oxford_guide_to_english_grammar

17 NOUNS AND NOUN PHRASES PAGE 176
Phrases after a noun • 148
There can be a phrase after a noun.
the man in the brown suit
information about the course
that sign there
Nominalization •149
Some noun phrases are equivalent to clauses. The start of the race means that the
race starts.
142 Nouns
AN EXPENSIVE TRAP
Worried that ground staff were stealing miniature bottles of whisky from a
Pan-Am aircraft, security guards set a trap. In the summer of 1978 they wired
up a cuckoo clock inside the drinks cabinet so arranged that it would stop
whenever the door was opened. This, they said, would reveal the exact time of the
theft.
They omitted, however, to tell the plane's crew, with the result that a stewardess,
Miss Susan Becker, assumed it was a bomb. She alerted the pilot of the Boeing
727 who made an emergency landing at Berlin where eighty passengers left in a
hurry through fire exits.
A Pan-Am spokesman said afterwards that the miniature bottles of whisky on
the plane cost 17 pence each. The cost of the emergency landing was £6,500.
(from Stephen Pile The Book of Heroic Failures)
1 The meaning of nouns
Nouns have many different kinds of meanings. Concrete nouns refer to physical
things: aircraft, clock, door, whisky. Abstract nouns refer to ideas and qualities:
time, result, security. Nouns can also refer to actions and events: theft, landing; and
to roles: pilot, spokesman. A noun can also be a name: Berlin.
2 The form of nouns
a
b
c
Many nouns have no special form to show that they are nouns. But there are a
number of endings used to form nouns from other words: movement, intention,
difference, kindness, security, landing. • 285(2)
Most nouns do not have gender. There are only a few word pairs such as steward/
stewardess. • 285(3e)
Nouns do not have endings to show that they are subject or object. The only
endings are for the plural (bottles, • 145) and the possessive (the plane's
crew, •146).