----- Original Message -----
From: Craig Hancock 

"I agree that "person, place, or thing" is harmfully simplistic. Do you
simply ignore semantic definition or do you work on a more 
nuanced one? If we grant something the status of "thing" is there a cognitive dimension to that?"
 
Being somewhat elusive, abstract nouns have never been very popular as objects of linguistic research. English Abstract Nouns as Conceptual Shells fills this long-standing gap in English and general
linguistics. Based on a systematic analysis of a very large corpus,
it introduces a conceptual and terminological framework for the
linguistic description of abstract nouns [...] Semantic, pragmatic, rhetorical, textual and cognitive functions of abstract nouns are discussed, always with reference to the empirical observation and statistical analysis of the corpus data. In this way, a link between the corpus method and functional and cognitive theories of language is
established. Caglayan annotated bibliography on Schmid, H.J "English Abstract Nouns as Conceptual Shells" (2000).
 
Craig - my students are pretty used to defining a noun as not a name of something, but a sign or symbol of the thing itself. "Craig" is a name and label used as an identifier, but Craig the person is the noun. So I suppose that "proper" nouns are classified as those names of the people they label. Students also know that "love," albeit an abstraction, is identifiable as a noun too... they recognize its empirically tested presence as a phenomena in our world (your cognitive dimension mentioned above). I'm surprised that the definitions of nouns mentioned so far haven't included this discussion, but based on Schmid I guess this is an elusive concept for some reason?
 
Hope you are all doing well.
 
John
 


 

John Chorazy
English III Academy, Honors, and Academic
Pequannock Township High School

Nulla dies sine linea.

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