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Exactly what kind of a noun is "language" in this metaphorical sentence?

Music is beautiful language.

Dog Lover
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user3510079
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    My gut expects "a beautiful language"... – Stephie Jul 13 '15 at 08:56
  • Mine too, but either way works. Different connotation though. Either Music IS literally a language (which it arguably is, with both written and audio forms, a syntax, and punctuation); or instances of music are just metaphorically "language", because they "speak to us" somehow. – Brian Hitchcock Jul 13 '15 at 09:15
  • Language is beautiful music. What type of noun is music? @Stephie, do you expect "a beautiful music" there? – TimR Jul 13 '15 at 10:35
  • @TRomano But we say Water is a substance not Water is substance. And (A) substance is (a) water doesn't really work, IMHO. – Damkerng T. Jul 13 '15 at 11:16
  • @Damkerng T. Are you suggesting that substance, art, music, and language are all the same kind of noun? – TimR Jul 13 '15 at 11:43
  • @TRomano My idea was that not all nouns work the same way, and the copula be sometimes is directional. For me, the meaning should come first, and meaning can help resolve the syntactic category, but syntax can force how we should interpret the meaning. Music is a beautiful language could mean one thing, while Music is beautiful language, given that it's a valid sentence, should mean a different thing. – Damkerng T. Jul 13 '15 at 11:53
  • @Damkerng T. Agreed. If we have an abstraction that refers to a paradigm or essence (Art, Music, Language -- by convention we use upper case) we don't use the article. Consider a treatise on metaphysics in which the author makes a distinction between Substance and Idea. In such a treatise one would accept as grammatical the question "Is a drop of water on the back of your hand Substance or Idea?" and the answer "Water is Substance". Now consider a textbook on crime-scene forensics: "The investigator should test the substance to determine whether it is organic or inorganic." – TimR Jul 13 '15 at 12:46
  • @NANDAGOPAL How is "language" an uncountable noun? It has a plural - "languages". – Dog Lover Jul 13 '15 at 22:47
  • Yeah, that was stupid of me.. sorry. – NANDAGOPAL Jul 14 '15 at 08:51

1 Answers1

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"Language" is a common abstract noun. An abstract noun is, to put it simply, a thing which cannot be touched; a noun which expresses an idea, quality or state rather than a physical object. (Paraphrased from Google)

The other type of common noun is the concrete noun. This is the noun which is most common; for example, "dog", "computer", "table". Common nouns do not require a capital letter except in obvious circumstances such as the beginning of a sentence.

Dog Lover
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