9.22 PRODUCTIVE FEATURE

When you are referring back to something that has been said or mentioned, you can use almost any noun which refers to texts, ideas, events, and sometimes even to people. The noun you use allows you to express your exact reaction to the thing which is being referred to. For example, you can refer to a football defeat using nouns such as 'tragedy' or 'farce', and you can refer to an argument using nouns such as 'wrangle' and 'battle'. This is a productive feature of English. Productive features are explained in the Introduction.