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This article defines the concept "improper noun" as a phrase that carries a specific meaning that may be different from its colloquial meaning. Such phrases can
by adunk 4y ago
This article defines the concept "improper noun" as a phrase that carries a specific meaning that may be different from its colloquial meaning. Such phrases can be confusing because they carry a double meaning, and because most people would only be familiar with only one of them - the colloquial meaning.
I believe that this confusion is strongest for native speakers. When you learn a language as a secondary language, you get used to pattern-match phrases in the new language. At first, each phrase is just a combination of words that you have to learn what they mean, one by one. After a while, you start to see the connection between phrases and their words, but you still retain that ability to simply pattern-match phrases and assign an arbitrary meaning to them. As a native speaker, it is much easier to interpret the colloquial meaning and you may have to almost force yourself to pattern-match the non-colloquial meaning.
I would also think that there are several subjects of study that may be helpful in interpreting these improper nouns:
* Mathematics. You soon get used to the style of thinking that starts with an assumption and proceeds to reason around the assumption, without defining exactly what the assumption is. "Assume we have a number, i, that satisfies i^2 = -1", and so on. It is straightforward to extend this type of thinking to improper nouns.
* Programming. In programming, we just define things, such as variable names or classes, and then we use them. The same thinking can be applied to improper nouns.
* Law. In contracts and agreements, is important to have precise meaning of every term, so contracts often start by explicitly defining all terms used in the contract. This type of thinking is easy to extend to improper nouns.
- MauranKilom 4y agoI expect most (if not all) languages have figures of speech that, just like "improper nouns", tend to mean something only tangentially related to the literal words. Whether most people can recognize and/or understand a novel one immediately likely varies though. I would agree that you tend to notice this more when learning a different language: As a child, you don't understand many things adults say and pick up these phrases among a lot of other inexplicable language. But when you later learn a new language, any apparent contradictions between the meaning of individual words and their combinations stick out much more.
- rocqua 4y agoA big difference between figures of speech and improper nouns is that the first are almost universal. Moreover, getting a figure of speach 'wrong' will generally cause quick reaction. Hence they are easy to learn, and there is a self-correcting mechanism. Meanwhile an improper noun can evade detection by those not in the know, and there is no self-correcting mechanism of wide public consciousness to teach those who are not in the know.