Learn English Language: Lesson 16 - 20

Lesson 16: Personification of abstract ideas

Abstract nouns are frequently used as proper names by being personified; that is, the ideas are spoken of as residing in living beings. This is a poetic usage, though not confined to verse.

• Next Anger rushed; his eyes, on fire, In lightnings owned his secret stings.
• Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind.
• Death, his mask melting like a nightmare dream, smiled.

Lesson 17: A halfway class of words - Class nouns in use, abstract in meaning

They are not then pure abstract nouns, nor are they common class nouns. For example, examine this:

• The arts differ from the sciences in this, that their power is founded not merely on facts which can be communicated, but on dispositions which require to be created.

When it is said that art differs from science, that the power of art is founded on fact, that disposition is the thing to be created, the words italicized are pure abstract nouns; but in case an art or a science, or the arts and sciences, be spoken of, the abstract idea is partly lost. The words preceded by the article a, or made plural, are still names of abstract ideas, not material things; but they widen the application to separate kinds of art or different branches of science. They are neither class nouns nor pure abstract nouns: they are more properly called half abstract.

Test this in the following sentences:

• Let us, if we must have great actions, make our own so
• And still, as each repeated pleasure tired, Succeeding sports the mirthful band inspired.
• But ah! those pleasures, loves, and joys
• The Solitary can despise.
• All these, however, were mere terrors of the night.

Lesson 18: By ellipses, nouns used to modify

Nouns used as descriptive terms. Sometimes a noun is attached to another noun to add to its meaning, or describe it; for example, "a family quarrel," "a New York bank," "the State Bank Tax bill," "a morning walk."

It is evident that these approach very near to the function of adjectives. But it is better to consider them as nouns, for these reasons: they do not give up their identity as nouns; they do not express quality; they cannot be compared, as descriptive adjectives are.

They are more like the possessive noun, which belongs to another word, but is still a noun. They may be regarded as elliptical expressions, meaning a walk in the morning, a bank in New York, a bill as to tax on the banks, etc.

NOTE. If the descriptive word be a material noun, it may be regarded as changed to an adjective. The term "gold pen" conveys the same idea as "golden pen," which contains a pure adjective.

Lesson 19: The noun may borrow from any part of speech, or from any expression

Owing to the scarcity of distinctive forms, and to the consequent flexibility of English speech, words which are usually other parts of speech are often used as nouns; and various word groups may take the place of nouns by being used as nouns.

(1) Other parts of speech used as nouns:

• The great, the wealthy, fear thy blow.
• Every why hath a wherefore.
• When I was young? Ah, woeful When! Ah! for the change 'twixt Now and Then!

(2) Certain word groups used like single nouns:

• Too swift arrives as tardy as too slow.
• Then comes the "Why, sir!" and the "What then, sir?" and the "No, sir!" and the "You don't see your way through the question, sir!"

(3) Any part of speech may be considered merely as a word, without reference to its function in the sentence; also titles of books are treated as simple nouns.

• The it, at the beginning, is ambiguous, whether it mean the sun or the cold.
• In this definition, is the word "just," or "legal," finally to stand?
• There was also a book of Defoe's called an "Essay on Projects," and another of Dr. Mather's called "Essays to do Good."

Lesson 20

It is to be remembered, however, that the above cases are shiftings of the use, of words rather than of their meaning. We seldom find instances of complete conversion of one part of speech into another.

When, in a sentence above, the terms the great, the wealthy, are used, they are not names only: we have in mind the idea of persons and the quality of being great or wealthy. The words are used in the sentence where nouns are used, but have an adjectival meaning.

In the other sentences, why and wherefore, When, Now, and Then, are spoken of as if pure nouns; but still the reader considers this not a natural application of them as name words, but as a figure of speech.

NOTE. These remarks do not apply, of course, to such words as become pure nouns by use. There are many of these. The adjective good has no claim on the noun goods; so, too, in speaking of the principal of a school, or a state secret, or a faithful domestic, or a criminal, etc., the words are entirely independent of any adjective force.

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