Collective Nouns Research Articles

On old Irish collective and abstract nouns, the meaning of <em>cétmuinter</em>, and marriage in early mediaeval Ireland

This paper consists of two parts. The first concerns the use of words such as cerd to denote both an abstract concept (‘craft’) and a person who embodies it (‘craftsman’), and of words such as fine to denote both a collective (‘kin’) and an individual member of the collective (‘kinsman’). The second part consists of an examination of the meaning of cétmuinter, as well as an account of the origin and persistence of the mistranslation ‘chief wife’, which implicitly underpins the notion of polygamy in Early Christian Ireland.

Fourteen tests for Breton collectives, an inquiry into number and numerosity

We report on an inquiry into the mapping between the syntax and semantics of number in so-called collective nouns in Breton. First, the collective system of Breton is described. Next, we lay out the theory of numerosity (semantic) and number (syntactic) in terms of which we formulate particular diagnostics. We compare collectives to better or worse understood classes of nouns in the numerosity-number system, including group, count, and different varieties of mass nouns, focusing on those with anomalous number behavior recalling those of collectives. Each diagnostic is accompanied by the results of a pilot study. We review the methodological, comparative, and theoretical results we have and their current limits.1

L’accord sujet-verbe en français contemporain

This article presents an analysis of synchronic variation and diachronic change in verbal agreement with the French noun foule. This noun, like many collective nouns in French and other languages, can show variation between singular and plural verbal agreement (la foule des habitants exulteSING de joie dans les rues vs. une foule de gens pressés s’attardentPLU). A novel combination of data, including data from sociolinguistic interviews, a gap-fill exercise, and a corpus of written French, is used to investigate this variation and change, to elucidate some of the factors that play a role in this type of agreement, and to examine the differences between this form used with the definite and indefinite determiner (la foule vs. une foule). Some theoretical issues concerning the definition of collective nouns are also addressed.

Readings of LÚ in Old Babylonian Letters

In OB letters, the LU sign has three readings: 1) LU renders the noun aw?lum ‘man human being;’ 2) LU is the determinative preceding terms for male human beings; 3) LU corresponds to the headless sa in references to human beings. This paper proposes the ways to ascertain the correct reading of LU in a given context. First, we have established that in letters from Upper Mesopotamia (Mari etc.) the freely standing LU = aw?lum greatly outnumbers syllabic spellings of aw?lum, while in letters from Southern and Central Mesopotamia syllabic spellings are by far more frequent. This fact may be relevant for the description and history of the written Old Babylonian. Second, LU preceding terms for persons or groups of persons either reperesents aw?lum as an antecedent in appositive constructions or is the determinative. This study shows that LU should be understood as the determinative in the context of occupational and social category terms, as well as in that of collective nouns. LU as the determinative is more widely used in Upper Mesopotamia than in Southern and Central Mesopotamia. LU = aw?lum is plausible when LU precedes personal names and kinship terms. This usage is a hallmark of Upper Mesopotamian letters. Yet these results do not allow us to predict the interpretation of the LU sign in every case. Third, the LU sign appears in the context of occupational terms which etymologically are noun phrases headed by the erstwhile demonstrative pronoun sa (e.g., LU.BAN = sa q?stim ‘archer’). Moreover, we show that LU preceding place names can also be interpreted as sa, e.g. LU ter-qa KI = sa Terqa ‘(that) of Terqa’, i.e. ‘a man related to Terqa’ in one way or another.

AN ANALYSIS ON STUDENTS’ ERRORS IN DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN COLLECTIVE NOUN AND PLURAL NOUN

This research was conducted to find out the students errors in distinguishing between collective and plural noun and the factors made the students errors in distinguishing between collective noun and plural noun. In collecting required data, the researcher used interview and test. The subject of this research was the students at class VII2 SMPN 1 Nisam which consisted of 29 students. The result of this research shown that the students errors were divided into three categories, namely, errors of omission, errors of addition and errors of misuse. Based on the result of test, it was found out that there were 10,7% of students made errors of omission, 67,4% errors of misuse and 21,9 % errors of addition. The result of interview shown that students made many errors caused by two factors; they are external and internal factor. External factor come from the method of teaching, because how well the students understand the material depends on the method of teaching that used by the teacher. Internal factor was the students themselves, they did not pay attention to their study, some of them were afraid and shy to ask the teacher if they do not understand the material. Some of them were did not do repetition of their lesson or lazy to study.

영어의 집합명사의 구분에 관한 연구

영어의 집합명사의 구분에 관한 연구

Variation and Change in French Morphosyntax: The Case of Collective Nouns

Dans ce livre, Anna Tristram étudie l'accord verbal avec quelques noms collectifs du français. Son objectif est triple: explorer la variation en ce domaine, les facteurs impliqués, et tester l'hypothèse qu'un changement est en cours. Il s'agit aussi de mettre à l'épreuve une méthodologie combinant démarche sociolinguistique et corpus. L'ouvrage est composé de sept chapitres, suivis de quatre annexes présentant une partie du matériel d'expérimentation, et de deux index. Dans le premier chapitre Tristram expose le contexte de son étude, soulignant la rareté des études de variation morpho-syntaxique pour le français parlé en France. Le chapitre 2 est dédié à des questions théoriques. Après une définition de l'accord, l'auteure propose de définir les ‘Noms de type collectif’ comme morphologiquement singuliers mais référant à une entité faite de deux unités ou plus, et affichant possiblement une variation au niveau de l'accord verbal. Elle présente ensuite les facteurs susceptibles d'influer (syntaxiques: présence d'un complément du nom, distance linéaire ou syntaxique, hiérarchie d'accord; et sémantiques: caractère animé et conceptualisation). Le chapitre 3 expose la méthodologie qui croise, pour sa dimension sociolinguistique, interviews guidées et énoncés à trous (portant sur ‘foule’, ‘majorité’, ‘minorité’, ‘la moitié’, ‘partie’, ‘reste’), en relation avec les variables externes ‘âge’, ‘genre’ et ‘niveau d'études’, tout en s'appuyant sur un corpus de 50 millions de mots (milieu dix-septième siècle jusqu'au vingtième siècle). Les résultats des interviews guidées et des énoncés à trous mettent au jour, dans le chapitre 4, la présence d'une variation singulier/pluriel en français contemporain. Mais alors que les énoncés à trous font apparaître une préférence pour le singulier, c'est l'inverse dans les interviews, caractérisées par leur caractère moins formel. Il ressort en outre que les jeunes et les femmes utilisent davantage le pluriel, signe possible d'un changement en cours. La prise en compte individuelle des expressions montre cependant des divergences notables. Dans le chapitre 5, l'étude sur corpus se concentre sur les noms ‘majorité’, ‘minorité’, ‘foule’ et ‘partie’. La tendance générale (hausse du pluriel à la fin du dix-septième puis baisse à la fin du dix-huitième) est pareillement tempérée par la considération des diverses expressions. Il reste que, dans tous les cas, la présence d'un complément du nom, en particulier au pluriel, semble largement favoriser l'accord au pluriel, de même que la distance. Le chapitre 6 explore le rôle du niveau d'éducation sur le choix de l'accord. Il apparaît que, plus un sujet est éduqué, plus il tend à utiliser le singulier. Ce ne sont cependant pas les grammaires scolaires qui semblent influer, mais le souci de respecter un standard (sujet singulier = verbe singulier), au moins à l'écrit. En conclusion, l'auteure revient sur l'hypothèse d'une hausse des accords au pluriel, en soulignant le caractère complexe du mouvement, variable selon les expressions. Ainsi, si tous les noms présentent une variation, celle-ci n'est pas toujours associée à un changement. En outre, l'étude a montré que les généralisations sociolinguistiques développées à partir de données anglaises (souvent phonologiques) peuvent être appliquées à la variation morpho-syntaxique en français. Cet ouvrage constitue un apport majeur dans le champ de la linguistique variationniste et diachronique, tant par les résultats mis au jour que par la qualité de sa démarche méthodologique.

Posebna tvorba kolektivnih samostalnikov na -ajne v cerkljanskem narečju

V cerkljanskem narečju je mogoče prepoznati v slovenskem narečnem prostoru še neevidentiran vzorec za tvorbo kolektivnih samostalnikov na -anje = cerkljansko -ajne.

One Family by George Shannon (review)

Reviewed by: One Family by George Shannon Deborah Stevenson, Editor Shannon, George One Family; illus. by Blanca Gómez. Foster/Farrar, 2015 26p ISBN 978-0-374-30003-6 $17.99 R 4-6 yrs An author gifted at making the familiar fresh (as in White Is for Blueberry, BCCB 5/05), Shannon here turns his hand to the classic counting book, with a clever and stealthily simple text that plays collective nouns against countable individual nouns. The concept of one seems familiar enough, but the trickiness becomes apparent with two: “One is two./ One pair of shoes. One team of horses./ One family.” The book works its way up to ten, identifying as it goes a multitude of thought-provoking collectives (“One bunch of bananas”; “One flock of birds”; “One flight of stairs”) and ending each small verse with “One family”; a closing (“One earth. [End Page 564] One world./ One family”) takes the collective larger and makes it a warmhearted statement. The text is focused and precise, and the examples are often friendly (“One pile of pups”) and sometimes rhyming (“One house of bears. One bowl of pears”), making for a cozy readaloud that trips agreeably off the tongue. The round-headed Fisher-Price style of Gomez’s figures and the slightly shaded retro tones of teal, rust, forest green, and peach give the digital art a gently old-fashioned flavor, but the thoroughly multicultural cast is highly contemporary. There’s an entertaining seek-and-find element to the cited objects, perfect for sharp young eyes, and a closing spread identifies all the countable objects spread by spread. Complicate your counting curricula in the nicest possible way with this. Copyright © 2015 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Anna Tristram, Variation and Change in French Morphosyntax: The Case of Collective Nouns. (Research Monographs in French Studies, 40.) Oxford: Legenda, 2014, x + 178 pp. 978 1 907975 95 0 (hardback)

Anna Tristram, Variation and Change in French Morphosyntax: The Case of Collective Nouns. (Research Monographs in French Studies, 40.) Oxford: Legenda, 2014, x + 178 pp. 978 1 907975 95 0 (hardback)

An Ambush of Tigers: A Wild Gathering of Collective Nouns by Betsy R. Rosenthal (review)

An Ambush of Tigers: A Wild Gathering of Collective Nouns by Betsy R. Rosenthal (review)

An Appetite for Rhetoric

The impetus for writing this essay is dreadful despite being ordinary (all the more dreadful because its ordinary). Today, just like yesterday or tomorrow, hundreds of millions of people will not eat or eat so little that it seems as nothing to those who always have food in easy reach. I am no moralist, this is no sermon, yet the emptiness of rhetorical theory regarding hunger has begun to gnaw at me, especially since philosophical concern for the body and for materiality in rhetoric studies has only intensified in recent years. Hunger might draw the attention of rhetorical critique when public action is taken to feed the poor or when gazing on their suffering exposes capital’s cruelty. In the philosophy of rhetoric, however, hunger is something of a void, so I think it is important to note, amid omnipresent food insecurity, the unmarked satiety of the rhetor’s body, which is typically assumed to be a well-fed body or at least not a starving one. It is not a simple case of oversight; hunger is separated from rhetoric as a condition of understanding both and recognizing that we might begin to reckon the significance of assuming instead that rhetoric’s materiality, and hence its potential, is not detachable from food so far as human bodies are concerned. “Experience teaches us with abundant examples,” Spinoza remarks, “that nothing is less within men’s power than to hold their tongues or co ntrol their appetites” (1992, 106). Speech is effectively a species of appetite f or Spinoza. The “or” he inserts between tongues and appetites is botherso me, though, and it is exactly this analogic separation that I want to trouble: it is wrong to borrow from the master figure of appetite, hunger, to explain rhetoric’s persistence while granting rhetoricity independence from nour ishment. Rhetoric (understood as a collective noun) is per manently famished, but its human agents never seem to know the want of food. But maybe they could know that want, or maybe they have, and that is what I wish to discuss. My only point, ultimately, is that an appetite for

Hospitality and hospitableness

Not long after the word hospitality emerged as a collective noun to describe the commercial provision of services associated with accommodation, drinking and eating, some academics began to investigate the meanings of hospitality and hospitableness. Whilst most academic programme provision related to developing those who would subsequently manage the delivery of commercial hospitality services, the study of hospitality from an array of social science perspectives has yielded some interesting insights. This paper explores some perspectives to be gained from a variety of religions, particularly the universal need to welcome and protect the stranger. It goes on to show that genuine hospitality is offered without any concern for repayment or reciprocity. It then describes the development of a research instrument that can be used to identify those individuals who are driven by a personal desire to be hospitable to others.

BENTUK DAN PENGGUNAAN KATA PENGGOLONG BENDA DI PASAR INDUK TRADISIONAL DI JAKARTA DAN SURABAYA

This study aims to describe forms of noun classifiers and their uses by Indonesianspeakers in transactions in traditional central markets in Jakarta and Surabaya. The datawere collected through listening and interviewing. They were analyzed by the intralingualcorrespondence technique. The research findings are as follows. First, there are43 forms of noun classifiers. Second, they can be classified into three categories, i.e.: (a)individual noun classifiers, (b) collective noun classifiers, and (c) noun classifiers in theform of measurement units. Third, the dominant noun classifiers in traditional centralmarkets in Jakarta and Surabaya are noun classifiers in the form of measurement units.This is due to the fact that transactions need precise measurements.

Using Collective Nouns by Korean Learners of English: A Generalized Linear Model with R

Using Collective Nouns by Korean Learners of English: A Generalized Linear Model with R

Absolute Goodness: In Defence of the Useless and Immoral

Kraut defines absolute goodness as follows: for something to be absolutely good is for its goodness to be unrelated to the needs or interests of any individual. Let’s allow goodness to apply broadly to objects, states of affairs and events (including actions). (Although for Kraut the goodness of objects will be derivative on the goodness of elements of an individual’s life.) Treat x as a variable ranging over these categories. Then, to say that x is absolutely good in this sense is to say that a world containing x is better than a world in which x is absent, whether or not x contributes, in that world, to the satisfaction of anyone’s needs or interests. (In what follows I will occasionally refer to ‘needs and interests’ with the collective noun ‘ends’.) For example, to say that the Bamiyan Buddhas are absolutely good is to claim that a world in which all sentient life has been extinguished but in which the Buddhas exist is better than a world in which the statues were destroyed along with everything else. Call this the Moorean claim. The opposite of absolute value is relative value. Note that the phrase ‘relative value’ is deployed here as a term of art. It does not imply that what is relatively valuable is so only by contrast to something of lesser value, or only valuable for some people and not others. Rather, to say that x is relatively valuable is to say that its value is a product of the contribution that it makes to the realization of the ends of some given individual. Furthermore, the distinction between absolute and relative

Isn’t it good, Norwegian wood? Lifestyle and adventure sports participation among Norwegian youth

This paper explores Norwegian youngsters’ (and, to a lesser extent, adults’) engagement with conventional and lifestyle sports via an examination of recent trends. In the process, it explores the significance or otherwise of ‘nature-based settings’ and the developing character of lifestyle sports. In terms of changes in youth sport, young Norwegians are the quintessential sporting omnivores. However, the particular mix of conventional and lifestyle sports that Norwegian youngsters favour has shifted within a generation, with the latter more prominent in 2007 than they had been even a decade earlier. The changes appear emblematic of a shift among Norwegian youth towards sports activities that offer alternative forms and styles of participation to those traditionally associated with ‘the outdoors’ as a style of life. In theoretical terms, the findings suggest that, as a generic and popular collective noun, the term lifestyle sport is most useful when it draws attention to the ‘commonalities’ shared by many of the activities often corralled under it.

What is the Collective Noun for a Group of Librarians?

This article looks at the many options for a collective noun for a group of librarians.

Attitudes of University Students to Some Verbal Anti-Sexist Forms

After more than two decades of non-sexist linguistic policies in Spain, a survey was carried out to evaluate the positive or negative attitude of almost 500 students from two Madrid universities to the most controversial verbal forms advocated in Spanish non-sexist linguistic policies: 1) the use of @ (as in alumn@s [students]); 2) the use of dual gender (as in alumnos y alumnas [students- masc and students-fem]); 3) the use of feminine terms for some women’s professional titles and occupations (i.e. ingeniera [engineer-fem], bedela [caretaker-fem], arquitecta [architect-fem], médica [physician-fem], aparejadora [quantity surveyor-fem], gerenta [manager-fem], perita [ex- pert-fem], cancillera* [chancellor-fem]); 4) the use of non-sexed collective nouns (as in profeso- rado [teaching staff]). Our aims were to know to what degree these resources were accepted by highly-educated young people, whether differences exist between the attitudes of men and women with respect to these forms, and which of these uses was the best accepted and which the least. Various examples of these non-sexist uses were presented to university students, who were asked to make a pronouncement on the feeling which these gave them or whether they used them. Our study concluded that the @ symbol and collective nouns are widely accepted among the student community. The dual gender seems to be also accepted, although greater vacillation was seen and sometimes the levels of rejection or indifference are higher. Nevertheless, of the four uses studied, the one which appears to provoke the greatest hesitation, vacillation or even opposition is the use of the feminine for some names of professions. In general, the number of female students in favour of the four features studied exceeds the number of male students.

A Multiplicity of Washing Rites and a Multiplicity of Experiences

If experience can be defined as the affectively charged interaction with the world by means of the body as agency or medium, various sites of such affectively charged interaction mapped on to the body may be fruitfully analysed to explain the operations of religion as discourse. Baptism is one such site. In fact, baptism as the shorthand for of collective noun denoting a spectrum of ritual practices is a particularly apposite example. Baptism as ritual practice has had a varied history, both in terms of originary context as well as interpretive or discursive trajectories. This essay primarily tracks two such significant trajectories: the one being baptismal practices as purification rites operating in socially ‘heterodox’ early Jewish and early Christian groups within an apocalyptic, dissociative framework; the other being ‘orthodox’ baptismal discourse as expressed in, for instance, Cyril of Jerusalem’s Mystagogical Catheceses. In the former, the strong affect of dissociation is coupled with visionary experiences, hence its embeddedness in apocalyptic trajectories with their strongly dismissive stance to the surrounding world. In the case of the latter, the dramatic performances of the Easter liturgy, arguably, created the experience of salvation and resurrection. In both instances, the intersection of ritual, bodily experience, religious discourse, and social imaginaire provides the explanatory framework for baptism as foundational ritual practice in the making and maintenance of religious discourse and its attendant experiential effects. In this sense, such is the argument pursued in the essay, baptism is a core facet of early Jewish and early Christian religious experience.