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Selasa, 25 Juni 2013

The Noun Phrase



Nama                 : CHRISTIAN ADI NUGRAHA
NPM                   : 10209968
Kelas                 : 4EA15
Mata Kuliah   : Bahasa Inggris Bisnis 2


What is an article?

Basically, articles are either definite or indefinite. They combine to a noun to indicate the type of reference being made by the noun.
·         The definite article is the.
·         The indefinite article is a / an.

The indefinite article a or an:

The article a / an is used when we don't specify the things or people we are talking about:
·         I met a friend.
·         I work in a factory in New York.
·         I borrowed a pencil from a passenger sitting next to me.
The indefinite article a is used before a consonant sound:
·         a dog.
·         a pilot
·         a teacher.
·         a university

NOTE:
Although 'university' starts with the vowel 'u', it is not pronounced as such. It is pronounced as a consonant sound /ju:.niv3:.si.ti/
The indefinite article an is used before a vowel sound:
·         an engineer.
·         an elephant.
·         an athlete

The definite article the:

It's used when the speaker talks about a specific object that both the person speaking and the listener know.
·         The car over there is fast.
·         The president of the United States is giving a speech tonight.

When we speak of something or someone for the first time we use a or an, the next time we repeat that object we use the definite article the.
·         I live in a house. The house is quite old and has four bedrooms.
·         I ate in a Chinese restaurant. The restaurant was very good.
No article:

1. Do not use an article with countries, states, counties or provinces, lakes and mountains except when the country is a collection of states such as "The United States".
·         He lives in Washington near Mount Rainier.
·         They live in Northern British Columbia.
·         They climbed Mount Everest. 

2. we do not normally use an article with plurals and uncountable nouns to talk about things in general.:
·         He writes books.
·         She likes sweets.
·         Do you like jazz music?
·         She ate bread with butter in the morning. 

Countable and uncountable nouns

Using English articles with countable and uncountable nouns may be confusing.
The can be used with uncountable nouns, or the article can be dropped entirely as mentioned above.
1.      "The two countries reached the peace after a long disastrous war" (some specific peace treaty) or "The two countries reached peace after a long disastrous war" (any peace).
2.      "He drank the water" (some specific water- for example, the water his wife brought him from the kitchen) or "He drank water." (any water)

It is unusual to use a/an for uncountable nouns. You can't say "I'd like a milk"
a/an can be used only with countable nouns.
1.      I'd like a piece of cake.
2.      I lent him a book.
3.      I drank a cup of tea.

What are quantifiers?

A quantifier is a word or phrase which is used before a noun to indicate the amount or quantity:
'Some', 'many', 'a lot of' and 'a few' are examples of quantifiers.
Quantifiers can be used with both countable and uncountable nouns.
Examples:
There are some books on the desk
He's got only a few dollars.
How much money have you got?
There is a large quantity of fish in this river.
He's got more friends than his sister.

Examples of quantifiers
With Uncountable Nouns
·         much
·         a little/little/very little *
·         a bit (of)
·         a great deal of
·         a large amount of
·         a large quantity of 

With Both
·         all
·         enough
·         more/most
·         less/least
·         no/none
·         not any
·         some
·         any
·         a lot of
·         lots of
·         plenty of

With Countable Nouns
·         many
·         a few/few/very few **
·         a number (of)
·         several
·         a large number of
·         a great number of
·         a majority of

* NOTE
few, very few mean that there is not enough of something.
a few means that there is not a lot of something, but there is enough.
** NOTE
little, very little mean that there is not enough of something.
a little means that there is not a lot of something, but there is enough.

Classes of nouns

The head of a noun phrase

The head of a noun phrase either takes the form of a noun or a pronoun. The head determines such features of the noun phrase as number (singular or plural) and gender (masculine, feminine or neuter). In terms of meaning, the head determines what kind or type of entity the whole noun phrase refers to.
Thus, the following noun phrases have the same noun, car, as head and therefore refer to the same kind of entity, namely some kind of car. The exact reference of the full noun phrases differ because of the different determiners and modifiers that accompany the head.
(1) the blue car that Lisa bought
(2) the yellow car that is parked outside my office
(3) a French car with four-wheel steering
Nouns can be grouped into different classes based on their grammatical properties.

Proper nouns and common nouns
A first major distinction among nouns is that between proper nouns and common nouns. Simply put, proper nouns are nouns that functions as names of people, cities, countries, etc. Typical examples are: Bill, Stockholm, and Denmark. All other nouns are common nouns, e.g. car, water, and democracy.
The distinction is relevant to capitalisation. Thus, proper nouns always start with a capital letter.
Countable and uncountable nouns

Common nouns may be divided into countable and uncountable nouns. As the terminology suggests, countable nouns can combine with numerals like one, two, three, etc., whereas uncountable nouns cannot. Moreover, uncountable nouns are always singular, whereas most countable nouns may be either singular or plural. A number of properties related to this basic difference distinguish the two classes of nouns. The following table lists the most important ones, and provides examples of both types of noun. (The asterisk * marks an example as ungrammatical.) 

Inherently plural nouns
Some nouns are such that they cannot be used in the singular, that is, they are always regarded as denoting something plural, and they always take plural agreement. Important members of this category appear in the following examples:

(4) My new jeans are Italian.
(5) We have to buy Peter new pyjamas, since his old ones are worn out.
(6) In this experiment, headphones are to be used.
(7) The ship's doctor made use of tweezers to remove the foreign object.
(8) The minutes were kept by Sheila.
(9) The goods have been exported to Germany.
(10) All our valuables have been stolen.
(11) The police are investigating the case.
(12) There were hundreds of police present in Stockholm in connection with the royal wedding.
(13) Do you know how many people are here?
(14) The cattle were seen grazing in the field.
(15) We do not want vermin in our house, but they are here anyway.
Nouns in -ics
Nouns that end in -ics look plural, but are actually most often treated as singular. Thus, when heading a noun phrase which functions as the subject, they trigger singular agreement on the verb.

(16) Statistics is becoming increasingly popular among our students.
(17) Mathematics is an integral part of our culture.
(18) Western economics has tended not to be influenced by theories from other parts of the world.

In the examples above, the nouns in -ics denote academic disciplines. However, some of these nouns may also be used to denote the practical application of the discipline, and are then treated as ordinary plurals, e.g. by taking plural determiners and by triggering plural agreement on the verb.

(19) These statistics show that our production of beef has almost doubled.
(20) The acoustics of the new concert hall are very lively.

Zero plurals
Zero plural nouns are nouns that look the same in the plural as they do in the singular. A well-known example is the noun sheep. Since sheep is a zero plural noun, it looks the same in the two sentences below. However, this does not prevent it from being singular in the first sentence and plural in the second one, as indicated by the different verb forms, is and are:

(21) My sheep is black.
(22) My sheep are black.

Other nouns that belong to this category are aircraft, Chinese, deer, elk, headquarters, horsepower, hovercraft, means, offspring, Portuguese, salmon, series, species, trout, and Vietnamese. When in doubt, please consult a good dictionary.

Foreign plurals

There is a group of nouns whose members are commonly referred to as 'foreign plurals'. What the nouns in this group have in common is that both their singular and their plural forms have been borrowed from other languages, which means that the plural ending is not the regular English -s, but something else. 

Examples of such foreign plural nouns that are important to remember, especially when writing academic texts (since many of these words tend to be academic in nature), are analysis-analyses, basis-bases, criterion-criteria, diagnosis-diagnoses, hypothesis-hypotheses, parenthesis-parentheses, phenomenon-phenomena, stimulus-stimuli, and thesis-theses.  

What usually happens when a word is borrowed into English (or into some other language) is that it is changed in line with the morphology of the language into which it has been borrowed. Consequently, there are some foreign words in English that have both a foreign and an English plural form. Examples include appendix-appendixes/appendices, cactus-cactuses/cacti, focus-focuses/foci, and index-indexes/indices.  


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