E. Litvinova, K. Panova
DRAWING A DISTINCTION OF
ABSTRACT AND CONCRETE NOUNS
Keywords: abstract nouns, concrete
nouns, multitude nouns, article, homogeneous
group.
In linguistics there are a lot of disputable topics and abstract nouns belong
to one of them. Despite a great many studies, the topic is poorly understood so
the interest in this language sphere is quite obvious.
A number of Ukrainian scientists were devoted to revealing main
linguistic aspects, including such outstanding scholars as O. Potebnia,
V. Shadura, I. Kovalyk, P. Chepiga, L. Poluga, V. Nimchuk,
etc. Russian linguists of V. Veselitskiy, R. Tseitlin and I. Lekov
and others also found the topic interesting.
First of all, telling the difference between abstract
and concrete nouns is essential. Abstract nouns describe concepts, properties,
actions, qualities, states (e.g. truth,
running, wisdom). Unlike concrete nouns, abstract ones usually have no correlative
forms in number and are mostly used only in the singular (friendship, self-confidence),
or only in the plural (news) [4, 10].
Studying abstract nouns is impossible
without focusing on the article because the part of speech helps emphasize some essential language units. There are uncountable
nouns which have no plural form in English, therefore no indefinite article is
used, e.g. advice
(порада), behavior (поведінка), equipment (обладнання), furniture (меблі), hair
(волосся), health
(здоров'я), homework (домашнє завдання), information (інформація), knowledge (знання), luggage
(багаж). To express a unit value,
the following set expressions are used, e.g. a piece of, an item of, a word
of, an article of, a sum of and so on. There is an interesting phenomenon in the English language: a certain
group of nouns can be both countable and uncountable, though adding the article
changes the meanings. For example: business (справа,
заняття) - a business
(метушня); charm (чарівність) - a charm
(талісман); law (право) - a law (закон, судовий процес); glass (скло) - a glass
(стакан); iron (залізо) - an iron
(праска); coffee (кава) – a coffee
(одна чашка кави) [3, 45]. The main feature of the bookish style is using the indefinite article
with abstract nouns which have a descriptive attribute. In this case, authors emphasize
the particular variety or unusual manifestation of an abstract notion. Consider
the following sentences:
After a fairly long silence the Captain continued. - Після досить довгого мовчання капітан продовжив.
If an abstract noun has a restrictive
definition or is clarified by the situation, the definite article should be
used:
The silence that followed his speech lasted several
seconds. - Мовчання,
що послідувало за його промовою,
тривало декілька хвилин.
Сoncrete nouns are words that name objects, facts,
phenomena of reality, which can be presented separately as well as counted or measured (a city, a star, a house). They usually have both singular and plural forms (university – universities) [2,
93].
Many linguists consider nouns expressing abstract concepts to be
the largest group, though the
number is changing constantly
with adding new units. Because
of this the study and
typology of their features are updated regularly. Despite
the fact that the issue of
abstract nouns is repeatedly discussed in linguistics, and practical
grammar has a fairly detailed description of the features concerning abstract
nouns use, some issues are
still unexplored, including clarification
and further development
of certain nouns. It concerns,
above all, the problem of separating the abstract
and the concrete
[5, 250]. For modern semantic theories,
the problems of abstract and concrete vocabularies
are extremely important.
Besides, some
linguists
have different opinions about the adequacy of the criteria for identifying
abstract nouns. Thus the criteria should be developed.
Despite a wide variety of abstract noun classifications into
subgroups in linguistic literature, there are still many unresolved
issues. For example, the
issue of referring some words such as darkness, night, wealth, music to concrete nouns is considered a problem, especially grouping them,
e.g. features
(face as a whole), glasses, money, trousers, yellow, or the opposite – the so called nouns of
multitude such as applause, mankind,
humanity to abstract
nouns.
According to the definition of multitude nouns (hand-clappings – the
act of clapping; applause – loud praise; mankind,
humanity – human
beings generally), the first of the words should be reffered to the nouns
of action and the other two – to
ordinary (not abstract) collective
nouns. From the
grammatical point of view,
converted
abstract nouns are
typically presented as a homogeneous group of nouns which units,
unlike affixed nouns, have the feature of computability, which does not fully correspond to
reality [1, 147].
To sum up, the concept of abstraction is one of the most
controversial and difficult issues to understand. It begins
with defining the border of
the abstract and the concrete.
References
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