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Oct 2016
9:37pm, 7 Oct 2016
11,427 posts
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Columba
I'm sure she will if you have the right sort of discussions with her at home, SallyKate.
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Oct 2016
10:25pm, 7 Oct 2016
27,436 posts
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JenL
Columba - sorry for not being clearer. By "morphological content" I mean languages that inflect for, for example, case and gender. I believe there are some languages in which most, perhaps all, abstract nouns are feminine, some in which the decision falls easily into a predictable pattern and others in which the grammatical gender of a noun follows no easily discernable pattern but a deeper examination of the groupings reveals something about the way that native speakers of that language see the world. I hope that makes more sense.
SallyKate - I agree that your daughter will benefit far more from developing her critical thinking skills. I think the critical function is one that is being taught out of our children by all this testing 
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Oct 2016
10:40pm, 7 Oct 2016
2,562 posts
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Cyclops
The curriculum we have to teach at the moment is not right, JenL, on lots of levels
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Oct 2016
10:45pm, 7 Oct 2016
27,437 posts
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JenL
I know, and the teaching staff are the easy targets. It's completely wrong.
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Oct 2016
11:06pm, 7 Oct 2016
4,422 posts
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sallykate
Husband is all about critical thinking - it will not escape her! But that's also why I want to be clear about what she's being taught now.
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Oct 2016
11:15pm, 7 Oct 2016
27,438 posts
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JenL
It's tricky isn't it? I would say any noun has the capacity to be used in a concrete and/or an abstract way - their categorisation is not fixed, though some settle more obviously into one category or the other in most people's usage most of the time. The problem is that, particularly in literature, words and phrases are used metaphorically, which often changes their concrete/abstract status; a further problem is that language changes; and another one is that not all the English we encounter is standard English. Do we really want our children to believe that when they hear or read usage that doesn't fit what they've been taught is "right", they must consider it "wrong"? Much of the English they are taught in school is literature-based and they are told this is "Art". How are they to distinguish between error and art? Why are some errors Art while others are "wrong"? It's no wonder they lack confidence in understanding how their own language works
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Oct 2016
11:19pm, 7 Oct 2016
13,883 posts
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ChrisHB
I am fascinated by the question why we should bother to identify abstract nouns. In particular, whether anyone regardless of their religious beliefs, would class God as abstract. I for instance would not class Roman gods as abstract.
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Oct 2016
11:45pm, 7 Oct 2016
27,439 posts
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JenL
It's just one of those things some of us have grown up with that have gathered a rosy glow of importance, I think - like the endless lists of the male and female versions of some nouns and the exact name for a young hare or the name of a badger's living space
In fact the real-life importance of these things is highly contextual and restricted to a small number of the population, though such knowledge can be very handy in a pub quiz
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Oct 2016
12:39am, 8 Oct 2016
12,277 posts
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Dvorak
Thanks for explanations,  . I can't remember any concrete vs abstract nouns stuff at school: naming words, doing words and describing words did us.
I never had you sett as a fan of Newspeak, though ;-).
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Oct 2016
1:05am, 8 Oct 2016
5,775 posts
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paul the builder
JenL - thanks for trying to address my question. And I really do appreciate the information in that, and subsequent posts. But - you didn't actually say why anyone would want to categorise nouns that way? Or what was at risk from failing to do so? Or putting a noun in the wrong category?
Is it purely an academic exercise?
Don't get me wrong, I love academic pursuits.... Just wondering if this has a real-world-language bearing.
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