Number and class for nouns
Number- grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions. [Though not all these agreements necessarily occur at once: English has no adjective agreement, except with genitive pronouns which agree with their antecedents.]
Singular- One.
Dual- Two.
Plural- Three or more.
Noun class- a system of categorizing nouns. A noun may belong to a given class because of characteristic features of its referent, such as sex, animacy, shape, but counting a given noun among nouns of such or another class is often clearly conventional. Some authors use the term “grammatical gender” as a synonym of “noun class” [I personally agree that it’s a class, albeit a terribly arbitrary one], but others use different definitions for each.
Animate- That which moves. (eg, animals, microbes, certain objects like fire or waves)
Inanimate- That which does not move (objects, plants, fungi)
Abstract- That which does not physically exist (abstract ideas)
Poetry is concerned with using and abusing, with losing with wanting, with denying with avoiding with adoring with replacing the noun. It is doing that always doing that, doing that and doing nothing but that. Poetry is doing nothing but losing refusing and pleasing and betraying and caressing nouns. That is what poetry does, that is what poetry has to do no matter what kind of poetry it is. And there are a great many kinds of poetry.
When I said.
A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.
And then later made that into a ring I made poetry and what did I do I caressed completely caressed and addressed a noun.
—Gertrude Stein, Lectures in America, “Poetry and Grammar”
Collective Nouns
ojohaven.comA list of the different terms for collective nouns (flock of sheep). The credibility of some of these claims is questionable, but I’m definitely a fan of creative wordsmithing, and I’m certainly not a prescriptivist.
Japanese Demonstrative Pronouns - [NihongoUp Lesson 11: Describing]
Kore - something touchable, aka this. Something close to the speaker.
Sore - something close, but out of reach, aka that. Something close to the listener.
Are - something far away, aka yonder. Something far from both people.
Dore - something in a location unsure about, aka which. e.g which one is it (that you are talking about)? or many things.
こそあど
ko so a do - this is the name of them all
Kono, sono, ano, dono.
The no replaces re, and connect straight to a noun in the sentence, without any particles between them.
Come at the start of the sentence. PRE-NOMINALS. Noun often follows - aka, [that/this] [person/thing] [wa] [noun/describe] [desu]
e.g. that magazine [<the topic] red it is.
sono (that) zasshi (mag) [wa] aka (red) [desu]
Kore often followed by wa or ga. They are often the subject of the sentence.
e.g. kore [wa] shinbun [desu]
this [<topic] newspaper [is]
Dore followed by ga particle.
e.g. dore ga dame desu ka
which (out of many number) [ga sentence subject>] broken is it ?
Grammar: Appositives
An appositive is a noun or noun phrase which adds extra meaning or modifies a noun beside it. It is placed in a sentence surrounded by comma [most commonly], dashes, ellipses, and a number of ways.
Examples:
My mother, Janet, came to the door with a rat on her head.
The pilot, scary and overbearing with a beard so thick you could get lost, ate his sandwich alone at the table. I bet he had to make it himself since there is no woman in sight.
Black and dense, my leg hair took an hour for the razor I was using to get chewed off.
I walked all the way on a hot summer’s day to the church, black and dusty.
You should notice that when appositives fall at the beginning of a sentence, there is not a comma or any other punctuation in front of them, and when they fall on the back of the sentence there is only end of sentence type punctuation.
Writing Prompt #300: The Ultimate!
Hell, yes! Three-hundred frikin’ prompts! To celebrate, you get three groups of three things to use in your story. We know that doesn’t equal 300, but we don’t really care. We’re not the ones who have to write the damn story.
Verbs: slaughter, finalize, marinate
Nouns: accountant, laser, bathroom
Adjectives: effulgent, phantasmagoric, audacious
