ON 'NOISE', 'A NOISE' AND 'NOISES'

All the three nominal structures that form the major part of the title for this piece belong to the lexical set of 'noise', a word which has for itself a distinctive entry in any English dictionary. Because of this and to be able to make distinctions among the different forms above, there is the need for a semantic examination of the word serving as the anchor for the aforesaid lexical set-- noise.

 'Noise', like many other English words, is a polysemous word, implying that it has several meanings, but one, as regards this, that is complex. Here are some of its meanings:

1. A sound, especially one that is loud or unpleasant or that causes disturbance.

2. A series or combination of loud, confused sounds, especially when causing disturbance.

3. (Noises) conventional remarks made to express something.

4. Irregular fluctuations that accompany a transmitted electrical signal but are not part of it and tend to obscure it.

5. Random fluctuations that obscure or do not contain meaningful data or other information.

It must be said here before we go any further that the word 'noise' could be countable or uncountable, making it possible to have it in the former case pluralised or made indefinite through the agent of the indefinite article 'an'. That said, we proceed to treat the meanings outlined above. However, submitting to the factors of spatial-temporal limitations, we confine ourselves to the first three meanings leaving the remaining two untouched, the former being commonly immediate and the latter technically remote.

Now, we look at the meanings. The first meaning suggests that when there is (just) a sound which is unpleasant or causes disturbance, what we have is a noise:

1. The van is making A TERRIBLE NOISE outside.

2. That student just made A NOISE.

3. Do not make A NOISE.

In each of the cases, noise is construed as just a sound ( for instance, yeeh!) which is loud, unpleasant, or that causes disturbance. So, it is easy to make the plural forms of the above examples:

1. The van has made terrible noises for an hour.

2. That student has been disturbing me with different noises.

3. Do not make noises that can land you in trouble.

You would seen by now  that the first meaning describes the countable sense of the word.

The second meaning describes the uncountable sense of the word. Here, we talk about a series of confused sounds, not just a sound, which causes disturbance. With this meaning in mind, it becomes an aberration to use the examples above. Using the word in this sense, we could have the following:

1. The students are making too much noise.

2. The noise of the traffic was so much that we could not hear each other.

To understand this better, imagine yourself among a class of students who are each producing confused sounds loud, unpleasant and causing disturbance. What you have is noise, not 'a noise' or 'noises'. Why? Because the sounds produced are uncountable.

The third sense is rather a fixed collocation describing conventional remarks used to express an idea. This sense is always plural:

1. The President made serious noises about providing uninterrupted power supply.

2. The principal made noises about building a library for the school.

In conclusion, the word 'noise' is like many other English words whose individual senses have to be perfectly learnt. It is to help in the understanding of the word and its senses that this piece has been scribbled.