Bare singular noun pattern

The bare singular noun pattern is a semantic-grammatical pattern with a simple noun phrase that is not marked with a delimiter (a/an/the). In traditional grammatical parlance, it is referred to as a zero-article (Ø) noun (lacking a so-called definite article the or indefinite article a/an). Bare singulars contrast with bare plural nouns, and they contrast with marked nouns, especially marked singular nouns.

Examples of bare singulars include:

• They love yogurt.
• I depend on water, juice, and coffee to survive my long study sessions.
• The structure consists of wood, concrete, steel, and PVC plastic.

This analysis is sketched out in Lee (2017)

1 Basic pattern

The basic, default meaning of bare singulars is material -- material nouns, mass nouns, or substance nouns. These contrast with marked singular nouns, which denote object nouns.

• Bare Pattern. Bare singular nouns indicate materials or substances; this constitutes their basic, default meaning for physical nouns.

We speak of drinking water, coffee or juice, and buying and eating chicken, salad or cake. This contrasts with the singular marked pattern:

• Marked Pattern. Marked singular nouns (with the, a/an) indicate objects, things, entities that we conceptualize as distinct things.

We thus speak of drinking a (bottle of) water, a coffee, a juice, and we speak of buying or eating a chicken, a salad, or a cake.

These basic patterns apply to physical nouns, which are marked by the following perceptual properties, unlike abstract nouns: (1) They are more tangible and perceivable. (2) They are more imageable, that is, when asked, one can imagine and mentally picture the noun.

Material nouns are somewhat less imageable than object nouns, and less distinct, physically. While objects have strict physical boundaries that distinguish them from other objects or from their background, material nouns are less distinct. Thus, they have a lesser degree of the semantic properties of entitivity (or entatitivity). They also lack in the property of physical boundedness, in that they are not perceived as being as spatially bounded. "Water" is spatially unbounded compared to "a (bottle of) water," "coffee" is more unbounded than "a coffee," and "chicken" (referring to the meat as substance) is unbounded compared to "a chicken" (a whole bird).

Bare nouns are traditionally treated as mass or non-count nouns in materials for students and teachers. This, however, is problematic. A number of nouns can refer to objects or conceptually concrete items in one context (e.g., “a chicken” or “a nanofiber”), but can easily refer to materials or substances in another context (“chicken” as meat, or “nanofiber” as a material). This distinction is not only relevant to everyday contexts (e.g., shopping or eating, where the difference between “chicken” and “a chicken” can be important), but also to academic contexts, where the difference between “nanofiber” material and “a nanofiber” crucially refer to different noun types and referents. It also can change the essential meaning of some nouns, e.g., “tape” (an adhesive material) versus “a tape” (a cassette tape), or “iron” (metal) and “an iron” (a fabric-pressing device, or a golf club).

The basic meaning patterns are summarized below.

	Form	Meaning	Examples
1.	Singular marked noun: a/an/the + singular noun cf.	Object / item / thing, i.e., physical objects	a cup, a coffee, a chicken, the chicken
2.	Singular bare noun (Ø)	Material / substance noun	coffee, chicken

2 Advanced patterns: Specialized extensions of basic pattern

The basic bare singular pattern is applied to other non-physical nouns to derive more abstract meanings.

2.1 General activities

General activities are indicated by bare nouns, while marked singular nouns indicate specific instances of an activity. General activities are not bounded in time or space, e.g., one speaks of jogging as a general activity that could occur anytime or anywhere. In contrast, a specific event ('a jog') occurs in a particular time and/or place.

1. I like jogging. (cf. That was a great a jog.)
2. I enjoy swimming.
3. Beware of theft. (cf. A theft occurred last night. The theft was rather daring.)

2.2 Generalized nouns

Nouns that are otherwise object nouns or distinct entities can be used as bare nouns, i.e., with no delimiter, for an altered meaning or nuance. The noun has a slightly more abstract or more general nuance. This is most common in prepositional phrases; it is common in academic parlance, and in the nomenclature of various fields.

1. She plays piano.
2. The satellite is in orbit.
3. The children were speaking in dialect.
4. He is in jail.
5. I go to school / to campus by bus / by subway.
6. I am in hospital. (British English)

2.3 Abstract nouns

The bare noun pattern is naturally applied to non-physical nouns to express abstract ideas. A concept noun 'hope' is not bounded in time or space, but generally refers to 'hope' that could exist anytime and anywhere.

• love, hate, war, peace, hope, existence, language, communication, existentialism, socialism, antidisestablishmentarianism

1. Modern physics has attempted to explain how gravity, electricity, magnetism, and the nuclear forces are related.
2. Modern feminism began as part of the abolitionist movement against slavery in the early to mid-1800s.
3. We really need more support here.

These abstract nouns contrast with specific instantiations of the ideas, often with the, for example, "the love of money," "the feminism of the 1800s" or "the gravity of earth."

These are summarized below.

Singular bare noun (Ø)	Contrasts with
Object noun → (a) Specific event / instance (cf. 1a) (b) Abstract concepts (c) Generic use of object noun	(a) There was a theft. We had a good climb (b) feminism, peace, existence (c) It is in orbit / in place; we speak in dialect; I go by bus

3 Teaching the Bare Noun Pattern

Stone or rock have been used for human-made structures from the beginnings of human history. ‘Rock’ is more often a geological term, or a term for everyday pieces of rock, while ‘stone’ is more often a term for the material, especially for building materials that have been processed. Rock, as in large pieces of rock, were first used for fashioning human dwellings. Later, humans found how to quarry and cut stone, such as granite and marble, for buildings.

At first it would have been hard to drag a large rock to build a primitive house, and the pieces might not fit together well to make a good house. Humans later learned to cut and transport stone from quarries to build buildings. In building the Egyptian pyramids, for example, a large stone could be carried on rollers or loose sand by a group of people. A normal piece of rock is simply a rock, or a stone in more formal or literary style. A large rock formation might also be referred to as a stone.

We thus have five basic patterns, which are to be elaborated on more in separate entries, along with teaching suggestions.

• Bare singular noun pattern
• Marked singular noun pattern
• Bare plural noun pattern
• Indefinite noun pattern
• Definite noun pattern