Here’s an interesting grammar puzzler e-mailed to me yesterday, March 15, 2013, by FH, an English teacher in Iran:
Dear Mr. Carillo,
Please look at options (A) and (B)
(A) It was a hard work.
(B) A good knowledge of French.
As you know, (A) is wrong but (B) is correct. But why? Both “work” and “knowledge” are uncountable, both have an adjective in front of them. But why (A) is wrong and (B) correct?
I am really confused. The issue of using the indefinite article “a” in front of uncountable nouns has really confused me.
All the best
FH
Here’s my reply to FH:
Dear FH,
Here’s my grammar analysis of the two grammatical constructions you presented:
(A) “It was a hard work.”
(B) “A good knowledge of French.”
The first, “It was a hard work,” is grammatically flawed and unidiomatic because it needlessly uses the indefinite article “a” to precede “hard work.” It’s true that here, “work” is an uncountable noun that’s preceded by the adjective “hard,” but “hard work” is actually functioning in that sentence as a compound noun—a figurative expression or idiom—meaning “difficult labor.” The words “hard” and “work” are therefore not working as separate grammar entities in this case.
As a compound noun, “hard work” in that sentence serves as a predicate nominative to the subject “it” following this pattern:
It + was + (hard work)
Subject + linking verb + predicate nominative
By definition, a predicate nominative follows a linking verb and tells us what the subject is. In the sentence in question, although the predicate nominative “hard work” is a compound noun, it serves as an adjective describing the subject “it,” in much the same way that the predicate nominative “big trouble” works as an adjective in the sentence below:
“She was big trouble.”
We don’t say “She was a big trouble,” which is grammatically wrong and awfully unidiomatic. In the same way, we don’t say “It was a hard work” but say “It was hard work” instead.
(The grammatical situation would be different if “work” is used in a sentence as a stand-alone noun in its literal sense modified by a preceding adjective phrase. An indefinite pronoun would then be needed, as in “It was a hard piece of work” and “It was an infuriating kind of work.”)
The above analysis, to my mind, explains why we don’t use the indefinite article “a” in the sentence “It was hard work.” But if this is the case, why then is the indefinite article “a” necessary in this other sentence that you presented?
“A good knowledge of French.”
Let’s see why this phrase needs a different grammatical treatment although it also uses an uncountable noun like the sentence we analyzed.
Although both “work” and “knowledge” are uncountable nouns, they are generically different. “Work” in the sense of the sentence you presented is uncountable because it’s a thing that can’t be physically counted like, say, marbles or houses. However, “work” as a uncountable noun can take either a singular form (“work”) or plural form (“works”). We therefore can construct sentences like “It was productive work,” “It was a difficult piece of work,” “She did many different works,” or “His works in modern architecture made him famous.”
In contrast, “knowledge” belongs to the class of abstract ideas or qualities that don’t have and can’t take a plural form at all, like “ignorance,” “courage,” “cowardice,” and “patriotism”; we can’t use “knowledges,” “ignorances,” “courages,” “cowardices,” and “patriotisms” in any kind of sentence construction whatsoever. But being always singular, such abstract nouns generally need to be preceded by the indefinite article “a” or “an” to work properly in a sentence, whether or not there’s an intervening adjective between the noun and the indefinite article. Not to do so would, of course, result in faulty syntax.
Consider these three sets of examples:
“He showed an ignorance of geography.” “He showed a surprising ignorance of geography.”
“She demonstrated a courage that amazed his peers.” “She demonstrated an indomitable courage that amazed his peers.”
“They showed a disappointing cowardice that shocked us.” “They showed an ignoble cowardice that shocked us.”
All of the sentences above will grammatically malfunction—or at least sound unidiomatic—if we knock off the “a” or “an” preceding the abstract nouns.
This need for the indefinite pronoun “a” or “an” by an abstract noun when used in a sentence obviously applies to the noun “knowledge” as well: “She has a knowledge of French.” “She has a good knowledge of French.” “She has an amazing knowledge of French.”
This rule is not absolute, however. When no postmodifying phrase follows a noun preceded by an adjective, the indefinite pronoun “a” or “an” can be dropped for both brevity and euphony:
“He showed shocking ignorance.” “He showed abysmal ignorance.”
“She demonstrated amazing courage.” “She demonstrated indomitable courage.”
“They showed disappointing cowardice.” “They showed ignoble cowardice.”
I hope you will find this explanation helpful.
