Indicating likelihood
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Using nouns to indicate likelihood | page 5 of 5 |
Reasons for using nouns
There are two main reasons why a writer might want to use a noun. One reason is to
convey the writer's judgement of the proposition's 
likelihood; the other is to summarise what has
gone before:
With the farmland around Swayjghazi lying fallow for the winter, American intelligence had concluded that local peasants would have little reason to venture out of their village and into the fields. This assumption, as Balwanz immediately discovered, was absurd. (Bank of English)
The word assumption serves firstly to convey the writer's opinion of whether American military intelligence was correct in its thinking that Iraqi peasants would stay indoors during the winter. If a writer uses a word such as assumption when referring to what someone else thinks, there is a good chance that the writer is questioning the truth or likelihood of the other person's proposition.
The word assumption can also be seen as the writer's summary of the preceding sentence, and functions as a link to the next sentence, in which we learn that American military intelligence was indeed wrong.
This assumption, as Balwanz immediately discovered, was absurd. No sooner had the team finished sterilizing its holes at sunrise than dozens of Iraqis began drifting across the countryside. (Bank of English)
In the following example, belief is used in a similar way:
Are you in favour of giving to a doctor who has failed not only to comfort, but also to adequately relieve the distress of a seriously ill patient, the right to compound his ineffectiveness by killing the patient? This belief in the "right to die" or, more correctly, the right to be killed, poses many questions which need to be answered by the community before any legislative changes are implemented. (Bank of English)
Nouns, when they are used in this way, are known as summarising
nouns . This use of nouns is
one of the ways in which sentences are linked together to form coherent texts. For further
information, see 
Representing actions with nouns:
Reasons for representing actions with nouns.
Reasons for using nouns
