2014-12-22 Evening: nouns and Old English

Greg Malivuk
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http://www.pastebin.com/u/gmalivuk
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Remember: There is also class tomorrow (Tuesday), but not Wednesday
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Homework: grammar book p. 74-75
a drop of rain
a bolt/flash of lightning
a piece of advice
part 13
1 government
2 a country
3 a...piece
4 toast
5 or (some) fried bread
6 (a) soup
7 a mixture
8 cereal
9 nuts
10 (some) dried fruit
11 milk
12 breakfast
part 14
1 outskirts...are, e
2 press is, d
3 clergy are, f
4 Mathematics is, b
5 Binoculars are, a
6 is sometimes called a fortnight
  (two weeks together as a single period of time)
  (fortnightly or biweekly for something that happens every 2 weeks)
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The telephone rang while you were out. (The specific telephone you have at home.)
The telephone rules my life. (The telephone as a general invention/technology.)

The maple tree is 40 feet tall. (a specific tree, e.g. in my back yard)
The maple tree can be up to 40 feet tall. (the species of maple trees)

"the + singular" generics are usually used with species, inventions, and body parts
"The heart weighs about 1kg," can be a statement either about a specific heart or about hearts in general.
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p. 77 part 16
1 Life's troubles (The troubles of life - we need 'the' in this case)
2 worries of each day (We can't say "the each".)
3 morning's special news
4 world's problems
5 woman's love
6 Mother's Day (or possibly Mothers' Day)

She ordered the morning special of eggs with bacon.

New Year's Eve / New Year's Day
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personify: to make something like a person (noun: personification)
(It's common to use 's possessives with personified objects.)

student's office = the office of one student
students' office = the office of multiple students
student office = the office for students

a chicken's head = the head of a living or recently killed animal
a chicken head = the head of a dead chicken
chicken heads = the heads of many dead chickens

Animate or personified (often living) things can have possessive 's.
Inanimate objects more frequently have compound nouns or of-phrases.
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In English, the LAST word of a modified noun is the head noun, which tells us what the whole expression is about.
A chicken head is a type of head (one that comes from a chicken).
A head chicken is a type of chicken (one that is the boss of the other chickens).

sky blue: the blue that looks like the sky
blue sky: the sky when it's blue

The first words in compound nouns, like other adjectives, aren't usually plural.
a shoebox (even though it has two shoes)
a 10-year-old student (not "years")

(However: teethmarks, almsgiver, painstaking)
If I take pains to do something correctly, I am painstakingly careful.

Most carnivores have binocular vision. ("binocular" is an adjective now, so can't be plural)