Nouns (Parte 2): Gender and Plural – Inglês Enem

(URCA CE/2007)

NUTTY FOR THE DRAWING BOARD (PART I) About to turn 75, author and cartoonist Ziraldo collects honors and says he is in love with his work. Ziraldo Alves Pinto contradicts the legend that people from Minas Gerais don´t talk too much. Born in the city of Caratinga, in October 1932, the author of one of the greatest editorial successes in Brazil, the children´s book The Nutty Boy, from 1980, lets loose to talk about Blank I passion for drawing and for the art of putting ideas on paper. Full of projects, Ziraldo says that he doesn´t plan to stop soon. Happy, he celebrates innumerous honors which he has received in 2007, when he turns 75 years old and completes more than 50 years in his career.

There are exhibitions that show his talent as movie poster, designer, cartoonist, comic strip writer, and illustrator. Ziraldo was also honored with an extensive display in the 18^th Salão Carioca de Humor, which ended in April.

Ziraldo, who has already sold almost 10 million books, is the author of the first national comic magazine written by a single author, Pererê´s Gang. But his first success in children´s literature was the book Flicts (1969), about a color that can´t find its place in the world. (…)

Examples of countable nouns are:

(PUC RS/2007)

COCONUT TREE, COCO PALM

A thousand years⁷ ago, the coconut tree⁷ did not even exist in Tahiti. It was the pioneering Polynesians who first⁷ brought this plant¹ with them in their migrations. A tree of life² in every sense of the phrase¹², its nut supplies¹² water, milk and edible³ pulp; its “heart” is eaten in salads; its trunk⁸ serves as framework⁹ for Tahitian huts¹⁰, and its palms are woven⁴ as roofing¹¹.

Then¹⁴, of course, there is the coconut which¹⁴, when cut In¹⁵ two and dried in the sun, produces oil. Plait⁵ three blades  of grass⁶ and dip¹³ into¹⁵ this oil, light¹³… And you have a lamp. A lamp which not so¹⁵ very long ago was still used throughout¹⁴ the islands.

Nouns in English can be divided into countable or uncountable (e.g.: apple X water). In order to indicate some kind of “measurement” in the case of uncountable nouns, another noun is required (e.g.: glasses or liters of water). Accordingly, the expression below that is equivalent to the structure blades of grass (ref.6) is

(UEPB/2008)

Salad Poem

(for Henri Rousseau le Douanier)

The sun is shining outside

Henri Rousseau (Gentil Rousseau)

The sky is blue

like your skies

I want to paint the salad

on the table

bright crisp green red purple

lettuce and radishes, ham and tomatoes

Paint them like your jungles

Gentle Rousseau

I want to paint

All things bright and beautiful

All salads great and small

I want to make

Blue skies bluer

Green grass greener

Pink flowers brighter

Like you

Henri Rousseau

Adrian Henri

Which of the following groups of words from TEXT consists only of nouns:

(EFOA MG/2006)

Who lives longer?

¹How to live longer is a topic that has fascinated mankind for ²centuries. Today scientists are beginning to separate the facts from the ³fallacies surrounding the aging process. Why is it that some people reach ⁴a ripe old age and others do not? Several factors influencing longevity are ⁵set at birth, but surprisingly, many others are elements that can be ⁶changed. Here is what you should know.

⁷Some researchers divide the elements determining who will live ⁸longer into two categories: fixed factors and changeable factors. Gender, ⁹race and heredity are fixed factors – they can’t be reversed, although ¹⁰certain long term social changes can influence them. For example, ¹¹women live longer than men – at birth, their life expectancy is seven to ¹²eight years more. However, cigarette smoking, drinking and reckless ¹³driving could shorten this advantage.

¹⁴There is increasing evidence that length of life is also influenced ¹⁵by a number of elements that are within our ability to control. The most ¹⁶obvious are physical life-style factors.

¹⁷Cutting calories may be the single most significant life-style ¹⁸change you can make. Experiments have shown that in laboratory ¹⁹animals, a 40 percent calorie reduction leads to a 50 percent extension in ²⁰longevity. According to experts, eating less has a more profound and ²¹diversified effect on the aging process than does any other life-style ²²change. It is the only factor we know of in laboratory animals that is an ²³anti-aging factor.

²⁴A long life, however, is not just the result of being good to your ²⁵body and avoiding disease. All the various factors that constitute and ²⁶influence daily life can be critical too. In searching for the ingredients to a ²⁷long, healthy existence, scientists are studying links between longevity ²⁸and the psychological and social aspects of human existence. Several ²⁹aspects can play significant roles in determining your longevity.

³⁰Researchers have found that people who are socially integrated – ³¹members of a family network, married, or participants of structured group ³²activities – live longer.

³³Early studies indicated that the more friends and relatives you ³⁴had, the longer you lived. Newer studies focus on the types of ³⁵relationships that are most beneficial. According to these studies, larger ³⁶networks don’t always seem to be advantageous to women, since certain ³⁷kinds of ties add more demands rather than generate more help.

³⁸A feeling of autonomy or control can come from having a say in ³⁹important decisions (where you live, how you spend your money) or from ³⁹being surrounded by people who inspire confidence in your ability to ⁴⁰master certain tasks. Studies show these feelings bring a sense of wellbeing ⁴¹and satisfaction with life.

⁴²Where you live can make a difference in how long you live. A ⁴³study by the California Department of Health Services in Berkeley found a ⁴⁴40 percent higher mortality rate among people living in a poverty area ⁴⁵compared to those in a nonpoverty area. According to the study, the ⁴⁶difference was not due to age, sex, health care or life-style. The resulting ⁴⁷hypothesis was that a locale can have socioeconomic characteristics, ⁴⁸such as high crime rate and level of stress, that make it unhealthy.

⁴⁹People with higher incomes, more education and high-status ⁵⁰occupations tend to live longer. Researchers used to think this was due to ⁵¹better living and job conditions, nutrition and access to health care, but ⁵²these theories have not held up.

⁵³The message from experts is clear. There are many ways to add ⁵⁴years to your life. Instituting sound health practices and expanding your ⁵⁵circle of acquaintances and activities will have a beneficial effect. The ⁵⁶good news about aging is many of the factors related to longevity are also ⁵⁷related to life satisfaction.

(Source: SKALKA, P. Who lives longer? In: SMITH, L. C.; MARE, N. N. (Org.).

Topics for today: an advanced reading skills text. 2 ed. Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle, 1997, p. 70-73. Adapted.)

All of the following words function as nouns in the text, EXCEPT:

(UNIOESTE PR/2012)

Brazil police occupy Rio favela in World Cup operation

Brazilian security forces have occupied one of Rio de Janeiro’s biggest slums as part of a major crackdown ahead of the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics.

Some 800 police and special forces moved into the Mangueira shantytown, without needing to fire a shot, having announced the raid in advance.

The slum – or favela – is close to Rio’s famous Maracana stadium, where the World Cup final will be played.

The pre-dawn operation involved armoured vehicles and helicopters.

According to the newspaper, O Globo, leaflets were thrown out of the helicopters, some with photos of wanted criminals.

Others were printed with the police special forces’ telephone number so that residents could pass on information about drugs traffickers or weapons.

BBC Brazil correspondent Paulo Cabral says most of Mangueira’s residents co-operated with the operation, as they want to rid the area of drug dealers.

He says that Rio’s authorities are making an effort to gain the trust of those living in the slums, who – after decades of abuse – have got used to seeing the police as their enemy.

Mangueira – home to one of Rio’s most famous samba schools – is the 18th favela that the authorities have occupied recently.

Adapted from : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-13833037

Mark the noun that does NOT have the same plural form as in residents:

(UERN/2015)

What is Ebola?

Ebola is a viral illness of which the initial symptoms can include a sudden fever, intense weakness, muscle pain and a sore throat. And that is just the beginning: subsequent stages are vomiting, diarrhoea and – in some cases – both internal and external bleeding.

Healthcare workers are at risk if they treat patients without taking the right precautions to avoid infection. People are infectious as long as their blood and secretions contain the virus – in some cases, up to seven weeks after they recover.

The virus was first discovered in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1976 since when it has mostly affected countries further east, such as Uganda and Sudan. From Nzerekore, a remote area of south-eastern Guinea, the virus spread to the capital, Conakry, and neighbouring Liberia and Sierra Leone.

There have been 20 cases of Ebola being imported by someone travelling from a country of widespread transmission to Nigeria, with eight confirmed deaths.

A nurse in Spain became the first person to contract the deadly virus outside of West Africa, after treating two Spanish missionaries who had eventually died of Ebola in Madrid.

Ebola is spread through close physical contact with infected people. This is a problem for many in the West African countries currently affected by the outbreak, as practices around religion and death involve close physical contact.

The ritual preparation of bodies for burial involves washing, touching and kissing. Those with the highest status in society are often charged with washing and preparing the body. For a woman this can include braiding the hair, and for a man shaving the head.

If a person has died from Ebola, their body will have a very high viral load. Bleeding is a usual symptom of the disease prior to death. Those who handle the body and come into contact with the blood or other body fluids are at greatest risk of catching the disease.

The item in which the gerund form was used as a noun is:

(UFRGS/2015)

⁰¹ The study of game aesthetics is a very ⁰² recent practice, spanning less than two ⁰³ decades. Unlike game studies in mathematics ⁰⁴ or the social sciences, …….. are much older, ⁰⁵ games became subject to humanistic study ⁰⁶ only after computer and video games became ⁰⁷ popular. This lack of persistent interest might ⁰⁸ seem odd, but only if we see traditional ⁰⁹ games and computer games as intrinsically ¹⁰ similar, …….. they are not. We might try to ¹¹ explain this lack by noting that games are ¹² usually seen as trivial and lowbrow by the ¹³ aesthetic and theoretical elites …….. cultivate ¹⁴ the analysis of artistic media objects: ¹⁵ literature, the visual arts, theatre, music, etc. ¹⁶ But this does not explain the fact that ¹⁷ aesthetic studies of games are now not only ¹⁸ possible, but even encouraged and supported ¹⁹ with funding. What happened to cause this ²⁰ change?

²¹ A possible explanation could be that digital ²² games, unlike traditional games or sports, ²³ consist of non-ephemeral content (stored ²⁴ words, sounds and images), which places ²⁵ them much closer to the ideal object of the ²⁶ Humanities, the work of art. Thus, they ²⁷ become visible and textualizable for the ²⁸ aesthetic observer, in a way the previous ²⁹ phenomena were not.

³⁰ However, this sudden visibility, probably ³¹ also caused by the tremendous economic and ³² cultural success of computer games, produces ³³ certain blind spots in the aesthetic observer, ³⁴ especially if he/she is trained in textual/visual ³⁵ analysis, as is usually the case. Instead of ³⁶ treating the new phenomena carefully, and as ³⁷ objects of a study for which no methodology ³⁸ yet exists, they are analyzed with tools that ³⁹ happen to be at hand, such as film or ⁴⁰ narrative theories. Therefore we need to ⁴¹ outline and promote a methodology for the ⁴² aesthetic study of games, which, given the ⁴³ current nascent state of the field, will ⁴⁴ doubtlessly give way to more sophisticated ⁴⁵ approaches in the years to come.

Adapted from: Aarseth, Espen. Playing Research:
Methodological approaches to game analysis. Available at: <http://hypertext.rmit.edu.au/dac/ papers/Aarseth.pdf>. Accessed on July 26th, 2014.

Select the alternative which presents only nouns in their plural forms.

(FGV /2007)

On Sept. 20, in all likelihood, Shinzo Abe will be elected president of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party – a victory that will guarantee his election, a few days later, as prime minister. Yasuo Fukuda, his closest rival, had been campaigning as the dovish alternative to the hawkish Abe. But then North Korea fired a clutch of missiles into the sea of Japan, shifting the balance decisively in favor of Shinzo Abe, who first transformed himself into a national figure in  2002 by harshly indicting North Korea for its abductions of innocent Japanese citizens in the 1970s.

What will the world see when the cameras are finally trained on Abe? The problem is that no one – not even the Japanese – really knows. That’s caused observers to latch onto¹ what little they do know about his ambitions.

He’s got at least two big goals, and they’re both risky. The first is revising the Constitution to eliminate Japan’s pacifist postwar military tradition, and the second, which could be a function of the first, is defying China’s bid for regional preeminence. A generation ago, the first idea would have struck mainstream Japanese voters as irresponsibly radical; the second even now strikes many as fraught with² uncertainty.

This summer he shocked many of his compatriots when he responded to the North Korean missile tests by suggesting that it might be time to consider the option of pre-emptive strikes to prevent future launches. But Abe subsequently backtracked, and lately he’s adopted a softer tone.

Surprises could be in the offing. Rumor has it, for example, that Abe’s aides are busily working to set up summit meetings with the leaders³ of China and South Korea, in a bid for a fresh diplomat start with those neighbors. But no one knows how a Prime Minister Abe would handle himself in a crisis. If you want to get to know Shinzo Abe, wait until the real work begins.

(from Asia’s Mystery Man in NEWSWEEK, Sept.18, 2006)

The agentive suffix ER is added to the verb lead to form the noun leader (ref.3). It can be added to all the following items, except

(IFMG/2015)

THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY (2014)

The worldwide phenomenon of The Hunger Games continues to set the world on fire with The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1, which finds Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) in District 13 after she literally shatters the games forever. Under the leadership of President Coin (Julianne Moore) and the advice of her trusted friends, Katniss spreads her wings as she fights to save Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) and a nation moved by her courage. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 is directed by Francis Lawrence from a screenplay by Danny Strong and Peter Craig and produced by Nina Jacobson’s Color Force in tandem with producer Jon Kilik. The novel on which the film is based is the third in a trilogy written by Suzanne Collins that has over 65 million copies in print in the U.S. alone. (c) Lionsgate

Rating: PG-13 (for intense sequences of violence and action, some disturbing images and thematic material)

Genre: Drama , Action & Adventure , Science Fiction & Fantasy

Directors: Francis Lawrence (II) , Francis Lawrence

Writers: Danny Strong , Peter Craig

In Theaters: Nov 21, 2014 Wide

Runtime: 2 hr. 5 min.

Lionsgate Films – Official Site

Available at: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_hunger_
games_mockingjay_part_1/. Access on: November 23rd 2014.

Some suffixes are used in order to create a noun from a verb.

Choose the alternative which exclusively presents verbs which were turned into nouns by adding a suffix.

(PUC GO/2015)

[…]

Arandir (numa alucinação) – Dália, faz o seguinte. Olha o seguinte: diz à Selminha. (violento) Diz que, em toda minha vida, a única coisa que salva é o beijo no asfalto. Pela primeira vez. Dália, escuta! Pela primeira vez, na vida! Por um momento, eu me senti bom! (furioso) Eu me senti quase, nem sei! Escuta, escuta! Quando eu te vi no banheiro, eu não fui bom, entende? Desejei você. Naquele momento, você devia ser a irmã nua. E eu desejei. Saí logo, mas desejei a cunhada. Na praça da Bandeira, não. Lá, eu fui bom. É lindo! É lindo, eles não entendem. Lindo beijar quem está morrendo! (grita) Eu não me arrependo! Eu não me arrependo!

Dália – Selminha te odeia! (Arandir volta para a cunhada, cambaleante. Passa a mão na boca encharcada.)

Arandir (com voz estrangulada) – Odeia. (muda de tom) Por isso é que recusou. Recusou o meu beijo. Eu quis beijar e ela negou. Negou a boca. Não quis o meu beijo.

Dália – Eu quero!

Arandir (atônito) – Você?

Dália (sofrida) – Selminha não te beija, mas eu.

Arandir (contido) – Você é uma criança. (Dália aperta entre as mãos o rosto de Arandir.)

Arandir – Dália. (Dália beija-o, de leve, nos lábios.)

Dália – Te beijei.

Arandir (maravilhado) – Menina!

Dália (quase sem voz) – Agora me beija. Você. Beija.

Arandir (desprende-se com violência) – Eu amo Selminha!

Dália (desesperada) – Eu me ofereço e. Selminha não veio e eu vim.

Arandir – Dália, eu mato tua irmã. Amo tanto que. (muda de tom) Eu ia pedir. Pedir à Selminha para morrer comigo.

Dália – Morrer?

Arandir (desesperado) – Eu e Selminha! Mas ela não veio!

Dália (agarra o cunhado. Quase boca com boca, sôfrega) – Eu morreria.

Arandir – Comigo?

Dália (selvagem) – Contigo! Nós dois! Contigo! Eu te amo!

[…]

(RODRIGUES, Nelson. O beijo no asfalto.
Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, 1995. p. 98-100.)

The noun “kiss” (beijo) and verb “kiss” (beijar) appear numerous times in text in both the title of the work, as well as in the dialogue between the two characters. Although the verb “kiss” can be used as an intransitive verb, it is generally used, such as in the excerpt from O beijo no asfalto, as a transitive verb.

Recalling that a transitive verb is an action verb that takes an object, which of the following sentence or sentences exemplifies the use of a transitive verb?
I. John ran quickly.
II. Susie kicked the ball.
III. My uncle broke the window.
IV. I wrote a letter to my friend.

Choose from the following options: