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In linguistics, a collective noun is a word referring to a collection of things taken as a whole. Most collective nouns in everyday speech are not specific to one kind of thing. [1] For example, the collective noun "group" can be applied to people ("a group of people"), or dogs ("a group of dogs"), or objects ("a group of stones").
There are about seven main types of collocations: adjective + noun, noun + noun (such as collective nouns), noun + verb, verb + noun, adverb + adjective, verbs + prepositional phrase (phrasal verbs), and verb + adverb.
In British English (BrE), collective nouns can take either singular (formal agreement) or plural (notional agreement) verb forms, according to whether the emphasis is on the body as a whole or on the individual members respectively; compare a committee was appointed with the committee were unable to agree.
A prepositional phrase can be used as a complement or post-modifier of a noun in a noun phrase, as in the man in the car, the start of the fight; as a complement of a verb or adjective, as in deal with the problem, proud of oneself; or generally as an adverb phrase (see above).
Modifying adverbial phrases combine with a sentence, and the removal of the adverbial phrase yields a well-formed sentence. For example, in (5) the modifying adverbial phrase in an hour can be removed, and the sentence remains well-formed (e.g., I'll go to bed); in (6) the modifying AdvP three hours later can be omitted, and the sentence remains well-formed (e.g., We arrived); and in (7), the ...
William Bullokar wrote the earliest grammar of English, published in 1586.It includes a chapter on adverbs. His definition follows: An adverb is a part of speech joined with a verb or participle to declare their signification more expressly by such adverb: as, come hither if they wilt go forth, sometimes with an adjective: as, thus broad: & sometimes joined with another adverb: as, how soon ...
An audience in Tel Aviv, Israel, waiting to see the Batsheva Dance Company Audiences at the 2013 World Championships in Athletics in Moscow, Russia. An audience is a group of people who participate in a show or encounter a work of art, literature (in which they are called "readers"), theatre, music (in which they are called "listeners"), video games (in which they are called "players"), or ...
There is typically little confusion between nouns and adverbs in English because there is no overlap in the inflectional morphology that they take (-s for nouns, -er and -est for adverbs) and they tend to cooccur with different kinds of words (e.g., nouns can head phrases containing determinatives while adverbs cannot). Further, nouns and ...