CESSNOCK HIGH SCHOOL
Aberdare Rd , Cessnock
Ph: 49901977
Fax: 49911815
Email: cessnock-h.school@det.nsw.edu.au

Punctuation

Nominalisation

Nominalisation is the process of forming a noun from a verb or clause.

Nominalisation of a clause

Dogs need regular vaccinations and this can cost a lot of money.

The need for regular vaccinations is a recurring expense.

Nominalisation of a verb

Dogs protect people…

The personal protection dogs provide…

Nominalisations are a feature of particular types of writing such as explanations and technical writing that need to use abstract ideas and concepts. Arguments often use nominalisations as they can effectively remove agency and time from statements and therefore render the propositions more difficult to refute. Writing such as narratives, on the other hand, employ abstract language through the use of imagery (as discussed above) and generally avoid normalisations.

Noun

Nouns are words that name people, places, things, ideas, and states of being. There are different types of nouns:

• Common nouns (the vast majority) are the names of things and begin with a lower-case letter, eg boy, girl, name verb.
• Proper nouns name specific people, places, things and acronyms, and begin with a capital letter, eg Bombee Public School, William Wild Thing, State Government, BST.
• Abstract nouns name things hat cannot be seen, eg team, family, committee, class.
• Mass nouns name things that you cannot count, eg gold, milk, sunshine, furniture.

Noun Group

A noun group is a group of words relating to, or building on, a noun. Noun groups usually consist of an article plus one or more adjectives or adverbs and are an important language resource for building up descriptions.

The mysterious, carved box was an extremely tempting discovery.

Noun groups can also have adjectival phrases or adjectival clauses embedded in them.

Noun group with adjectival phrase embedded

The dog with the waggiest tail was mine.

Noun group with adjectival clause embedded.

The milk that has been pasteurised is now ready to bottle.

Person

In written English the choice of address significantly affects style. Address can be personal or impersonal, direct or indirect. Address is conveyed through the choice of person. The concept of person distinguishes, for example, the person speaking (first speaking), the person listening (second person), and the person being spoken about (third person). If a piece of writing is in the first person it has the effect of engaging the reader closely in a personal even, and so it is often used in narrative texts. Use of second person is common to procedural texts. Third person removes the personal and puts a distance between the writer and the text, often giving the text a more formal style and objective tone.

The choice of person determines the type of pronouns that can be used.

1st person I (me, my, mine), we (us, our, ours)

2nd person you (your, yours)

3 rd person he (him, his), she (her, hers), it (its), one (one’s), they (them, their, theirs)