Appendix talk:English nouns with restricted non-referential interpretation in bare noun phrases

The list of prepositions is almost unlimited really. town could take less obvious ones like through and towards. Equinox ◑ 18:54, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Can band be one of these? e.g. "I was really close to a lot of the white kids because I was in band and I really loved it." Equinox ◑ 17:50, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

I think so. In the case of a school band, it 'feels' like it is a kind of status, analogous to (deprecated template usage) in hospital. I'm not sure that it would be said often in American English. The more of them I see, the more the phenomenon seems like a matter of grammar. Which is why it is in CGEL. Separating those PPs using these as bare nouns that are idiomatic from those that are not is hard and unlikely to win agreement other than from native English contributors. I think I would mostly follow lemmings on inclusion and resist others. DCDuring TALK 19:37, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

The article states

Role nouns

Nouns that indicate a role can optionally appear without determiner or article [...] but not as subjects or objects.

This is simply not so: The lack of a determiner is allowed for a subject or object where a role/title is introduced by the context:

"I put the dog in the kitchen, the cat in the living room and the rabbit in the sitting room. I only left the house for a moment but, when I returned, dog, cat, and rabbit were fighting in the sitting room."

“The announcement that interrupted the talk gave speaker and audience a break from each other.”