VOA慢速英语2019--语法与新闻:名词修饰名词

Grammar and the News: Nouns Modifying Nouns

Imagine you are looking at an American newspaper or news website. You read a few stories, and see terms such as health care, football game or bank policy.

These terms might all seem to have nothing in common, but they share a grammatical feature. This feature is often found in writing – especially in newswriting.

Today we will explore a pattern you will often find in the news business: nouns modifying, or describing, other nouns. Understanding this idea will not only help your reading skills, but also help develop your writing skills.

Join us as we explore a common pattern in news reporting!

Definitions

An adjective is a word that describes, or modifies, a noun or pronoun. Consider this example:

Everyday Grammar is a good program.

Here, the adjective good describes the noun program. A noun is a word that is the name of something. That thing could be a person, idea, place or action.

Sometimes nouns can act like adjectives. In other words, they change the meaning of other nouns. Listen to this example:

Everyday Grammar is a grammar program.

Here, the word grammar, a noun, is acting¹ like an adjective. It is modifying the noun program. For the purposes of this report, we will call this pattern a 'noun-noun pairing.'

We have discussed this subject before in another Everyday Grammar program, which you can find on the VOA Learning English website. It is called When Nouns Act Like Adjectives.

News stories

You might be asking yourself: how does this discussion relate to news reporting?

Susan Conrad and Douglas Biber are grammar experts. They note that in newswriting, nouns that act like adjectives are almost as common as adjectives themselves.

In other words, understanding groupings of 'noun-noun' words is an important skill to have when reading news stories.

The good news for English learners is that there are patterns in how news writers use these pairings. Nouns that relate to abstract entities² - things that you cannot really see - are often modified by other nouns. Examples include descriptions of organizations, businesses, or even human health.

Now, let me take you on a tour of a news website and offer a few examples.

Institutions

Our first stop is the newspaper’s current events section. In this area, you often find stories about government institutions, cities, courts and so on.

Noun-noun pairings are often used to identify institutions, write Conrad and Biber.

Let’s consider how nouns are used in that manner.

One example is the word government.

Here is a line from a story on the VOA Learning English website:

“Estonia has launched a project to make government administration completely digital.”

Here, the noun government is acting like an adjective. It is modifying another noun, administration.

Other nouns you might find in the current events section include city, state, hospital and community.

For example, you often hear reports about a state subsidy³ or a court case. Now, you know the grammar behind such terms!

Business

Our next stop on the news tour is the business section. It is another place where readers often find nouns modifying other nouns.

Consider this report from The New York Times newspaper.

The story is called:

"China Pledges Openness in Hopes of Reaching a Trade Deal"

Here, trade deal is the structure we would like to draw your attention to. Trade is the noun that is - you guessed it! – modifying the word deal. The story talks about China's desire to end a trade war with the United States. Yes, trade war is also an example of a noun-noun pairing.

Company profits, labor⁴ supply, and market forces, are other examples that you will often see in business news.

Health

Our final stop on this tour is the health section. We start by listening to part of a VOA story called “More Americans Died From Drugs in 2016 Than Any Year Before.”

The story tells about a statement that U.S. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein made to reporters:

"Rosenstein called it a “horrifying surge in drug overdoses." He added that drug abuse is wrecking⁶ families and communities throughout the U.S."

You heard the terms drug overdoses and drug abuse – both cases of nouns modifying other nouns.

The nouns drug, health and cancer are all used to modify other nouns. You will often read stories about drug tests, health care systems, cancer treatments and cancer drugs, for example.

Closing thoughts:

The next time you are reading news stories in English, try to look for examples of nouns modifying other nouns. Can you find some of the examples that we talked about today? Can you think of other examples?

You can find a list of common nouns used as modifiers with the text version of the story on our website, learningenglish.voanews.com.

We give you some examples, but there are many others. Try to record common noun-noun pairings that you find, along with the subjects they appear with. Over time, you will start to develop an impressive knowledge of news terms and expressions.

And that's Everyday Grammar.

I'm Jill Robbins.

And I'm John Russell.

Words in This Story

grammatical – adj. involving or related to the structure of language?

feature – n. an interesting or important part, quality or ability

pattern – n. the repeated way in which something happens or is done

tour – n. a short trip or visit

manner – n. a way of doing things

digital – adj. using or characterized by computer technology

guess – v. to estimate or make a prediction

horrify⁵ – v. to cause (someone) to feel horror or shock;

surge – n. a sudden, large increase

1 acting   

n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的

参考例句：

• Ignore her,she's just acting.别理她，她只是假装的。
• During the seventies,her acting career was in eclipse.在七十年代，她的表演生涯黯然失色。

2 entities   

实体对像； 实体，独立存在体，实际存在物( entity的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Our newspaper and our printing business form separate corporate entities. 我们的报纸和印刷业形成相对独立的企业实体。
• The North American continent is made up of three great structural entities. 北美大陆是由三个构造单元组成的。

3 subsidy   

n.补助金，津贴

参考例句：

• The university will receive a subsidy for research in artificial intelligence.那个大学将得到一笔人工智能研究的补助费。
• The living subsidy for senior expert's family is included in the remuneration.报酬已包含高级专家家人的生活补贴。

4 labor   

n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦

参考例句：

• We are never late in satisfying him for his labor.我们从不延误付给他劳动报酬。
• He was completely spent after two weeks of hard labor.艰苦劳动两周后，他已经疲惫不堪了。

5 horrify   

vt.使恐怖，使恐惧，使惊骇

参考例句：

• His family were horrified by the change.他的家人对这一变化感到震惊。
• When I saw these figures I was horrified.我看到这些数字时无比惊骇。

6 wrecking   

破坏

参考例句：

• He teed off on his son for wrecking the car. 他严厉训斥他儿子毁坏了汽车。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Instead of wrecking the valley, the waters are put to use making electricity. 现在河水不但不在流域内肆疟，反而被人们用来生产电力。 来自辞典例句