Common use of The nouns studied Clause in Contracts

The nouns studied. Given the classifications of collective nouns presented in Section 2.2 above, for purposes of the analytical part of this study we have opted for the list of specific collective nouns given in Quirk et al’s (1985:755) classification. We have excluded the generic collective nouns and the unique collective nouns, since they were not attested, or in some cases, were attested only a few times in the corpora studied. Our choice was also influenced by pragmatic concerns. Namely, we hold that learners of English as a foreign language are more likely to hear and use specific collectives, which belong more or less to neutral, everyday contexts. Compare, for instance crowd, family, flock (all specific collectives) to the more register-specific generic collectives clergy, aristocracy, intelligentsia and unique collectives The Vatican, the Arab League, etc. Although this 'register-based' difference is not absolute, we hold that the latter two are more natural in the more specialized contexts of governance, politics, economics, etc. Notice that our database also includes nouns denoting some relatively small groups of people who have some function in common (e.g. crew) and nouns that generally denote very large groups of individuals (e.g. army).