Unit 15
DESCRIPTIVE GRAMMAR
ARTICLES
1. DEFINITE ARTICLE
THE
Articles in English are invariable. That is, they do not change according to
the gender or number of the noun they refer to, e.g. the boy, the woman,
the children
'The' is used:
- to refer to something which has already been mentioned.
Example:
An elephant and a mouse fell in love.
The mouse loved the elephant's long trunk, and the elephant
loved the mouse's tiny nose.
- when both the speaker and listener know what is being talked about, even
if it has not been mentioned before.
Example:
'Where's the bathroom?'
'It's on the first floor.'
- in sentences or clauses where we define or identify a particular person
or object:
Examples:
The man who wrote this book is famous.
'Which car did you scratch?' The red one.
My house is the one with a blue door.'
- to refer to objects we regard as unique:
Examples:
the sun, the moon, the world
- before superlatives and ordinal numbers:)
Examples:
the highest building, the first page, the last chapter.
- with adjectives, to refer to a whole group of people:
Examples:
the Japanese, the old
- with names of geographical areas and oceans:
Examples:
the Caribbean, the Sahara, the Atlantic
- with decades, or groups of years:
Example:
she grew up in the seventies
2. INDEFINITE ARTICLE
A / AN
Use 'a' with nouns starting with a consonant (letters
that are not vowels), 'an' with nouns starting with a vowel
(a,e,i,o,u)
Examples:
- A boy
- An apple
- A car
- An orange
- A house
- An opera
NOTE:
An before an h mute - an hour, an honour.
A before u and eu when they sound like 'you': a
european, a university, a unit
The indefinite article is used:
- to refer to something for the first time:
An elephant and a mouse fell in love.
Would you like a drink?
I've finally got a good job.
- to refer to a particular member of a group or class
Examples:
- with names of jobs:
John is a doctor.
Mary is training to be an engineer.
He wants to be a dancer.
- with nationalities and religions:
John is an Englishman.
Kate is a Catholic.
- with musical instruments:
Sherlock Holmes was playing a violin when the visitor arrived.
(BUT to describe the activity we say "He plays the violin.")
- with names of days:
I was born on a Thursday
- to refer to a kind of, or example of something:
the mouse had a tiny nose
the elephant had a long trunk
it was a very strange car
- with singular nouns, after the words 'what' and 'such':
What a shame!
She's such a beautiful girl.
- meaning 'one', referring to a single object or person:
I'd like an orange and two lemons please.
The burglar took a diamond necklace and a valuable painting.
Notice also that we usually say a hundred, a thousand,
a million.
NOTE: that we use 'one' to add emphasis or to contrast
with other numbers:
I don't know one person who likes eating elephant meat.
We've got six computers but only one printer.
3. EXCEPTIONS TO USING THE DEFINITE ARTICLE
There is no article:
- with names of countries (if singular):
Germany is an important economic power.
He's just returned from Zimbabwe.
(But: I'm visiting the United States next week.)
- with the names of languages:
French is spoken in Tahiti.
English uses many words of Latin origin.
Indonesian is a relatively new language.
- with the names of meals:
Lunch is at midday.
Dinner is in the evening.
Breakfast is the first meal of the day.
- with people's names (if singular):
John's coming to the party.
George King is my uncle.
(But: we're having lunch with the Morgans tomorrow.)
- with titles and names:
Prince Charles is Queen Elizabeth's son.
President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.
Dr. Watson was Sherlock Holmes' friend.
(But: the Queen of England, the Pope.)
- After the 's possessive case:
His brother's car.
Peter's house.
- with professions:
Engineering is a useful career.
He'll probably go into medicine.
- with names of shops:
I'll get the card at Smith's.
Can you go to Boots for me?
- with years:
1948 was a wonderful year.
Do you remember 1995?
- with uncountable nouns:
Rice is the main food in Asia.
Milk is often added to tea in England.
War is destructive.
- with the names of individual mountains, lakes and islands:
Mount McKinley is the highest mountain in Alaska.
She lives near Lake Windermere.
Have you visited Long Island?
- with most names of towns, streets, stations and airports:
Victoria Station is in the centre of London.
Can you direct me to Bond Street?
She lives in Florence.
They're flying from Heathrow.
- in some fixed expressions, for example:
by car
by train
by air
on foot
on holiday
on air (in broadcasting) |
at school
at work
at University
in church
in prison
in bed |
STUDY GUIDE
Reference: EGU: 68-80; PEG: 1-8, PEGE: 1-5,
- Put a/an or the in the gaps, or leave them blank (zero
article).
- ... people who live in ... Spain are called ... Spanish.
- As ... captain of ... ship, I have ... complete authority.
- ... recipe for ... success is ... hard work.
- ... worst part of ... living in a caravan is ... lack of space.
- ... little knowledge is ... dangerous thing.
- There's no point in taking ... medicine for ... cold.
- It's ... long way by ... train to ... north of ... Scotland.
- ... people we met on ... holiday in ... north of England sent us ...
postcard.
- David learned to play ... violin when he was at ... university.
- ... dancing is ... more interesting activity than ... reading.
- Put in a/an, the or '-' in the following sentences.
- We were looking for ... place to spend the night. ... place we found
turned out to be in ... charming village. ... village was called ... Lodsworth.
- ... individual has every right to expect personal freedom. ... freedom
of ... individual is something worth fighting for.
- Yes, my name is ... Simpson, but I'm not ... Simpson you're looking
for.
- Who's at ... door?- It's ... postman.
- When you go out, would you please go to ... supermarket and get some
butter.
- I've got ... appointment this afternoon. I've got to go to ... doctor's.
- We went to ... theatre last night and saw Flames. It's ... wonderful
play.
- We prefer to spend our holidays in ... country, ... mountains or by
... sea.
- We have seen what ... Earth looks like from ... moon.
- This is the front room. ... ceiling and ... walls need decorating,
but ... floor is in good order. We'll probably cover it with ... carpet.
- You're imagining ... things. All your fears are in ... mind.
- Look at this wonderful small computer. ... top lifts up to form ...
screen; ... front lifts off to form ... keyboard and ... whole thing only
weighs 5 kilos.
- ... history of ... world is ... history of ... war.
- Is there ... moon round ... planet Venus?
- What's ... John doing these days?- He's working as ... postman.
- ... exercise is good for ... body.
- Could you pass me ... salt, please?
- They're building ... new supermarket in ... centre of our town.
- Where's your mother at ... moment?- I think she's in ... kitchen.
- If you were a cook, you'd have to work in ... kitchen all day long.
READING COMPREHENSION
Read the following newspapar article and answer the questions.
Washington (Washington Star)-- The
unemployment rate was 7.8 percent in July,
almost unchanged from June, as the decline in
employment of the last four months apparently
"leveled off", the Labor Department reported
Friday.
The 7.8-percent rate, following the 7.7
percent in June and the 7.8 percent in May,
gives three months of fairly level un-
employment after the unemployment rate jumped
from 6.2 percent to 7.8 percent between March
and May.
Unemployment for adult males, at 6.7
percent, and adult women also at 6.7 percent,
were essentially unchanged. Unemployment for
blacks rose to 14.2 percent, up from 13.6
percent.
The economic signals in the figures were
mixed, and Janet Norwood, the commissioner of
the Bureau of Labor Statistics, said it was
too early to suggest any new trend. Many
economists have been predicting that the
unemployment rate will rise to near 9 percent
by the end of the year.
Total employment was up 460,000, after four
months of sharp declines. But since February
total employment is still down by about
950,000. At the same time, the labor force--
the total of all the employed and unemployed
--rose 650,000 in July, which is why the rate
of unemployment rose slightly.
But payroll employment, which excludes farm
workers and is measured in a separate survey,
fell 240,000 in July. The Labor Department
said this drop was attributable to major
strikes in the mining and construction
industries, which have idled about 150,000
workers. However, in the payroll survey,
these workers are counted as not working
but as still employed in the total employment
survey.
In addition, the federal government is
laying off about 90,000 workers who had been
hired to do the 1980 census, the department
said, and this added to the payroll
employment drop.
- In line 5, what does "level off" mean?
- become stable
- decrease
- rise
- change
- The unemployment rate rose by ______% between March and May.
- 1.6
- 1.8
- 9
- 107.8
- What two industries had strikes?
- the Labor Department and the Bureau of Labor Statistics
- the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the federal government
- farm workers and payroll employees
- mining and construction
- What was the July increase in the labor force?
- slight
- 150,000
- 190,000
- 650,000
- By what amount did the payroll employment decrease in July?
- 90,000
- 150,000
- 240,000
- 390,000
- key to Unit 15 -
Literature
EMILY BRONTË: Wuthering Heights
Bronte, name of three English novelists, also sisters, whose works, transcending
Victorian conventions, have become beloved classics. The sisters Charlotte
Brontė (1816-1855), Emily (Jane) Brontė (1818-1848), and Anne
Brontė (1820-1849), and their brother (Patrick) Branwell Brontė (1817-1848),
were born in Thornton, Yorkshire: Charlotte on April 21, 1816, Emily on July
30, 1818, and Anne on March 17, 1820. Their father, Patrick Brontė, who had
been born in Ireland, was appointed rector of Haworth, a village on the Yorkshire
moors; it was with Haworth that the family was thenceforth connected. In 1821,
when their mother died, Charlotte and Emily were sent to join their older sisters
Maria and Elizabeth at the Clergy Daughters' School in Cowan Bridge; this was
the original on which was modeled the infamous Lowood School of Charlotte Brontė's
novel Jane Eyre. Maria and Elizabeth returned to Haworth ill and died in 1825.
Charlotte and Emily were later taken away from the school due to the grim conditions
and the sisters' illness.
The Brontė children's imaginations transmuted a set of wooden soldiers into
characters in a series of stories they wrote about the imaginary kingdom of
Angria-the property of Charlotte and Branwell-and the kingdom of Gondal-which
belonged to Emily and Anne. A hundred tiny handwritten volumes (started in 1829)
of the chronicles of Angria survive, but nothing of the Gondal saga (started
in 1831), except some of Emily's poems. The relationship of these stories to
the later novels is a matter of much interest to scholars.
Charlotte went away to school again, in Roe Head, in 1831, returning home a
year later to continue her education and teach her sisters. She returned to
Roe Head in 1835 as a teacher, taking Emily with her. Emily returned home three
months later and was replaced by Anne, who stayed for two years. In 1842, conceiving
the idea of opening a small private school of their own, and to improve their
French, Charlotte and Emily went to Brussels, to a private boarding school.
The death of their aunt, who had kept house for the family, compelled their
return, however. Emily stayed at Haworth as housekeeper. Anne worked as a governess
in a family near York, where she was joined as tutor by Branwell, who had failed
first as a portrait painter and then as a railway clerk. Charlotte went back
to Brussels, her experiences there forming the basis of the rendering, in Villette
(1853), of Lucy Snowe's loneliness, longing and isolation. In 1845 the family
was together again. Branwell, who had been dismissed from his tutorship, presumably
because he had fallen in love with his employer's wife, was resorting increasingly
to opium and drink.
Charlotte's discovery of Emily's poems led to the decision to have the sisters'
verses published; these appeared, at their own expense, as Poems by Currer,
Ellis and Acton Bell (1846), each sister using her own initials in these
pseudonyms. Two copies were sold.
Each sister then embarked on a novel. Charlotte's Jane Eyre was published
first, in 1847; Anne's Agnes Grey and Emily's Wuthering Heights
appeared a little later that year. Speculation about the authors' identities
was rife until they visited London and met their publishers.
On their return to Haworth they found Branwell near death. Emily caught cold
at his funeral, and died December 19, 1848. Anne too died, on May 28, 1849.
Her second novel, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, had been published the
year before; the account of a drunkard's degeneration, it was as deeply rooted
in personal observation as Agnes Grey, the study of a governess's life.
Alone now with her father at Haworth, Charlotte resumed work on the novel Shirley
(1849). This was the least successful of her novels, although its depiction
of the struggle between masters and workers in the Yorkshire weaving industry
a generation earlier precluded Charlotte's relying solely on intense subjectivity.
This strain of realism was the source of her power, as can be seen earlier in
Jane Eyre and later in Villette and The Professor (1857).
In 1854, Charlotte married her father's curate, Arthur Bell Nicholls. Pregnant
in 1855, she became ill and died March 31 of that year of tuberculosis.
Since their deaths, new generations of readers have been fascinated by the
circumstances of the Brontės' lives, their untimely deaths, and their astonishing
achievements. Jane Eyre's popularity has never waned; it is a passionate
expression of female issues and concerns. The Brontės' transcendent masterpiece,
however, is almost certainly Emily's novel Wuthering Heights, a story
of passionate love, in which irreconcilable principles of energy and calm are
ultimately harmonized. Emily Brontė was a mystic, as her poetry shows, and Wuthering
Heights dramatizes her intuitive apprehension of the nature of life.
The first book about the Brontės, The Life of Charlotte Brontė (1857),
by her friend the novelist Elizabeth Gaskell, is a classic biography. Another
notable book is Fannie E. Ratchford's The Brontės' Web of Childhood (1941);
it first indicated the significance for their art of the Angria and Gondal sagas
of their childhood.
Context
Wuthering Heights, which has long been one of the most popular and highly
regarded novels in English literature, seemed to hold little promise when it
was published in 1847, selling very poorly and receiving only a few mixed reviews.
Victorian readers found the book shocking and inappropriate in its depiction
of passionate, ungoverned love and cruelty (despite the fact that the novel
portrays no sex or bloodshed), and the work was virtually ignored. Even Emily
Brontė's sister Charlotte-an author whose works contained similar motifs of
Gothic love and desolate landscapes-remained ambivalent toward the unapologetic
intensity of her sister's novel. In a preface to the book, which she wrote shortly
after Emily Brontė's death, Charlotte Brontė stated, "Whether it is right
or advisable to create beings like Heathcliff, I do not know. I scarcely think
it is."
Emily Brontė lived an eccentric, closely guarded life. She was born in 1818,
two years after Charlotte and a year and a half before her sister Anne, who
also became an author. Her father worked as a church rector, and her aunt, who
raised the Brontė children after their mother died, was deeply religious. Emily
Brontė did not take to her aunt's Christian fervor; the character of Joseph,
a caricature of an evangelical, may have been inspired by her aunt's religiosity.
The Brontės lived in Haworth, a Yorkshire village in the midst of the moors.
These wild, desolate expanses-later the setting of Wuthering Heights-made
up the Brontės' daily environment, and Emily lived among them her entire life.
She died in 1848, at the age of 30.
As witnessed by their extraordinary literary accomplishments, the Brontė children
were a highly creative group, writing stories, plays, and poems for their own
amusement. Largely left to their own devices, the children created imaginary
worlds in which to play. Yet the sisters knew that the outside world would not
respond favorably to their creative expression; female authors were often treated
less seriously than their male counterparts in the nineteenth century. Thus
the Brontė sisters thought it best to publish their adult works under assumed
names. Charlotte wrote as Currer Bell, Emily as Ellis Bell, and Anne as Acton
Bell. Their real identities remained secret until after Emily and Anne had died,
when Charlotte at last revealed the truth of their novels' authorship.
Today, Wuthering Heights has a secure position in the canon of world
literature, and Emily Brontė is revered as one of the finest writers-male or
female-of the nineteenth century. Like Charlotte Brontė's Jane Eyre, Wuthering
Heights is based partly on the Gothic tradition of the late eighteenth century,
a style of literature that featured supernatural encounters, crumbling ruins,
moonless nights, and grotesque imagery, seeking to create effects of mystery
and fear. But Wuthering Heights transcends its genre in its sophisticated observation
and artistic subtlety. The novel has been studied, analyzed, dissected, and
discussed from every imaginable critical perspective, yet it remains unexhausted.
And while the novel's symbolism, themes, structure, and language may all spark
fertile exploration, the bulk of its popularity may rest on its unforgettable
characters. As a shattering presentation of the doomed love affair between the
fiercely passionate Catherine and Heathcliff, it remains one of the most haunting
love stories in all of literature.
Themes, Motifs, and Symbols
Themes
Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary
work.
- The Destructiveness of a Love that Never Changes - Catherine and
Heathcliff's passion for one another seems to be the center of Wuthering Heights,
given that it is stronger and more lasting than any other emotion displayed
in the novel, and that it is the source of most of the major conflicts that
structure the novel's plot. As she tells Catherine and Heathcliff's story,
Nelly criticizes both of them harshly, condemning their passion as immoral,
but this passion is obviously one of the most compelling and memorable aspects
of the book. It is not easy to decide whether Brontė intends the reader to
condemn these lovers as blameworthy or to idealize them as romantic heroes
whose love transcends social norms and conventional morality. The book is
actually structured around two parallel love stories, the first half of the
novel centering on the love between Catherine and Heathcliff, while the less
dramatic second half features the developing love between young Catherine
and Hareton. In contrast to the first, the latter tale ends happily, restoring
peace and order to Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange. The differences
between the two love stories contribute to the reader's understanding of why
each ends the way it does.
The most important feature of young Catherine and Hareton's love story is
that it involves growth and change. Early in the novel Hareton seems irredeemably
brutal, savage, and illiterate, but over time he becomes a loyal friend to
young Catherine and learns to read. When young Catherine first meets Hareton
he seems completely alien to her world, yet her attitude also evolves from
contempt to love. Catherine and Heathcliff's love, on the other hand, is rooted
in their childhood and is marked by the refusal to change. In choosing to
marry Edgar, Catherine seeks a more genteel life, but she refuses to adapt
to her role as wife, either by sacrificing Heathcliff or embracing Edgar.
In Chapter XII she suggests to Nelly that the years since she was twelve years
old and her father died have been like a blank to her, and she longs to return
to the moors of her childhood. Heathcliff, for his part, possesses a seemingly
superhuman ability to maintain the same attitude and to nurse the same grudges
over many years.
Moreover, Catherine and Heathcliff's love is based on their shared perception
that they are identical. Catherine declares, famously, "I am Heathcliff,"
while Heathcliff, upon Catherine's death, wails that he cannot live without
his "soul," meaning Catherine. Their love denies difference, and
is strangely asexual. The two do not kiss in dark corners or arrange secret
trysts, as adulterers do. Given that Catherine and Heathcliff's love is based
upon their refusal to change over time or embrace difference in others, it
is fitting that the disastrous problems of their generation are overcome not
by some climactic reversal, but simply by the inexorable passage of time,
and the rise of a new and distinct generation. Ultimately, Wuthering Heights
presents a vision of life as a process of change, and celebrates this process
over and against the romantic intensity of its principal characters.
- The Precariousness of Social Class - As members of the gentry, the
Earnshaws and the Lintons occupy a somewhat precarious place within the hierarchy
of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century British society. At the top
of British society was the royalty, followed by the aristocracy, then by the
gentry, and then by the lower classes, who made up the vast majority of the
population. Although the gentry, or upper middle class, possessed servants
and often large estates, they held a nonetheless fragile social position.
The social status of aristocrats was a formal and settled matter, because
aristocrats had official titles. Members of the gentry, however, held no titles,
and their status was thus subject to change. A man might see himself as a
gentleman but find, to his embarrassment, that his neighbors did not share
this view. A discussion of whether or not a man was really a gentleman would
consider such questions as how much land he owned, how many tenants and servants
he had, how he spoke, whether he kept horses and a carriage, and whether his
money came from land or "trade"-gentlemen scorned banking and commercial
activities.
Considerations of class status often crucially inform the characters' motivations
in Wuthering Heights. Catherine's decision to marry Edgar so that she
will be "the greatest woman of the neighborhood" is only the most
obvious example. The Lintons are relatively firm in their gentry status but
nonetheless take great pains to prove this status through their behaviors.
The Earnshaws, on the other hand, rest on much shakier ground socially. They
do not have a carriage, they have less land, and their house, as Lockwood
remarks with great puzzlement, resembles that of a "homely, northern
farmer" and not that of a gentleman. The shifting nature of social status
is demonstrated most strikingly in Heathcliff's trajectory from homeless waif
to young gentleman-by-adoption to common laborer to gentleman again (although
the status-conscious Lockwood remarks that Heathcliff is only a gentleman
in "dress and manners").
Motifs
Motifs are recurring structures, contrasts, or literary devices that can
help to develop and inform the text's major themes.
- Doubles - Brontė organizes her novel by arranging its elements-characters,
places, and themes-into pairs. Catherine and Heathcliff are closely matched
in many ways, and see themselves as identical. Catherine's character is divided
into two warring sides: the side that wants Edgar and the side that wants
Heathcliff. Catherine and Young Catherine are both remarkably similar and
strikingly different. The two houses, Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange,
represent opposing worlds and values. The novel has not one but two distinctly
different narrators, Nelly and Mr. Lockwood. The relation between such paired
elements is usually quite complicated, with the members of each pair being
neither exactly alike nor diametrically opposed. For instance, the Lintons
and the Earnshaws may at first seem to represent opposing sets of values,
but, by the end of the novel, so many intermarriages have taken place that
one can no longer distinguish between the two families.
- Repetition - Repetition is another tactic Brontė employs in organizing
Wuthering Heights. It seems that nothing ever ends in the world of this novel.
Instead, time seems to run in cycles, and the horrors of the past repeat themselves
in the present. The way that the names of the characters are recycled, so
that the names of the characters of the younger generation seem only to be
rescramblings of the names of their parents, leads the reader to consider
how plot elements also repeat themselves. For instance, Heathcliff's degradation
of Hareton repeats Hindley's degradation of Heathcliff. Also, the young Catherine's
mockery of Joseph's earnest evangelical zealousness repeats her mother's.
Even Heathcliff's second try at opening Catherine's grave repeats his first.
- The Conflict between Nature and Culture - In Wuthering Heights,
Brontė constantly plays nature and culture against each other. Nature is represented
by the Earnshaw family, and by Catherine and Heathcliff in particular. These
characters are governed by their passions, not by reflection or ideals of
civility. Correspondingly, the house where they live-Wuthering Heights-comes
to symbolize a similar wildness. On the other hand, Thrushcross Grange and
the Linton family represent culture, refinement, convention, and cultivation.
When, in Chapter VI, Catherine is bitten by the Lintons' dog and brought into
Thrushcross Grange, the two sides are brought onto the collision course that
structures the majority of the novel's plot. At the time of that first meeting
between the Linton and Earnshaw households, chaos has already begun to erupt
at Wuthering Heights, where Hindley's cruelty and injustice reign, whereas
all seems to be fine and peaceful at Thrushcross Grange. However, the influence
of Wuthering Heights soon proves overpowering, and the inhabitants of Thrushcross
Grange are drawn into Catherine, Hindley, and Heathcliff's drama. Thus the
reader almost may interpret Wuthering Heights's impact on the Linton family
as an allegory for the corruption of culture by nature, creating a curious
reversal of the more traditional story of the corruption of nature by culture.
However, Brontė tells her story in such a way as to prevent our interest and
sympathy from straying too far from the wilder characters, and often portrays
the more civilized characters as despicably weak and silly. This method of
characterization prevents the novel from flattening out into a simple privileging
of culture over nature, or vice versa. Thus in the end the reader must acknowledge
that the novel is no mere allegory.
Symbols
Symbols are objects, characters, figures, or colors used to represent abstract
ideas or concepts.
- Moors - The constant emphasis on landscape within the text of Wuthering
Heights endows the setting with symbolic importance. This landscape is
comprised primarily of moors: wide, wild expanses, high but somewhat soggy,
and thus infertile. Moorland cannot be cultivated, and its uniformity makes
navigation difficult. It features particularly waterlogged patches in which
people could potentially drown. (This possibility is mentioned several times
in Wuthering Heights.) Thus, the moors serve very well as symbols of
the wild threat posed by nature. As the setting for the beginnings of Catherine
and Heathcliff's bond (the two play on the moors during childhood), the moorland
transfers its symbolic associations onto the love affair.
- Ghosts - Ghosts appear throughout Wuthering Heights, as they
do in most other works of Gothic fiction, yet Brontė always presents them
in such a way that whether they really exist remains ambiguous. Thus the world
of the novel can always be interpreted as a realistic one. Certain ghosts-such
as Catherine's spirit when it appears to Lockwood in Chapter III-may be explained
as nightmares. The villagers' alleged sightings of Heathcliff's ghost in Chapter
XXXIV could be dismissed as unverified superstition. Whether or not the ghosts
are "real," they symbolize the manifestation of the past within
the present, and the way memory stays with people, permeating their day-to-day
lives.
- Contest 15 -
- back to Weekly Plan -