308. Complexities of “Whole”

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“Whole” can be confusing because of its similarity to “all” and its variable noun/adjective status

TOPIC OVERVIEW

Whole is a familiar word with surprising complexities, some of which cause error among inexperienced users of English. As it is also common in professional writing, I wish here to examine it in detail. Key points include its pronunciation, grammatical class variation, meaning subtleties, usage after a(n) and the, usage before of, and its occurrence within fixed phrases. The post finishes with a practice exercise.

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PRONUNCIATION AND BASIC MEANING

I expect most readers will know that the “w” at the start of whole is not pronounced (see 155. Silent Consonants, #8). Perhaps less well known is the closeness of the pronunciation of whole to that of all. Apart from the /h/ at the start of whole, both have a similar-sounding vowel before a final /l/. In Southern British English, the vowel in whole is variably pronounced /ɒ/ or /əυ/, while that in all is /ɔ/ – a difference mainly of length.

This pronunciation similarity can be a particular problem for speakers of languages, such as French, that do not usually allow the /h/ sound at the start of words. In listening especially, the /h/ of whole is not likely to be very noticeable, leaving similarities of pronunciation that, combined with the meaning similarity, may easily cause whole and all to be confused. One common resultant error is a belief that *the all is possible (instead of all the), this having been the way the whole was interpreted in listening (see 144. Words that are Often Heard Wrongly).

Meaning-wise, whole carries, of course, the idea of completeness or totality. On top of that, and distinguishing it from all (see 169. “All”, “Each” and “Every”), it usually conveys one of three possible messages. One is a very strong indication that all rather than some of something is being talked about:

(a) The whole enterprise took three days.

This very clearly associates three days with all of the enterprise rather than any part of it. Quite often, there will be preceding information about some or all of the parts (for example, a description of the first day’s activity above), so that whole is making a contrast with it, and hence even more clearly indicating a change of focus.

Whole could be called “emphatic” in this use because the same meaning would actually be still understandable without it. However, in speech, whole would not normally be pronounced in an emphatic way.

The second main use of whole is to suggest in an emphatic way the idea of “more than expected”:

(b) The awful noise went on for a whole day.

This says that a day was a very long time to suffer from the awful noise. Normally in such sentences, the pronunciation of both whole and its partner noun (day above) would be emphatic (see 125. Stress and Emphasis).

Thirdly, whole can mean “over-arching” or “covering all other possibilities”. Used like this, it typically goes between the… and, most often, either idea (= proposal), plan, point, purpose or reason. There is often a suggestion that the addressee has failed to recognise the idea (etc.) as the key one (But that’s the whole idea!).

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GRAMMATICAL FEATURES

1. Word Class Variation

Whole is mostly used as a noun or adjective. It is a noun when not directly followed by a noun or noun phrase e.g.:

(c) A whole is often greater than its parts.

By far the most common noun use is before of, e.g. the whole of the world.

As an adjective, whole usually describes a directly-following noun or noun phrase (e.g. the whole world, a whole new science), or the pronoun one (a whole one), or a noun located before and separated by a link verb like BE (e.g. the fossil was whole).

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2. Combination with a Following Noun

Most noun types can follow the whole of:

*SINGULAR COUNTABLE WITH a(n): the whole of an afternoon
*SINGULAR COUNTABLE WITH the: the whole of the afternoon
*PLURAL COUNTABLE: the whole of afternoons
*PLURAL COUNTABLE WITH the: the whole of the afternoons
PROPER: the whole of France
*PROPER WITH the: the whole of the United States
UNCOUNTABLE TYPE A: the whole of childhood
UNCOUNTABLE TYPE B: all luggage
*UNCOUNTABLE WITH the: the whole of the childhood/luggage

For information about which proper nouns usually follow the, see 47. Article Errors with Proper Nouns.

Uncountable nouns that I call “type A” seem usually to represent something with a fairly clear boundary. Childhood, for example, is bounded by a quite definite number of years. “Type B” nouns lack this feature. This difference is important above only where uncountable nouns lack the (through having “generic” meaning), since it leads to type B nouns typically following all rather than the whole of.

Other examples of type A uncountable nouns – easily usable like childhood after the whole of – are humanity and business. Other examples of type B uncountable nouns are love and air. Practice in recognising the two types of uncountable noun, and hence where the whole of is possible, is offered in an exercise below.

The combinations marked * above can alternatively drop the whole of and place just whole directly before the final noun:

the whole of an afternoon → a whole afternoon
the whole of the afternoon → the whole afternoon
the whole of afternoons → whole afternoons
the whole of the afternoons → the whole afternoons
the whole of the United States → the whole United States
the whole of the luggage → the whole luggage

Note the absence from this list of proper nouns that normally lack the, such as France.  They must keep the whole of. Usage with just the whole (e.g. *the whole France) is a common error. One other noun with this requirement is humanity – *the whole humanity should be avoided.

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FIXED EXPRESSIONS AND DERIVATIVES

Two important preposition phrases are on the whole and as a whole. Each is unusual in not allowing a choice between adverbial and adjectival use (see 84. Seven Things to Know about Prepositions, #2). On the whole is always adverbial. It might be expected to mean “wholly” (see 85. Preposition Phrases and Corresponding Adverbs), but it in fact means “generally”. As a whole is purely adjectival, needing a noun just before it to link with:

(d) Fuel price changes affect economies as a whole.

Elsewhere, whole has special meanings associated with one or more particular expressions. In whole milk and wholemeal, it suggests that nothing has been removed from a commodity that very often does have something removed from it: fat in the former case, wheat germ in the latter. In the whole story, where the meaning of story is “explanation” rather than “narrative”, whole suggests inclusion of everything regardless of inconvenience, so that not the whole story implies omission of information, often in order to deceive.

A whole before various singular “collective” nouns (suggesting multiplicity), such as collection, crowd, group, myriad, range, variety and informal lot, makes the multiplicity sound greater. These nouns are often followed by of – e.g. a whole range of objections – while a whole lot is also possible before comparative adjectives or adverbs, e.g. a whole lot better, a whole lot more quickly (see 194 Adverbs that Say How Much, #4).

Another common combination is the whole (of the) time used to show that an extended event or situation is happening throughout the occurrence of another one (see 225. Simultaneous Occurrence, #3). It may or may not be combined with a following subject + verb linked by a visible or understood when:

(e) Solar panels produce electricity the whole time (when) the sun is shining.

Also notable is a whole new before a noun to emphasise that the noun idea is not just a replacement of an old one but also completely different from it. Common partner nouns include approach, ball game (= situation), meaning, method, set, understanding and way.

Finally, whole occurs within a small number of compound words like wholemeal above. Food described as wholesome is health-promoting. Whole-hearted describing a person or behaviour suggests total, unreserved belief or commitment. Wholesale is a noun, verb, adjective or adverb referring to goods sold in large quantities to other sellers, usually very cheaply.

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PRACTICE USING “the whole of”

Some of the uncountable nouns in the list below can follow the whole of and some cannot (usually needing all instead). Can you separate the two groups? Answers are given after.

destruction, freedom, health, history, humanity, information, justice, life, logic, love, manufacturing, nature, paper, politics, research, science, silence, society, storage, suffering, time, truth, vegetation, water, work, yesterday.

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Answers

Nouns allowing the whole of are underlined:

destruction, freedom, health, history, humanity, information, justice, life, logic, love, manufacturing, nature, paper, politics, research, science, silence, society, storage, suffering, time, truth, vegetation, water, work, yesterday.

Note that logic after the whole of refers to the subject known as logic, not logic itself; while nature means “the natural world”, not “type”.

307. Word Order Variations

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Most types of word have a typical position in English sentences but some allow an alternative for special effect

ROLE AND TYPES OF WORD ORDER

Words in most languages, if not all, are ordered according to rules. This usually means that in a particular language some word orders are unlikely or impossible, and choices between different possible orders express different meanings. Most word-order rules are best stated in terms not of individual words but of word types.

Word types are of two different kinds. One is the fixed grammatical class (“part of speech”) that the words belong to. An example of a word-order rule involving grammatical classes is the one behind the fact that the problem is grammatical in English but not *problem the. Since the belongs to the class of “articles” and problem is a “noun”, the rule can be stated as “articles go before their partner noun”. This is a better way of stating the rule than saying that the goes before problem because it covers more: every combination of the (or a[n]) + noun instead of just one.

The other kind of word type is based on the role that the word assumes in a sentence or part of it. The main sentence roles are “subject”, “verb”, “direct object”, “indirect object”, “subject complement”, “object complement” and “adverbial”. A potential for confusion here is that one of the terms – “verb” – is also the name of a word type. A better name would have been “verbial”, but “verb” is the established one and is used here. Within individual parts of a sentence, roles like “apposition”, “negative” and “subordinator” are typical.

This second set of terms facilitates some important word-order rules that would be difficult to state with only grammatical class names. They can distinguish between subtypes of grammatical classes, for example subject nouns and object nouns (see 8. Object-Dropping Errors), and they can cover multiple word types; complements, for example, may be either nouns or adjectives (see 220. Features of Complements).

An example of a word-order rule that is best stated in terms of sentence roles concerns subject complements (roughly definable as nouns or adjectives that are shown by a special kind of verb to be describing or identifying its subject). The rule is that subject complements usually follow both the subject and the verb.

Word-order rules apply at different levels. The example above of the-positioning is a low-level one, mostly involving just two words. At a higher level are rules for ordering multiple parts of a sentence component. For example, an adjective describing a central noun within a subject usually goes before that noun but after any article present. A rule at the highest level is that verbs (in the sentence-role sense) normally go after their subject but before any object or complement. Some grammarians consequently call English a “Subject-Verb-Object” (SVO) language – a sequence that might not be the norm in another language.

Some word orders are compulsory and some are not. The rule for the with nouns is compulsory: placing the after instead of before is ungrammatical (see 100. What is a Grammar Error?). The SVO rule, however, is optional. A familiar alternative is the use of the verb BE before its subject in questions. This post is about alternative word orders that are common in written English, along with their impact on meaning. For further possibilities, see 156.Mentioning what the Reader Knows Already (#10). For a discussion of non-grammatical ordering, see 222. Information Orders in Texts.

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COMMON VARIATIONS

1. Object before Subject (OSV)

EXAMPLE
(a) The problem was clear to everyone. A solution nobody could see.

Here, a solution, the object of could see, precedes the subject nobody. A common reason for making such a change is a wish to highlight a contrast between the object’s meaning and that of the subject of the preceding sentence (problem above): having the second noun in the same starting position despite its object role adds a structural link to the meaning one.

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2. Reversed Subject and Complement

EXAMPLE
(b) High on the agenda was employee safety.

The subject here is employee safety. This is clear from the fact that the words before the verb was (high on the agenda) are of a kind (adjective phrase) that cannot be the subject of a verb but can be a complement.

An adjective phrase is recognisable here because it comprises an adjective (high) followed by a preposition + noun (on the agenda) – a typical combination (see 203. Expanding an Adjective with Words after it, #1). Although there is a noun (agenda) in this phrase, it cannot be the subject of the sentence because it follows a preposition (on), something subjects cannot do (see 84. Seven Things to Know about Prepositions, #5).

Complements that can change places with a subject tend to be adjectives rather than nouns because a starting noun complement could much more easily be misunderstood as the subject of its verb (see 220. Features of Complements, #6).

One situation where a complement might precede its verb is when the verb’s subject needs to be at the end to ensure that it is recognised as the focus of the sentence. Another situation is where the subject is wordy, a characteristic that English speakers usually feel does not suit the start of a sentence.

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3. Reversed Subject and Verb

EXAMPLES
(c) Seldom are the planets close together in the sky.

(d) Across the Sahara flows the Nile.

(e) The Rockies are new mountains, as are the Himalayas.

In (c) here, the reason why the planets, the subject of are, is placed after it is that both follow a negative adverb (seldom). Starting negative adverbs as a whole require this word order change, other common examples being little, rarely, not often, neither and nor, plus hardly, barely and scarcely combined with a later when…, no sooner with a later than…, and only and not only except sometimes when the subject and verb follow directly (see 251. The Grammar of “Only”, #2).

Sentences like (c) can also begin with adverbial so + adjective / adverb (the kind needing a later that…: see 64. Double Conjunctions, #3), and with the conjunction neither (partnering a later nor), provided an object rather than subject noun follows directly.

The subject of the verb in sentences like (c) has the same position as in direct questions, namely after a part of most verbs, but all of BE in the present or past simple tense.

Sentence (d) also starts with an adverb expression (across the Sahara), but a location one without any negativity. Subject-verb reversal usually follows such adverbials if the subject is naming new information. However, it is probably not true reversal, but rather an abbreviated there sentence (…there flows the Nile), a common option after some adverbial types (see 295. Options in Saying Where, #4). Supporting this view is the fact that pronoun subjects, which rarely name new information, cannot change position – (d) could end it flows but not *flows it. Moreover, movable subjects must follow all of the verb, even when it is multi-word – (d) could not end *does the Nile flow.

In sentence (e), the subject-verb reversal directly follows the similarity-showing conjunction as (always a mid-sentence use). The subject position is the same as in sentences like (c). The reversal here is optional: its presence indicates an assumption that the reader does not already know the mentioned point; without it (…as the Himalayas are) there is a suggestion that the reader does know this (see 159. Exotic Grammar Structures 2, #1).

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4. Adverbial Moved to the Start

EXAMPLE
(d) Across the Sahara flows the Nile.

Some adverbials most naturally start a sentence and some do not. The starting kind tend to say something about the whole sentence rather than a part of it (see 121. Sentence-Spanning Adverbs).

Adverbs that do not naturally start a sentence, however, are often able to do so if the wording before and/or after the sentence makes that desirable. The adverbial across the Sahara in (d) would normally follow flows, the word whose meaning it is mostly closely linked to, but it can easily start the sentence too.

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5. Separately-Highlighted Wording

EXAMPLES
(f) It was in 1492 that Columbus first reached America.

(g) What most motivates consumers is low prices.

In both of these, the underlined words are within a special structure that clearly marks them as the main information in their sentence. The first is near the start of an it sentence, between the verb BE (= was) and that; the second ends a what sentence, and again directly follows BE (= is). The choice between an it and a what structure depends on whether the highlighted wording needs to be near the start or the end of the sentence.

In both examples, the highlighted wording is outside the sentence position it would have in a standard sentence: in (f), in 1492 would typically end its sentence, while in (g) low prices would start as the subject of MOTIVATE. However, such movement is not inevitable with it... and what… sentences, as they do not always have to highlight the same part of a sentence. Sentence (f), for example, could highlight the subject Columbus instead, thereby putting it into the normal position of subjects and returning in 1492 to its normal sentence-end position:

(h) It was Columbus who first reached America in 1492.

For full descriptions of it and what sentences, see 190. Special Uses of “it”, #3, and 145. Highlighting with “What” Sentences.

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6. Separated Starting Adjective

EXAMPLE
(i) Common in speech, interjections are rare in writing.

The start of a sentence is a not unnatural position for an adjective describing a subject noun after it (e.g. Difficult problems are…). In the example above, however, the starting adjective common has its meaning modified by following words that separate it, along with a comma, from its noun interjections.

Without the comma, an adjective phrase like common in speech would need to follow its noun (see 109. Placing an Adjective after its Noun, #3). With the comma, there is a choice between following the noun (between two commas) and starting the sentence.

The uses with and without a comma give different meanings to the noun: all of what it represents in the first case and only some in the second. Thus, interjections, common in speech, …  would refer to all interjections, indicating where they are common, but without the commas would refer only to some interjections (the ones common in speech). This is the same difference that commas make to the use of who, which etc. (see 34. Relative Pronouns and Commas).

Most adjectives seem able to start a sentence as illustrated above. However, a few – particularly mind state ones like pleased, bewildered and interested – are also usable with just a comma between themselves and their noun:

(j) Bewildered, nobody knew what to say.

The unusual feature here, of course, is the punctuation rather than the word order.