2020-10-11
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WHAT ARE CLASS NOUNS?
Class nouns are common countable nouns. They denote a kind, a type, a class of a thing they name. When the speakers use a class noun (e.g. the noun ‘pen’), they may refer to the whole class of objects or to the specific object they see, remember or look for.
e.g. “I need a pen” – one of the representatives of a given class.
“I need the pen. Give it back, please” – the specific pen you are holding in your hand.
Nouns of this group can be concrete or abstract: the word ‘a cat’ and the word ‘an idea’ follow the same rules of article use. Collective nouns are also included in this group (e.g., the words ‘family’, ‘audience’, ‘government’, ‘team’, ‘jury’, etc.)
COMMON RULES
THE DEFINITE ARTICLE is used with class nouns:
1. When the noun denotes a thing or things singled out from all the things of a given class. This can take place in the three cases:
a) both the speaker and the listener know what object is meant.
e.g. How did you like the play? Did you understand the plot? What’s the name of the cat?
b) the speaker uses a limiting attribute to single out an object from all the objects of the class. It is usually expressed by an ‘of-phrase’ or an attributive clause in post position.
e.g. This is the house that Jack built. Do you know where the house of his mother is?
c) the situation itself makes the object definite.
e.g. The wedding was strange: the bride was too old, and the bridegroom too young.
We rode through the forest. The horses were unquiet – they smelled wolves.
2. When the noun denotes a thing unique, and the listener has no chance to misinterpret which object the speaker refers to because there is only one thing like that in the world.
e.g. the sun, the moon, the sky, the universe, the atmosphere, the world, the earth, the ground.
3. When the noun is used in the generic sense and denotes a thing as a type, a genre, a whole. The generic sense is often used in statements about history which are not necessarily true for all the modern things of this class.
e.g. The telephone was invented in the 19th century.
The tragedy and the comedy first appeared in Ancient Greece.
The cat was domesticated in the Neolithic period.
Note: do not mix up the generic and the general sense. A noun in the general sense denotes an individual representative of a class; it means that any object like this has the same features.
e.g. A detective story helps to while away the time. Conan Doyle is a master of the detective story.
4. When the noun is modified by an adjective in the superlative degree or an ordinal numeral.
e.g. She is the best pupil in the class. Everest is the highest mountain in the world. Let’s enter the second room. In fairy tales, the third attempt is often lucky.
5. When the noun in the plural is preceded by ‘some of’, ‘many of’, ‘none of’, ‘most of’, ‘all of’, ‘one of’, ‘several of’ and denotes a limited group of things.
e.g. Many of the students were present. Some of the pages were missing. None of the reporters will ask this question. Most of the people on the platform were crying. One of the versions of this myth claims that the character refused to take the gold.
Note: do not mix up this case with the case when the noun in the plural represents an unlimited group of things, and there is no preposition ‘of’.
e.g. Most people in the world live in cities. Some trees bloom in early March. Many incurable diseases can be easily prevented. All people are created equal.
6. With nouns modified by the pronoun ‘same’ or a limiting adjective such as ‘wrong’, ‘right’, ‘very’, ‘only’, ‘main’, ‘central’, ‘following’, ‘principal’, ‘previous’, ‘present’, ‘current’, ‘former’, ‘latter’, etc.
e.g. Sorry, this is the wrong number. Which is the right way to Exeter? You are the very man I want to talk to. In the previous episode Doctor House is taken to prison. The principal office of the bank is in Hong Kong.
Two young graduates, John and Clive, founded the reading club together. The former man wrote The Lord of the Rings. The latter man answered the challenge with The Chronicles of Narnia.
7. With substantivized adjectives and participles.
e.g. Fortune favours the brave. It used to be a dirty district where the poor lived. The happy don’t keep track of time. The industrious don’t take coffee breaks.
THE INDEFINITE ARTICLE is used with class nouns in the singular:
1. When the speaker presents a thing expressed by a noun as belonging to a certain class. The speaker specifies the type of the thing but does not care which exact thing it is.
e.g. I see a table, a chair, and a shelf in the room. A boy was walking in the street.
In the plural, we use ‘some’ or the zero article: I see some tables. Boys are walking in the street.
2. When the noun has the function of a predicative in the sentence.
e.g. My grandfather was a sea captain. He was a strong man. He was not a coward.
In the plural, the zero article is used: Our grandfathers were sea captains. They were strong men. They were not cowards.
3. When the noun is used in a general sense and the article has a meaning of ‘every’.
e.g. A cat is a domestic animal. A developed nation welcomes immigrants. A telephone number is a sequence of digits assigned to a telephone subscriber.
In the plural, the zero article is used: Cats are domestic animals.
4. In two cases the indefinite article has preserved its old meaning of ‘one’:
a) with nouns denoting time, measure, weight.
e.g. A week or two passed. Just a minute! A gallon of fuel is $3.49 at this gas station.
b) with the numerals ‘hundred’, ‘thousand’, ‘million’, ‘billion’, etc. and the noun ‘dozen’.
e.g. A hundred or so men were sitting round the fire. He bought a dozen ties. We have a thousand questions. This cute video has reached a billion views.
5. When a class noun is modified by a descriptive attribute. A descriptive attribute gives some additional information about a thing, but does not single it out as a definite one.
e.g. I saw a tall good-looking man. A pearl-white moon smiles through the green trees.
In the plural, the zero article is used: Cats are domestic animals.
THE ZERO ARTICLE is used with class nouns in the plural instead of the indefinite article.
EXERCISE 1. Find all the class nouns in the passage.
Seventeen years ago, a string of unfortunate events led to my being banned from a hotel in British Columbia. I would like to explain the incident.
In 2001, I had recently joined my current employer and I was also in the Canadian Naval Reserve. My employer was hosting a customer conference at the Empress hotel and it was my first event with the company.
I told my navy buddies that I was coming, and I was asked to bring “Brother’s Pepperoni” from Halifax. It is a local delicacy. Because this was the navy we were talking about, I brought enough for a ship. In a hurry, I had filled a suitcase with pepperoni for my friends. Some of it was wrapped in plastic, some in brown paper. I took whatever Brothers would sell me.
This was the bag that the airline misplaced.
The bag reappeared the next day. I knew that the pepperoni would still be “good”. It had only been at room temperature for a short time. It would, however, be quite some time before I could turn it over to my friends. Just to be safe, I decided that I should keep it cool.
My room was a nice, big, front-facing room on the fourth floor. It did not have a refrigerator. It was April, the air was chilly. An easy way to keep all this food cool would be just to keep it next to an open window. I lifted one of the sashes and spread the packages of pepperoni out on the table and window sill. Then, I went for a walk for about 4 or 5 hours.
When I had covered enough ground, I returned to the hotel. I remember walking down the long hall and opening the door to my room to find an entire flock of seagulls in my room. I didn’t have time to count, but there must have been about forty of them and they had been in my room, eating pepperoni, for a long time.
[continued in exercise 9]
