective Scots and it also

occurs in the compounds Scotsman/Scotswoman. The adjective
Scotch is normally used to refer to food and drink from Scotland
(e.g. Scotch broth, Scotch eggs).

4. Although America and American are the most frequently used

for the United States, its citizens and affairs, people from other
parts of the north and south American continent may object to
this use. It is sometimes avoided for these reasons. It is more
usual to say: She’s a US citizen; I’ve got some US dollars to
change.

5. The mostly monosyllabic non-compound words listed above

under ‘noun referring to a person from the country or region’
(e.g. Dane, Spaniard) are normally avoided when referring to a
woman (a Danish woman, a Spanish woman are preferred).

6. Arabic is used to designate the language spoken in Arab

countries; in other cases, the normal adjective is Arab. The
adjective Arabian is used in a few fixed expressions and place
names such as the Arabian Sea, Saudi Arabian.

299
Glossary
A
ABLATIVE: The case typically assigned to objects of prepositions
denoting instruments or sources.
ABLAUT: Internal vowel change. Also known as apophony.
ABSOLUTIVE: In an ergative-absolutive case system, the case that is
assigned to the subject of an intransitive clause and the object of a
transitive clause.
ACCUSATIVE: In a nominative-accusative case system, the case
assigned to the direct object of the clause, and in some languages to
objects of prepositions.
ACRONYM: A word made up of the initial letter or letters of a phrase
and pronounced as a word. For example, from self-contained
underwater breathing apparatus we get the acronym scuba,
pronounced [skubə].
ACTIVE: A voice in which the subject of the clause is (typically) the
agent, instrument, or experiencer and the direct object the theme or
patient. In English an active clause would be Fenster ate the pizza, as
opposed to a passive The pizza was eaten.
ADJUNCTS: Non-argumental phrases that are not necessary to the
meaning of a verb.
AFFIX: A bound morpheme that consists of one or more segments that
typically appear before, after, or within, a base morpheme.
affixal polysemy: Multiple related meanings of an affix.
AGENT: The argument of the verb that performs or does the action.
Agents typically are sentient and have intentional or volitional control
of actions.
AGGLUTINATIVE: One of the four traditional classifications of
morphological systems. Agglutinative systems are characterized by
sequences of affixes each of which is easily segmentable from the base
and associated with a single meaning or grammatical function.
AGRAMMATISM: A form of aphasia in which comprehension is good,
production is labored, and grammatical or function words largely
absent.
AGREEMENT: Contextual inflection of elements of a phrase or sentence
to match another element of that phrase or sentence. For example, in
the Romance languages the inflection of adjectives in a noun phrase

300
must match the gender and number of the head noun. In Latin the verb
must be inflected to match the person and number of its subject.
ALLOMORPH: A phonologically distinct variant of a morpheme.
ANALYTIC: One of the traditional four classifications of morphological
systems. In analytic systems words consist of only one morpheme. Also
known as isolating.
ANTI-PASSIVE: Morphology that decreases the valency of verbs by
eliminating the object argument.
APOPHONY: Internal vowel change. Also known as ablaut.
APPLICATIVE: Morphology that increases the valency of a verb by
adding an object argument.
ARGUMENT: A noun phrase that is semantically and often syntactically
necessary to the meaning of a verb. The arguments of a verb consist of
its subject and complement(s).
ASPECT: A type of inflection that conveys information about the
internal composition of an event.
ASSIMILATION: A phonological process in which segments come to be
more like each other in some phonological feature such as voicing or
nasality.
ATTENUATIVE AFFIXES: Affixes that denote ‘sort of X’ or ‘a little X’.
ATTRIBUTIVE COMPOUND: A compound in which the two elements
bear a modifier-modified relationship to one another.
AUGMENTATIVE: A kind of expressive morphology which conveys
notions of larger size and sometimes pejorative tone.

B
BACKFORMATION: A morphological process in which a word is
formed by subtracting a piece, usually an affix, from a word which is or
appears to be complex. In English, for example, the verb peddle was
created by back formation from peddler (originally spelled peddlar).
BASE-DRIVEN SELECTION: Choice of an affix by its base, whether a
simple or complex word. For example, in English, words prefixed by
en- always form nouns by suffixation of -ment. The complex base enX
therefore selects its affix.
BINYAN: A templatic pattern associated with a specific meaning or
function.
BLEND: A type of word formation in which parts of words that are not
themselves morphemes are combined to form a new word. For
example, the word smog is a blend of smoke and fog.
301
BLOCKING: The tendency of an already existent word to preclude the
derivation of another word that would have the same meaning. For
example, the existence of the word glory precludes the derivation of
gloriosity and the existence of went precludes the formation of the
regular past tense goed.
BOUND BASE: A morpheme which is not an affix but which
nevertheless cannot stand on its own. In English, bound bases are items
like endo, derm, and ology, from which neo-classical compounds like
endoderm and dermatology are formed.
BRACKETING PARADOXES: Complex words in which there is a
mismatch between syntactic structure and phonological form or
between syntactic structure and semantic interpretation. Within theories
that admit stratal ordering, bracketing paradoxes can also involve
mismatches between the structure required on the basis of word
formation rules and the structure consistent with strata ordering.

CASE: Inflectional marking which signals the function of noun phrases

in sentences.
CAUSATIVE: Valency-changing morphology that adds an external
causer to a verb.
CIRCUMFIX: A morpheme that consists of the simultaneous attachment
of a prefix and a suffix which convey meaning or function only when
they appear together.
CLIPPING: A word formed by subtraction of part of a larger word. For
example, in English math is a clipping from mathematics and ad is a
clipping from advertisement.
CLITIC: Small grammatical elements that cannot occur independently
but are not as closely bound to their hosts as inflectional affixes are.
closed class: A fixed list from which particular forms can be lost, but to
which no new forms can be added.
COINAGE: A word that is made up from whole cloth rather than by
affixation, compounding, conversion, blending, reduplication, or other
processes.
COMPLETIVE: An aspectual distinction that focuses on the end of an
event.
COMPLEX WORD: A word made up of more than one morpheme.
COMPLEXITY BASED ORDERING: The hypothesis that suffixes which
are more transparent, more productive, and more easily segmented
302
from their bases will occur outside those that are less transparent, less
productive, and less easily segmented from their bases.
COMPOSITIONAL: The semantic interpretation of a word is
compositional to the extent that it can be computed as the sum of the
meanings of each of its morphemes.
COMPOUND: A word made up of two or more separate lexemes.
CONJUGATION: The traditional name for the inflectional paradigm of a
verb.
CONSONANT MUTATION: A form of internal stem change in which
consonants of a base differ systematically in different morphological
contexts.
CONTEXTUAL INFLECTION: Inflection which is determined by the
syntactic construction in which a word finds itself.
CONTINUATIVE: An aspectual distinction that focuses on the middle of
an event as it progresses.
CONVERSION: A type of word formation in which the category of a
base is changed with no corresponding change in its form. For example,
in English the verb to chair is formed by conversion from the noun
chair. Also called functional shift.
COORDINATIVE COMPOUND: A type of compound in which the two
elements have equal semantic weight. Examples in English are
producer-director or blue-green.
CORPUS: A database comprised of spoken language and/or written
texts that can be mined for various forms of linguistic study.
CRAN MORPH: A bound morpheme that occurs in only one word. An
example in English is cran in cranberry.
CREATIVITY: The conscious use of unproductive word formation
processes to form new words that are often perceived as humorous,
annoying, or otherwise worthy of note.

D
DATIVE: In languages which mark case, the case assigned to the
indirect object and frequently to prepositional objects.
DECLARATIVE: The mood/modality of ordinary statements (as opposed
to questions or imperatives, for example).
DECLENSION: The traditional name for the inflectional paradigm of a
noun, especially in languages that display case marking.
DEFAULT ENDINGS: Inflectional markings that are used when no more
specific marking is applicable.
303
DEPENDENT-MARKING: Morphological marking of the dependents of a
phrase rather than its head. For example, in noun phrases marking
occurs on determiners and adjectives rather than the noun.
DERIVATION: Lexeme formation processes that either change syntactic
category or add substantial meaning or both.
DIMINUTIVE: Evaluative morphology that expresses smallness, youth,
and/or affection.
DISSIMILATION: A phonological process in which sounds come to be
less alike in terms of some phonological characteristic.
DOUBLE MARKING: Morphological marking of both the head of a
phrase and its dependents. For example, in a noun phrase marking
would occur on both the head noun and on adjectives and/or
determiners that modify it.
DUAL: Number-marking that denotes exactly two objects.

E
ENCLITIC: A clitic that is positioned after its host.
ENDOCENTRIC: Having a head. In endocentric compounds the
compound as a whole is the same category and semantic type as its
head.
ERGATIVE: In an ergative/absolutive case system, the marking of the
subject of a transitive verb.
ERGATIVE/ABSOLUTIVE CASE SYSTEM : A case-marking system in
which the subject of an intransitive verb is marked with the same case
as the object of a transitive verb, and the subject of a transitive verb
receives a different marking.
ETYMOLOGY: The study of the origins and development of words.
EVALUATIVE AFFIXES: Affixes, including diminutives and
augmentatives, that denote size and/or negative or positive associations.
EVALUATIVE MORPHOLOGY: Morphology that conveys information
about size and frequently about positive or negative valuation.
EXCLUSIVE: Person-marking in which the hearer is not included.
EXOCENTRIC: Lacking a head. In exocentric compounds the
compound as a whole is not of the category or semantic type of either
of its elements.

304
F
FAST MAPPING: The ability of language-learners to rapidly create
lexical entries for new words that they hear.
FREE BASE: A base that can occur as an independent word.
FREQUENCY OF BASE TYPE: The number of different bases that are
available for an affix to attach to, base type: thus resulting in new
words.
FREQUENTATIVE: Aspectual marking that signals repetition of an
action. See also iterative.
FULL REDUPLICATION: A word formation process in which whole
words are repeated to denote some inflectional or derivational meaning.
functional shift: See conversion.
FUSIONAL: One of the four traditional classifications of morphological
systems. In fusional systems words are complex but not easily
segmentable into distinct morphemes. Morphological markings may
bear more than one function or meaning.

G
GAVAGAI PROBLEM: A philosophical problem concerning how
children come to associate the meaning of a word with the action or
entity the word denotes.
GENDER: Inflectional classes of noun that may be either arbitrary
(grammatical gender) or semantically based (natural gender). See also
noun classes.
GENITIVE: The case assigned to the possessor of a noun.

HABILITATIVE: A verb form meaning ‘can V’.

HABITUAL ASPECT: Aspectual marking that designatesthat an action is
usually or characteristically done.
HAPAX LEGOMENON: A word that occurs only once in a corpus.
HEAD: The morpheme that determines the category and semantic type
of the word or phrase.
HEAD-MARKING: Morphological marking of the head of a phrase
rather than its dependents. For example, in noun phrases marking

305
occurs on the noun itself, rather than on determiners and adjectives that
modify the noun.

I
IMPERATIVE: The mood/modality used for commands.
IMPERFECTIVE: Aspectual distinction in which the event is viewed
from inside as on-going.
IMPLICATIONAL UNIVERSAL: In linguistic typology a generalization
that if one linguistic characteristic is found in a language, another
characteristic is expected to occur as well.
INCEPTIVE: Aspectual distinction that focuses on the beginning of an
event.
INCLUSIVE: Person-marking that includes the hearer as well as the
speaker.
INDEX OF FUSION: Typological measure of how many meanings may
be packed into a single inflectional morpheme in a language.
INDEX OF SYNTHESIS: Typological measure of how many morphemes
there are per word in a language.
INFIX: An affix which is inserted into a base morpheme, rather than
occurring at the beginning or the end.
INFLECTION: Word formation process that expresses a grammatical
distinction.
INFLECTIONAL CLASS: Different inflectional subpatterns displayed by
a category. See also noun classes, gender.
INHERENT INFLECTION: Inflection that does not depend on context.
For example, the inflectional category of aspect is inherent in verbs.
The inflectional category of number is inherent in nouns.
INITIALISM: A word created from the first letters of a phrase, and
pronounced as a sequence of letters. For example, FBI is an initialism
created from Federal Bureau of Investigation, and pronounced [ɛf bi
ai].
INTERFIX: See linking element.
INTERNAL STEM CHANGE: Morphological process which changes a
vowel or consonant in the stem. Also sometimes called simulfixation.
Internal vowel change is called ablaut and internal consonant change is
called consonant mutation.
INTERROGATIVE: The mood/modality of questions.
INTERVOCALIC VOICING: A phonological process which voices
consonants when they occur between two vowels.
306
INTRANSITIVE: The valency of a verb that takes only one argument.
IRREALIS: A mood/modality signaling that an event is imagined or
thought of but not verifiable.
ISOLATING: See analytic.
ITEM AND ARRANGEMENT MODEL (IA): A theoretical model of word
formation in which affixes have lexical entries just as bases do, and
words are built by rules which combine bases and affixes
hierarchically.
ITEM AND PROCESS MODEL (IP): A theoretical model of word
formation in which derivation and inflection are accomplished by rules
that add affixes, or perform reduplication, internal stem change, and
other processes of word formation.
ITERATIVE: Aspectual distinction that signals that an action is done
repeatedly. See also frequentative.

J
JARGON APHASIA: A form of language impairment in which the
subject produces fluent sentences in which function words are evident
but content words are often replaced by nonsense words.

L
LEXEME: Families of words that differ only in their grammatical
endings or grammatical forms. For example, the words walk, walking,
walked, and walks all belong to the same lexeme.
LEXICAL CONTRAST PRINCIPLE: The principle that the language
learner will always assume that a new word refers to something that
does not already have a name.
LEXICAL INTEGRITY HYPOTHESIS: The hypothesis that syntactic rules
may not create or affect the internal structure of words.
LEXICAL STRATA: Layers of word formation within a single language
that display different phonological properties and different patterns of
attachment.
LEXICALIZATION: The process by which complex words come to have
meanings that are not compositional.
LEXICALIZED: The property of having a meaning that is not the sum of
the meanings of its parts.
LEXICOGRAPHY: The art and science of making dictionaries.
Lexicographer: One who writes dictionaries.
307
LINKING ELEMENT: A meaningless vowel or consonant that occurs
between the two elements that make up a compound.
LOGOGRAPHIC WRITING: A writing system in which each symbol
stands for one word.

MENTAL LEXICON: The sum total of all the information a native

speaker of a language has about the words, morphemes, and
morphological rules of her/his language.
MOOD/MODALITY: Inflectional distinctions that signal the kind of
speech act in which a verb is deployed.
MORPHEME: The smallest meaningful part of a word.
MULTIPLE EXPONENCE: The property of having an inflectional
distinction marked in a single word by more than one morpheme.
MUTUAL EXCLUSIVITY PRINCIPLE: The tendency of language learners
to assume that each object has one and only one name.

N
NASAL ASSIMILATION: A phonological process in which a nasal
assimilates to the point of articulation of a preceding or following
consonant.
NEGATIVE AFFIX: An affix that means ‘not-X’.
NEO-CLASSICAL COMPOUND: In English, a compound that consists of
bound bases that are derived from Greek or Latin.
NOMINATIVE: In a nominative/accusative case system, the case
assigned to the subject of the sentence.
NOMINATIVE/ ACCUSATIVE CASE SYSTEM : A case system in which
the subject of a transitive sentence receives the same marking a the
subject of an intransitive sentence, and the object of a transitive
sentence receives a different case.
NONCE WORD: A word that occurs only once.
NOUN CLASSES: Groupings of nouns that share the particular
inflectional forms that they select for. Noun classes can be based
roughly on gender, shape, animacy or some combination of these
semantic properties, but frequently the membership in noun classes is
largely arbitrary.

308
NOUN INCORPORATION: A form of word formation in which a single
compound-like word consists of a verb or verb stem and a noun or noun
stem that functions as one of its arguments, typically its object.
NUMBER: An inflectional distinction that marks how many entities
there are.

ORTHOGRAPHY: The spelling system of a language.

P
PALATALIZATION: A phonological process by which one segment
takes on a palatal point of articulation, frequently in the environment of
a front vowel.
PARADIGM: A grid or table consisting of all of the different inflectional
forms of a particular lexeme or class of lexemes.
PARASYNTHESIS: A type of word formation in which a particular
morphological category is signaled by the simultaneous presence of
two morphemes.
PARTIAL REDUPLICATION: A type of word formation in which part of
a base morpheme is repeated.
PASSIVE: A voice in which the theme/patient of the verb serves as the
subject and the agent is either absent or marked by a preposition or
oblique case marking.
PAST: Tense that signals that an action has occurred before the time of
the speaker’s utterance.
PATIENT: The noun phrase in a sentence that undergoes the action.
PERFECt: An aspectual distinction that expresses something that
happened in the past but still has relevance to the present.
PERFECTIVE: An aspect in which an event is viewed as completed. The
event is viewed from the outside, and its internal structure is not
relevant.
PERIPHRASTIC MARKING: Marking by means of separate words, as
opposed to morphological processes. For example, in English one- or
two-syllable adjectives form the comparative by affixation of -er
(redder, happier) but three-syllable adjectives form their comparatives
periphrastically (more intelligent).

309
PERSON: Inflectional distinction that expresses the involvement of the
speaker, the hearer, or a person other than the speaker or hearer.
personal affix: Derivational affixes that produce either agent nouns
(writer, accountant) or patient nouns referring to humans (employee).
PHRASAL COMPOUND: A compound that consists of a phrase or
sentence as its first element and a noun as its second element. For
example, stuff-blowing-up effects.
PHRASAL VERB: A combination of a verb plus a preposition, frequently
having an idiomatic meaning. Phrasal verbs have the characteristic that
the preposition can and sometimes must occur separated from its verb.
For example, call up.
POLYSYNTHETIC: One of the four traditional typological
classifications of morphological systems. In polysynthetic languages
words are frequently extremely complex, consisting of many
morphemes, some of which have meanings that are typically expressed
by separate lexemes in other languages.
PROGRESSIVE: Aspectual distinction that expresses on-going action.
PREPOSITIONAL/ RELATIONAL AFFIX: Affixes that convey notions of
space and time. For example, over-, pre-.
PRESENT: Tense relating the speaker’s utterance to the moment of
speaking.
PRIVATIVE AFFIXES: Affixes that denote ‘without X’ (for example -
less in English) or ‘remove X’ (for example de- in English).
PROCLITIC: A clitic that is positioned before its host.
productivity: The extent to which a morphological process can be used
to create new words.

Q
QUANTIFICATIONAL ASPECT: An aspect denoting the number of times
or the frequency with which an action is done.
QUANTITATIVE AFFIXES: Affixes that express something relating to
amount (for example, multi- or -ful in English).

R
REALIS: A mood/modality in which the speaker means to signal that
the event is actual, that it has happened or is happening, or is directly
verifiable by perception.

310
REALIZATIONAL MODEL: A theoretical model of word formation that
does not separate out morphemes into discrete pieces, but rather states
rules that associate meanings (single or multiple) with complex forms.
reduplication: A morphological process whereby words are formed by
repeating all or part of their base.
RIGHTHAND HEAD RULE: A theoretical hypothesis that defines the
head of a morphologically complex word to be the righthand member
of that word.
ROOT: The part of a word that is left after all affixes have been
removed. Roots may be free bases, as is frequently the case in English,
or bound morphemes, as is the case in Latin.
ROOT AND PATTERN MORPHOLOGY: See templatic morphology.
ROOT COMPOUND: A compound in which the head element is not
derived from a verb (cf. synthetic compound). Dog bed, windmill,
blue-green, and stir-fry are root compounds.

S
SEMELFACTIVE: An aspectual distinction that expresses that an action
is done just once.
SEPARABLE PREFIX VERB: A kind of verb found in Dutch and German
which consists of two parts which frequently together have an
idiomatic meaning and which occur as one word in some syntactic
contexts but separated from each other in other syntactic contexts.
SIMPLE CLITIC: A clitic that appears in the same position as the
independent word of which it is a variant. In English, the contractions
’ll and ’d are simple clitics.
SIMPLEX: Consisting of one morpheme.
SIMULFIX: See internal stem change.
SPECIAL CLITIC: A clitic that is not a reduced form of an independent
word. The object pronouns in Romance languages are examples of
special clitics.
SPECIFIC LANGUAGE IMPAIRMENT (SLI): A genetic disorder in which
individuals display normal intelligence and have no hearing impairment
but are slow to produce and understand language, and display speech
characterized by the omission of various inflectional morphemes.
SPEECH ACT: Ways in which we can use words to perform actions, for
example, asking a question or giving a command.
STEM: The part of a word that is left when all inflectional endings are
removed.
311
STRATAL ORDERING HYPOTHESIS: The hypothesis that English
morphology is divided into levels, each of which is comprised of a set
of affixes and phonological rules. Strata are strictly ordered with
respect to each other such that the rules of an earlier stratum cannot
apply to the output of a later stratum.
STRONG VERB: In Germanic languages, verbs whose past tenses and
past participles are formed by internal stem change.
SUBJUNCTIVE: A mood/modality that is used to express counterfactual
situations or situations expressing desire.
SUBORDINATIVE COMPOUND: A compound in which one element
bears an argumental relation to the other. Compounds like truck driver
or dog attack in English are subordinative.
SUPPLETION: An instance in which one or more of the inflected forms
of a lexeme are built on a base that bears no relationship to the base of
other members of the paradigm.
SYNCRETISM: An instance in which two or more cells in a paradigm
are filled with the same form
SYNTHETIC COMPOUND: A compound in which the head is derived
from a verb and the non-head bears an argumental relationship to the
head. Examples of synthetic compounds in English are truck driver and
hand washing.

T
TEMPLATE: In a root and pattern system of morphology, a pattern of
consonants and vowels that is associated with some meaning.
TEMPLATIC MORPHOLOGY: A kind of morphological process in
which words are derived by means of arranging morphemes according
to meaningful patterns of consonants and vowels or templates. Also
called root and pattern morphology, simulfixation or transfixation.
TENSE: Inflectional morphology that gives information about the time
of an action.
THEME: The noun phrase in a sentence that gets moved by the action.
THEME VOWEL: In languages like Latin and the Romance languages,
the vowel that attaches to the root before inflectional and derivational
affixes are added.
TOKEN: In counting words in a text or corpus, each instance of a word
counts as a token of that word. This gives the raw number of words that
occur with a particular affix.
TRANSFIX: See templatic morphology.
312
TRANSITIVE: A valency in which a verb takes two arguments,
generally a subject and object.
TRANSPARENT PROCESS: A morphological process resulting in words
that can be easily segmented such that there is a one-to-one
correspondence between form and meaning.
TRANSPOSITIONAL AFFIXES: Affixes that change syntactic category
without adding meaning.
TRILITERAL ROOT: A root consisting of three consonants. These
typically occur in the templatic morphology of the Semitic languages.
TYPE: In counting words in a text or corpus, only the first instance of
each word is counted. This gives the number of types with a particular
affix.
TYPOLOGY: Linguistic subfield that attempts to classify languages
according to kinds of structures, and to find correlations between
structures and genetic or areal characteristics.

U
UMLAUT: Phonological process in which the vowel of the base is
fronted or raised under the influence of a high vowel in the following
syllable.
UNITARY BASE HYPOTHESIS: The theoretical hypothesis that affixes
will not select bases of more than one category.
USEFULNESS: The extent to which a morphological process produces
words that are needed by speakers.

V
VALENCY: The number of arguments selected by a verb.
VOICE: A category of inflection that allows different arguments to be
focused in sentences. In active voice sentences, the agent is typically
focused because it is the subject, and is passive sentences, the patient is
focused because it is the subject.
VOICING ASSIMILATION: A phonological process whereby segments
come to be voiced in the environment of voiced segments or voiceless
in the environment of voiceless segments.
VOWEL HARMONY: A phonological process whereby all the vowels of
a word come to agree in some phonological feature, for example in
backness or rounding.

313
W
WEAK VERB: In the Germanic languages, verbs that form their past
tenses and participles by suffixation.
WHOLE OBJECT PRINCIPLE: The principle that word learners will not
assume that a new word refers to a part of the object or its color or
shape if they do not already have a word for the object as a whole.
WORD: A linguistic unit made up of one or more morphemes that can
stand alone in a language.
WORD AND PARADIGM MODEL (WP): See realizational model.
WORD FORMS: Differently inflected forms that belong to the same
lexeme. For example, walks, walking, walk, and walked are all word
forms that belong to the same lexeme.

Z
ZERO AFFIXATION: An analysis of conversion in which a change of
part of speech or semantic category is effected by a phonologically null
affix.

314
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