Follow-Up Work. 1. Comment on the abstract meaning of the nouns in bold type and their syntactic position:

1. Comment on the abstract meaning of the nouns in bold type and their syntactic position:

a) I was surprised how easily the routine of days together came back to us, how we fell into a pattern of fetching the newspaper, eating a late breakfast, walking, exploring, looking at pictures, at churches, at houses, at the faces of Venetians, at the boats gliding silently across the silky black water, at the sky, morning and evening, over the campanile. (S. Hill)

b) Every morning of her life, rain or shine, Violet Aird walked to the village to collect, from Mrs Ishak’s supermarket, two pints of milk, The Times, and any other small groceries and supplies needed for the sustenance of one elderly lady living on her own. (R. Pilcher)

c) ‘I can’t ‘elp that. I been at sea, man and boy, for more than thirty years, and when a chap dies on a British ship he must ‘ave a British funeral. (S. Maugham)

2. Comment on the generalized meaning of the nouns in bold type and the role of attributes:

a) He had great natural kindliness, but it was a kindliness of instinct, which betokened not interest in the recipient: he would come to the rescue if you were in a fix, but if there was no getting you out of it would not bother about you further. (W.S. Maugham)

b) Dr Sunders was an early riser. The dawn had but just broken when he went out on his veranda and called Ah Kay. The boy brought his breakfast, the little delicate bananas known as lady’s fingers, the inevitable fried eggs, toast, and tea. The doctor ate with good appetite. (W.S. Maugham)

c) We now sing “Soldiers of the Queen” with tremendous enthusiasm. I sing fortissimo to keep out the noise of the others; and this clears me of all suspicion of offensive gentility. (B. Shaw)

3. Comment on the contextual use of the nouns in bold type. Compare their generalized and individualized uses:

a) There was another pause. Then the voice, “Suppose it were certified to you that, in a certain situation, truth would make you extremely unhappy? Would you, then, still seek truth?”

“I would still seek it,” Pete answered.

Again a pause. Then: “Let me put it this way, Peter Kenny: You and your people are now living happily in your city, enjoying life as you have always enjoyed it. The internal truths of your city, your life, are as you have always known them. Can it make a difference if there is a change in external truth, even though this change has absolutely no effect on your daily life?”

“It can make a difference,” Pete answered.

“You need to know the truth?”

“Absolutely”. (M. Gunther)

b) Soul and body, body and soul - how mysterious they were! There was animalism in the soul, and the body had its moments of spirituality. The senses could refine, and the intellect could degrade. Who could say where the fleshly impulse ceased, or the psychical impulse began? How shallow were the arbitrary definitions of ordinary psychologists! And yet how difficult to decide between the claims of the various schools! Was the soul a shadow seated in the house of sin? Or was thebody really in the soul, as Giordano Bruno thought? The separation of spirit from matter was a mystery, and the union of spirit with matter was a mystery also. (O. Wilde)

§ 6. The structure “indefinite article + noun” and the process of classification

Classification (division, categorisation) as a mental process is findamental in all kinds of interaction with the environment, i.e.cognizance as it implies that ideas and objects are recognised and understood. It is the intermediate stage of a cognitive process, which is placed between abstraction and individualisation. A classified concept is narrower than its generalised counterpart and broader than its individualized counterpart. Formally, classification is represented by means of the nominal form with the indefinite article, a categorial form which together with the forms with the zero and the definite article constitutes the conceptual category of abstraction/specification.

When it comes to nouns denoting classified concepts (objects and ideas), they are traditionally referred to as counts, thus being distinguished from uncounts. However, on closer examination this division may be less rigorous, as the very idea of countability may be viewed differently. Strictly speaking, countable nouns are those which can be used both in the singular (with a or an) and in the plural. Yet, there can be found quite a number of abstract nouns, such as love, interest, indulgence, knowledge, relief, etc., which are unlikely to occur in the plural, though they are regularly found in with the indefinite article. For example:

He has a wide knowledge of painting and music.

The holiday was an extravagant indulgence.

Do your parents take an interest in your friends?

The calm of the countryside came as a welcome relief from the hustle and bustle of city life.

As has already been mentioned, classification may take various forms, such as singularity, comparison and variety, all of them being represented by means of the indefinite article. What is common to all the 3 is that they show that a concept is unfamiliar to the addressee and may be further individualised (by the definite article). This means that the addressee does not know which person or thing is being spoken about. Besides, the speaker may not refer to a particular person or thing. In other words, the listener/reader recognises, i.e. classifies or categorises concepts that have been mentioned but does not particularise or individualise them.

The form classification takes most frequently is singularity (единичность). This mental operation consists in a reference to a concept as a single representative of a class it belongs to. [18] For example:

At a little after seven Judy Jones came downstairs. She wore a blue silk afternoon dress, and he was disappointed at first that she had not put on something more elaborate. This feeling was accentuated when, after a briefgreeting, she went to the door of a butler’s pantry and pushing it open called: ‘You can serve dinner, Martha.’ He had rather expected that a butler would announce dinner, that there would be a cocktail. Then he put these thoughts behind him as they sat down side by side on a lounge and looked at each other. (S.F. Fitzgerald)

This is a story of how a Baggins had an adventure, and found himself doing and saying things altogether unexpected. (J.R.R.Tolkien)

Since singularity as a form of classification correlates with multiplicity, both the indefinite article and the plural ending –(e)s are the grammatical means of expressing number distinctions in English. (See § 5)

Very often singularity is complemented by comparison (сравнение), another mental operation which involves a reference to a concept as a single representative of a class but in comparison or juxtaposition to another representative of the same class. In other words, comparison makes sense only within a class, between or among similar ideas or objects.

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, not yet a dry bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort. (J.R.R. Tolkien)

In this example comparison is explicit (or direct), because various types of a hole are referred to and discussed in detail. Consider another example of explicit comparison:

She walked to the window. It held, foolish as the idea was, something of her own in it, this country sky, this sky above Westminster. She parted the curtains; she looked. Oh, but how surprising! – in the room opposite the old lady stared straight at her. She was going to bed. And the sky. It will be a solemn sky, she had thought, it will be a dusky sky, turning away its cheek in beauty. But there it was – ashen pale, raced over quickly by teapeting vast clouds. It was new to her. (V. Woolf)

Here the heroine (Mrs Dalloway) is astonished to observe an unexpected change in the sky which now looked so different, compared with her everyday experiences.

Comparison may also be implicit (or indirect), if only one referent of the two (or more) is mentioned in a text:

Jenny was seven when Carl was born. I didn’t give Carl away. Carl was an easy, happy, loving baby. I didn’t feel the same fierce protectiveness for him that I had towards Jenny, my fatherless child. (F. Weldon)

It was a great landlocked harbour, big enough to hold a fleet of battleships; and all around it rose, high and steep, the green hills. (W.S. Maugham)

Suddenly he was not on the bridge any more. He was standing on a vast desert of starkwhite, under a violet sky. Two suns were in the sky: a small, fiercely bright one and a larger, dimmer orange one. The white desert stretched, lonely and level, to the horison. (M. Gunther)

In the first example it is implied that there exist babies who may be never happy or satisfied, while the second one suggests that harbours may vary in size and function. Compare:

Martin was a difficult baby.

The town has a small natural harbour.

The third example shows both types of comparison. It is taken from a science fiction story and describes the character’s experiences on an unknown planet. It seems natural that he should implicitly compare its sky, suns and landscape to those of the Earth. Besides, the suns are compared to each other.

As follows from the above illustrative material, comparison is normally supported by descriptive attributes. It should be noted that with nouns like knowledge, indulgence, etc. it is obligatory.

Variety (многообразие) is another form of classification revealed in a reference to the whole class a concept belongs to. In most cases the indefinite article may be replaced by the pronoun any:

“He is just what a young man ought to be,’ said she (Jane Bennett), “sensible, good-humoured, lively: and I never saw such happy manners! – so much ease, with such perfect god breeding!” (J. Austen)

He had made an admittedly remarkable showing for a young engineer – stumbled into two unusual opportunities, one in Peru, whence he had returned and another consequent upon it, in New York, whither he was bound. (F.S. Fitzgerald).

And because you cannot know persons of a nation foreign to you except from observation, it is difficult to give them credibility in the pages of a book. (W.S. Maugham)

That was fifteen years ago, Miss Jacobs. Holly is fifteen, and that’s old for a cat, isn’t it? Don’t you multiply their years by seven for the human equivalent? (F. Weldon)

Variety as a form of classification can be observed in definitions (of concepts), which refer to any representative of a class:

An ermine is a small thin animal of the weasel family whose fur is white in winter.

A stoat is a small wild animal with brown fur which turns white in winter.

Sometimes, like singularity, variety may be supported by comparison:

Do you know what difference there is between a stoat and an ermine?