From: Spruiell, William C <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Anthimeria: Hell in a handbasket
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Wednesday, June 11, 2008, 9:10 PM
Peter,
The heavy use of "name" in those definitions may be partly a legacy
of the history of the term itself ("noun" basically meant"name") and partly because the Renaissance tradition Lowth et al.
had inherited was itself influenced (unsurprisingly) by medieval philosophy,
and there were some important philosophical consequences of viewing a noun as a
name rather than as a cue that led to representation. I doubt Lowth was weighing
in on any of those philosophical arguments by using the definition he did -- it
had just become common practice when defining nouns in any language by the time
Lowth was born.
Bill Spruiell
Dept. of English
Central Michigan University
________________________________
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of Peter Adams
Sent: Wed 6/11/2008 12:40 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Anthimeria: Hell in a handbasket
Definitions have all the vices Jesperson and Ed complain of, for sure. And
yet, how my students cry out for them. They seem to think, and they may be
right, that being able to sort things--words, for instance,--into categories is
a
necessary step on the path to using them effectively.
By the way, I've always wondered why Lowth and almost every handbook author
since want to say a noun is the NAME of something. My students find that
definition very confusing when they come to learn what proper nouns are . . .
names of things in a different sense. Perhaps it would be clearer for novices
to say nouns are words that represent . . . persons, places, things, abstract
ideas, anything that exists. The last part is the hard part, but I've
always resisted saying nouns are names.
Peter Adams
On Jun 11, 2008, at 12:28 PM, Edgar Schuster wrote:
Bill (and others),
For what it's worth---and I'm not sure it's worth much---I
have a Murray definition of noun as "the name of any thing that exists, or
of which we have any notion." Lowth wrote "the Name of a thing; of
whatever we
conceive in any way to subsist, or of which we have any
notion."
Maybe this comment from Otto Jespersen is worth a lot more: "If
there is one thing I dislike in grammar, it is definitions (of parts of speech)
too often met with in our textbooks. They are neither exhaustive nor true; they
have not, and cannot have, the precision and clearness of the definitions found
in textbooks of mathematics . . . . And thus we might go on to the definitions
found even in the best grammars: they are unsatisfactory, all of them, and I do
not think
they are necessary."
The English Journal [!!!], 1924
Ed Schuster
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