collective nouns
The term collective noun refers to a singular noun
that has a plural implication (e.g. government)
and is used when the whole body (and not the constituent members) is being
considered. The category collective nouns
is not discrete, and it can be argued that some usages are midway between
collective and mass nouns. For
example, team is clearly a collective
noun and butter is clearly a mass
noun but it is not so easy to decide the status of such nouns as:
hair linen
royalty
As a rule, we can classify
nouns with animate members as collective
(committee, family, flock) and those with inanimate or indistinguishable
parts as mass nouns (timber, straw, water).
A collective noun takes a singular verb and is replaced by a singular pronoun
in formal and written English:
The jury is considering its verdict. It has been
out for two hours.
In informal
styles, there is a tendency to use a plural verb form:
The jury are considering the verdict.
but, although
this is acceptable in the spoken medium, there should be consistency of
reference. To mix singular and plural usage as in:
The jury
reached its verdict although they disagreed on a number of points.
would be regarded as an error of style and
syntax.
There is a risk of a shift in number when a plural modifier comes
between the collective noun and the verb:
The team was cheerful.
The team of
footballers was/were cheerful.
In colloquial
styles, words such as family, government,
team are often used with plural verbs, but this usage should be avoided in
writing.
Nouns of assembly may be regarded as a sub-category of collective nouns. Many of these,
such as a flock of sheep or a school of whales, are well known but
others are much rarer and are known only to collectors. Among these are:
an exaltation of larks a kindle of kittens a leap of
leopards
Geese on the
ground are a gaggle but in the air a skein. For practical purposes, the
ordinary speaker needs relatively few nouns of assembly, several of which seem
the result of lighthearted creativity rather than observation:
a charm of goldfinches
a watch of
nightingales a wisp of snipe
See: countable
and uncountable, every, mass nouns.
collocation
Collocation, from Latin collocare meaning ‘to place together’,
refers to the fact that words often occur together and that their meanings are
in part conditioned by habitual co- occurrences. For example, the word perch can appear with such words as fins, scales, swim, water. In such
contexts it is likely to mean fish.
If, however, perch co-occurs with alight, bird, branch or cage it is likely to be either a verb
related to ‘sit’ or a noun meaning ‘a place on which to sit’.
Some collocations are more predictable than others. If we say hale and…, the expected word is hearty. (Poets have often deliberately
frustrated a reader’s expections by avoiding the normal collocations and
producing such phrases as once below a time.) Others are less predictable, but a word such as dog is likely to occur with such items
as bark or bone.
Function words such as the or could are relatively free of collocational restrictions.
Semantically full words such as knife or
trot are less free. Clichés (at the eleventh hour) and idioms (bark up the wrong tree) are fixed
collocations, allowing little or no modification.
Occasionally, collocation is
contrasted with colligation, from
Latin colligare meaning ‘tie
together’. Colligations are sets of
words which function in the same way. Thus, verbs such as APPEAR, CHOOSE and
HAVE are said to colligate because they may all be followed by the
to-infinitive:
He appears to have gone. She chose to go on last.
We have to bear that in
mind.
See: cliché,
context, idiom, idioms, vocabulary.
colloquial English
Colloquial derives from Latin colloquor meaning ‘to converse’. Its
primary meaning thus relates to the spoken medium, so that a colloquialism is
characteristic of or used in conversation. Martin Joos divided English styles
into five main substyles:
Frozen
Formal Consultative Casual
Intimate
and colloquial English is most likely to be
found in the two last categories. It implies ‘informal’, bears the additional
feature of ‘conversational’ but is in no way inferior to ‘formal’.
Colloquial is a more general
term than slang. Whereas slang
relates usually to nonstandard forms, a colloquialism may be standard or
nonstandard. For example, the term hobo is
a colloquial variant of the more formal vagrant,
but both are standard. In contrast, the terms deadbeat and shooler (wanderer)
are less widely known and the second, in particular, could be described as
nonstandard.
Colloquial
English is marked by spontaneity; simple vocabulary; reduced forms (aren’t rather than are not); fillers (you see); and the use of words and
phrases that are acceptable in speech but less so in writing (a buck [dollar], between a rock and a hard place).
Although colloquial is
etymologically related to speech, colloquial English is often found in friendly
letters, in certain sections of
newspapers and in novels and plays where it is meant to create an impression of
realistic speech.
See: formal English, nonstandard English,
slang, speech and writing, speech in literature.
comparison and contrast
Comparison and contrast are procedures for determining the similarities and
differences between two or more people, ideas, objects or things. Comparison
focuses on likeness, as in Shakespeare’s sonnet 18:
Shall I
compare thee to a summer’s day?
Many popular
sayings are comparisons:
as bold as brass
as light on
her foot as a cat at milking too sweet to be wholesome
as are similes:
O, my luve is like a red red
rose
Robert Burns
and metaphors:
And what is love? It is a doll dressed up For idleness to cosset, nurse
and dandle.
John Keats
Contrast explores differences and
is frequently employed in logical and/or persuasive writing in order to
establish distinctions:
No man can serve two masters for either he will love the one and hate
the other, or he will serve the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God
and Mammon.
Luke
17:13
There is, however, some overlap between the words compare and contrast in that
compare to stresses similarity and compare with, like contrast, stresses difference.
comparison of adjectives and adverbs
When adjectives
and adverbs are used in a
non-comparative way as in:
That is a big car.
He drives carefully.
they are referred to as positive or in the positive degree. Adjectives and adverbs can also
occur in what is known as a comparative
form or in the comparative degree:
That is a bigger car than my last one.
He drives more/less carefully than he used to.
The superlative
degree involves a comparison of more than two:
That is the biggest car I’ve
ever had. He drives most carefully at
night.
When only two items are involved
in a comparison, the comparative form of the adjective must be selected:
the taller of
the two
John is the older (of the
two).
Monosyllabic and frequently-used
disyllabic adjectives and adjectives used as adverbs form their comparative and
superlative by adding -er and -est to the stem:
Positive Comparative
Superlative
quick quicker quickest
lovely lovelier loveliest
Less common disyllabic and
polysyllabic adjectives use more/most and
less/least:
Positive Comparative Superlative beautiful more/less beautiful most/least beautiful ridiculous more/less ridiculous most/least ridiculous
Adverbs
ending in -ly also take ‘more/most’ and ‘less/least’:
Positive Comparative Superlative
valiantly More/less valiantly most/least valiantly
Two adjectives, far and old, have two comparatives and superlatives:
Positive
Comparative Superlative far farther/further farthest/furthest old older/elder oldest/eldest
For most purposes further/furthest and older/oldest
should be selected.
A number of
adjectives and adverbs are irregular, and these are among the most frequently
used in the language:
Positive Comparative Superlative
|
bad/badly |
worse |
worst |
|
good/well |
better |
best |
|
Ill |
worse |
worst |
|
Little |
less |
least |
|
Much |
more |
most |
See: adjective,
adverb, degree.
competence and performance
This
distinction was introduced into linguistics
by Noam Chomsky. Competence is
defined as ‘the ideal speaker-hearer’s knowledge of his language’ and performance as the ‘actual use of
language in concrete situations’. Competence is, as it were, the complete and
perfect store-house of linguistic knowledge that allows a speaker to:
1 produce
and understand an infinite number of well-formed sentences
2
recognise errors and classify the degree of
error involved, whether a slip, an understandable extension or a usage which breaks
grammatical rules:
Sheats and Kelley (Keats and Shelley—slip)
I’ll Bubu you. (an extension, a shift from
noun to verb)
I knowed it. (breaking the rules)
3 recognise
similarity of meaning under dissimilarity of
form:
Jane followed Tarzan.
Tarzan was
followed by Jane.
and differences of meaning under
similarity of form:
I advised him what to say. I asked him what to say.
4
recognise the possibility of one structure
having several meanings:
Go to work on
an egg. (three
meanings at least)
Performance
draws on competence, but whereas competence is perfect, performance can be
faulty. It can involve hesitations, false starts, slips of the tongue,
unnecessary repetitions, inattention and carelessness. Linguists try to
describe competence by idealising performance, that is, by dredging away from
actual language all performance accidents such as slips of the tongue.
The distinction between competence and performance is a useful one and
one which all language users instinctively recognise. We have all, for example,
corrected our own usage or been aware that our fluency was impaired because of
illness or tiredness. We can only hypothesise about competence, however, by
idealising performance.
The notion of communicative
competence is a development of Chomsky’s work. Research in this area
derives from the fact that a native speaker not only has intuitions about
language but about the variety of language most suitable at a particular time
or place or in specific social contexts.
See: langue and parole, speech and writing.
complement
In its most
general application, the term complement refers
to anything that completes the predicate.
It therefore comprehends everything which follows the verb and which is necessary
to complete the state or action specified by the verb. According to this view,
all the items in bold in the following sentences are complements:
Maud rang the doctor. Maud
is a doctor.
Maud went into
the garden.
Most linguists
give complement a more restricted
meaning, applying it to words or phrases which follow a copula:
John is a doctor.
(noun
phrase complement)
John appeared foolish.
(adjective
complement)
John was out. (adverb complement)
John seemed in a hurry. (preposition phrase
complement)
All these complements provide
information on the subject and are called subject
complements. In such sentences as:
They elected John President. She called John an idiot.
the items in bold provide extra
information on the object and are called object
complements.
See: BE, copula,
predicate, verb phrase.
compound
A compound is a lexical item
formed by the process of: base+base+(base):
bookcase (book+case)
notwithstanding (not+with+standing)
instead of the usual:
base+affix(es):
homely (home+-ly)
Compounding is a highly productive type of word formation.
1 The strongest stress
normally falls on the first element of a twoword compound:
'blackbird (contrast: black 'bird)
'Whitehouse (contrast: white 'house)
but it may occur on a different
syllable in polysyllabic words:
photo'phobia
2 Compounds may be single words:
clergyman
hyphenated
words:
self-taught
pairs of words:
bee keeper
or hyphenated phrases:
a down-and-out
an
up-and-coming star
These forms represent a
continuum between the word and the phrase, many being in the process of change.
Thus we find both:
book-maker and bookmaker lion-tamer and liontamer
with UK users favouring more
hyphenation than US speakers.
3 One group of compounds uses morphemes
borrowed from Greek. Though usually full words in Greek, they may be bound
morphemes in English. This type of compounding is a frequent source of new
names for scientific and technological inventions and discoveries:
astronaut
biorhythm thermonuclear
4 Several
modern compounds are formed from a letter+a word:
T-square
S-bend U-turn X-ray
See: affix, coinage, derivation. rankshifting, word formation.
comprise,
consist, constitute
These words
are sometimes confused.
Comprise means ‘include’ or ‘contain’
and is often found in descriptions of houses which are for sale:
Desirable
residence in sought-after neighbourhood comprising
four downstairs reception rooms…
Consist may be used in two ways, depending on the
preposition which follows. Consist in
means ‘exist in’ and it is often used of abstractions, especially
religious abstractions:
Charity consists in loving your neighbour.
Consist of is the more usual collocation and means ‘be made up of’:
The hip consists of a ball and socket joint.
Constitute means ‘form a whole, make
up’:
What do you think constitutes their greatest threat?
