In linguistics, a collective noun is a word used to define a group of objects, where "objects" can be people, animals, inanimate things, concepts, or other things. For example, in the phrase "a pride of lions", pride is a collective noun.
Most collective nouns encountered in everyday speech (such as "group") are mundane and are not specific to one kind of constituent object (for example, the uses "group of people", "group of dogs", and "group of ideas" are all correct uses). Others, especially words belonging to the large subset of collective nouns known as terms of venery (words for groups of animals), are specific to one kind of constituent object (for example, "pride" as a term of venery refers to lions— but not to dogs or llamas). (Terms of venery are further discussed in a subsequent section.)
Collective nouns should not be confused with the collective grammatical number.
Most collective nouns encountered in everyday speech (such as "group") are mundane and are not specific to one kind of constituent object (for example, the uses "group of people", "group of dogs", and "group of ideas" are all correct uses). Others, especially words belonging to the large subset of collective nouns known as terms of venery (words for groups of animals), are specific to one kind of constituent object (for example, "pride" as a term of venery refers to lions— but not to dogs or llamas). (Terms of venery are further discussed in a subsequent section.)
Collective nouns should not be confused with the collective grammatical number.
1 comment:
nice blog!, let me ask you,if we want to teach english to students of TPA , what are the suitable material?
Post a Comment