Ingrammar, anoun is a word that represents a concrete or abstract thing, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, and ideas. A noun may serve as anobject orsubject within a phrase, clause, or sentence.[1][note 1]
Inlinguistics, nouns constitute a lexical category (part of speech) defined according to how its members combine with members of other lexical categories. Thesyntactic occurrence of nouns differs among languages.
In English, prototypical nouns arecommon nouns or proper nouns that can occur withdeterminers,articles andattributive adjectives, and can function as thehead of anoun phrase. According to traditional and popular classification,pronouns are distinct from nouns, but in much modern theory they are considered a subclass of nouns.[2] Every language has various linguistic and grammatical distinctions between nouns andverbs.[3]
Word classes (parts of speech) were described bySanskrit grammarians from at least the 5th century BC. InYāska'sNirukta, the noun (nāma) is one of the four main categories of words defined.[4]
TheAncient Greek equivalent wasónoma (ὄνομα), referred to byPlato in theCratylus dialog, and later listed as one of the eight parts of speech inThe Art of Grammar, attributed toDionysius Thrax (2nd century BC). The term used inLatin grammar wasnōmen. All of these terms for "noun" were also words meaning "name".[5] The English wordnoun is derived from the Latin term, through theAnglo-Normannom (other forms includenomme, andnoun itself).
The word classes were defined partly by the grammaticalforms that they take. In Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, for example, nouns are categorized bygender and inflected forcase andnumber. Becauseadjectives share these threegrammatical categories, adjectives typically were placed in the same class as nouns.
Similarly, the Latin termnōmen includes both nouns (substantives) and adjectives, as originally did the English wordnoun, the two types being distinguished asnouns substantive andnouns adjective (orsubstantive nouns andadjective nouns, or simplysubstantives andadjectives). (The wordnominal is now sometimes used to denote a class that includes both nouns and adjectives.)
Many European languages use acognate of the wordsubstantive as the basic term fornoun (for example, Spanishsustantivo, "noun"). Nouns in the dictionaries of such languages are demarked by the abbreviations. orsb. instead ofn., which may be used for proper nouns or neuter nouns instead. In English, some modern authors use the wordsubstantive to refer to a class that includes both nouns (single words) andnoun phrases (multiword units that are sometimes callednoun equivalents).[6] It can also be used as a counterpart toattributive when distinguishing between a noun being used as thehead (main word) of a noun phrase and a noun being used as anoun adjunct. For example, the nounknee can be said to be used substantively inmy knee hurts, but attributively inthe patient needed knee replacement.
Please hand in yourassignments by theend of theweek.
Cleanliness is next togodliness.
Plato was an influentialphilosopher in ancientGreece.
Revel thenight, rob, murder, and commit / The oldestsins the newestkind ofways? Henry IV Part 2, act 4 scene 5.
A noun can co-occur with anarticle or anattributive adjective. Verbs and adjectives cannot. In the following, an asterisk (*) in front of an example means that this example is ungrammatical.
the name (name is a noun: can co-occur with a definite articlethe)
*the baptise (baptise is a verb: cannot co-occur with a definite article)
constant circulation (circulation is a noun: can co-occur with the attributive adjectiveconstant)
*constant circulate (circulate is a verb: cannot co-occur with the attributive adjectiveconstant)
a fright (fright is a noun: can co-occur with the indefinite articlea)
*an afraid (afraid is an adjective: cannot co-occur with the articlea)
terrible fright (the nounfright can co-occur with the adjectiveterrible)
*terrible afraid (the adjectiveafraid cannot co-occur with the adjectiveterrible)
Nouns have sometimes been characterized in terms of thegrammatical categories by which they may be varied (for examplegender,case, andnumber). Such definitions tend to be language-specific, since different languages may apply different categories.
Nouns are frequently defined, particularly in informal contexts, in terms of theirsemantic properties (their meanings). Nouns are described as words that refer to aperson,place,thing,event,substance,quality,quantity, etc., but this manner of definition has been criticized as uninformative.[7]
Several English nouns lack an intrinsicreferent of their own:behalf (as inon behalf of),dint (by dint of), andsake (for the sake of).[8] Moreover, other parts of speech may have reference-like properties: the verbsto rain orto mother, or adjectives likered; and there is little difference between the adverbgleefully and theprepositional phrasewith glee.[note 2]
Afunctional approach defines a noun as a word that can be the head of a nominal phrase, i.e., a phrase with referential function, without needing to go through morphological transformation.[9][10]
Nouns can have a number of different properties and are often sub-categorized based on various of these criteria, depending on their occurrence in a language. Nouns may be classified according tomorphological properties such as whichprefixes orsuffixes they take, and also their relations insyntax – how they combine with other words and expressions of various types.
Many such classifications are language-specific, given the obvious differences in syntax and morphology. In English for example, it might be noted that nouns are words that can co-occur with definite articles (as stated at the start of this article), but this could not apply inRussian, which has no definite articles.
In some languages common and proper nouns have grammatical gender, typically masculine, feminine, and neuter. The gender of a noun (as well as its number and case, where applicable) will often requireagreement in words that modify or are used along with it. InFrench for example, the singular form of the definite article isle for masculine nouns andla for feminine; adjectives and certain verb forms also change (sometimes with the simple addition of-e for feminine). Grammatical gender often correlates with the form of the noun and the inflection pattern it follows; for example, in bothItalian andRomanian most nouns ending in -a are feminine. Gender can also correlate with thesex orsocial gender of the noun's referent, particularly in the case of nouns denoting people (and sometimes animals), though with exceptions (the feminine French nounpersonne can refer to a male or a female person).
In Modern English, even common nouns likehen andprincess and proper nouns likeAlicia do not have grammatical gender (their femininity has no relevance in syntax), though they denote persons or animals of a specific sex. The gender of a pronoun must be appropriate for the item referred to: "Thegirl said thering was fromher newboyfriend, buthe deniedit was fromhim" (three nouns; and three gendered pronouns: or four, if thisher is counted as apossessive pronoun).
Aproper noun (sometimes called aproper name, though the two terms normally have different meanings) is a noun that represents a unique entity (India,Pegasus,Jupiter,Confucius,Pequod) – as distinguished fromcommon nouns (orappellative nouns), which describe a class of entities (country,animal,planet,person,ship).[11] In Modern English, most proper nouns – unlike most common nouns – are capitalized regardless of context (Albania,Newton,Pasteur,America), as are many of the forms that are derived from them (the common noun in "he's anAlbanian"; the adjectival forms in "he's ofAlbanian heritage" and "Newtonian physics", but not in "pasteurized milk"; the second verb in "they sought toAmericanize us").
Count nouns orcountable nouns are common nouns that can take aplural, can combine withnumerals or countingquantifiers (e.g.,one,two,several,every,most), and can take an indefinite article such asa oran (in languages that have such articles). Examples of count nouns arechair,nose, andoccasion.
Mass nouns oruncountable (non-count)nouns differ from count nouns in precisely that respect: they cannot take plurals or combine with number words or the above type of quantifiers. For example, the formsa furniture andthree furnitures are not used – even thoughpieces of furniture can be counted. The distinction between mass and count nouns does not primarily concern their corresponding referents but more how the nounspresent those entities.[12][13]
Many nouns have both countable and uncountable uses; for example,soda is countable in "give me three sodas", but uncountable in "he likes soda".
Collective nouns are nouns that – even when they are treated in their morphology and syntax assingular – refer togroups consisting of more than one individual or entity. Examples includecommittee,government, andpolice. In English these nouns may be followed by a singular or a plural verb and referred to by a singular or plural pronoun, the singular being generally preferred when referring to the body as a unit and the plural often being preferred, especially in British English, when emphasizing the individual members.[14] Examples of acceptable and unacceptable use given by Gowers inPlain Words include:[14]
"A committeewas appointed to consider this subject." (singular)
"The committeewere unable to agree." (plural)
* "The committee were of one mind when I sat in on them." (unacceptable use of plural)
Concrete nouns refer tophysical entities that can, in principle at least, be observed by at least one of thesenses (chair,apple,Janet,atom), as items supposed to exist in the physical world.Abstract nouns, on the other hand, refer toabstract objects: ideas or concepts (justice,anger,solubility,duration).
Some nouns have both concrete and abstract meanings:art usually refers to something abstract ("Art is important in human culture"), but it can also refer to a concrete item ("I put my daughter's art up on the fridge"). A noun might have a literal (concrete) and also a figurative (abstract) meaning: "a brasskey" and "thekey to success"; "ablock in the pipe" and "a mentalblock". Similarly, some abstract nouns have developed etymologically by figurative extension from literal roots (drawback,fraction,holdout,uptake).
Many abstract nouns in English are formed by adding a suffix (-ness,-ity,-ion) to adjectives or verbs (happiness andserenity from the adjectiveshappy andserene;circulation from the verbcirculate).
Illustrating the wide range of possible classifying principles for nouns, theAwa language ofPapua New Guinea[15] regiments nouns according to howownership is assigned: as alienable possession orinalienable possession. An alienably possessed item (a tree, for example) can exist even without a possessor. But inalienably possessed items are necessarily associated with their possessor and are referred to differently, for example with nouns that function as kin terms (meaning "father", etc.), body-part nouns (meaning "shadow", "hair", etc.), or part–whole nouns (meaning "top", "bottom", etc.).
A noun phrase (orNP) is a phrase usuallyheaded by a common noun, a proper noun, or a pronoun. The head may be the only constituent, or it may be modified bydeterminers andadjectives. For example, "The dog sat near Ms Curtis and wagged its tail" contains three NPs:the dog (subject of the verbssat andwagged);Ms Curtis (complement of the prepositionnear); andits tail (object ofwagged). "You became their teacher" contains two NPs:you (subject ofbecame); andtheir teacher.[note 3]
Nouns and noun phrases can typically be replaced bypronouns, such ashe, it, she, they, which, these, andthose, to avoid repetition or explicit identification, or for other reasons (but as noted earlier, current theory often classifies pronouns as a subclass of nouns parallel toprototypical nouns). For example, in the sentence "Gareth thought she was weird", the wordshe is a pronoun that refers to a person just as the nounGareth does. The wordone can replace parts of noun phrases, and it sometimes stands in for a noun. An example is given below:
John's car is newer thanthe one that Bill has.
Butone can also stand in for larger parts of a noun phrase. For example, in the following example,one can stand in fornew car.
Nominalization is a process whereby a word that belongs to another part of speech comes to be used as a noun. This can be a way to create new nouns, or to use other words in ways that resemble nouns. In French and Spanish, for example, adjectives frequently act as nouns referring to people who have the characteristics denoted by the adjective. This sometimes happens in English as well, as in the following examples:
This legislation will have the most impact on thepoor.
The race is not to theswift, nor the battle to thepowerful.
The SocialistInternational is a worldwide association of political parties.
Living creatures (including people, alive, dead, or imaginary):mushrooms, dogs,Afro-Caribbeans, rosebushes,Mandela, bacteria,Klingons, etc.
Physical objects:hammers, pencils, Earth, guitars, atoms, stones, boots, shadows, etc.
Places:closets, temples, rivers, Antarctica, houses,Uluru,utopia, etc.
Actions of individuals or groups:swimming, exercises, cough, explosions, flight, electrification, embezzlement, etc.
Physical qualities:colors, lengths, porosity, weights, roundness, symmetry, solidity, etc.
Mental or bodily states:jealousy, sleep, joy, headache, confusion, etc.
^ Idioms often include nouns in a way that may be independent of any nominal meaning they may have: inrock and roll there is no reference to any "rock" or any "roll";lock, stock, and barrel is adead metaphor that refers only to a figurative sense of alock orstock orbarrel. Seehendiadys andhendiatris.
^In this positiontheir teacher would be analysed variously under different linguistic theories. For example, some would classify it as a "predicate nominal over the subject" (as in the articlePredicative expression); but all would agree that it is not an object sincebecame is nottransitive. Traditionally, and very commonly in mainstream linguistic analysis, it is classified as a complement orpredicative complement (PC); see extended treatment in Chapter 4 ("The clause: complements") of Huddleston and Pullum (2002), pp. 213–321: for example in §5.1 at p. 253, where the NPa minister is taken as a PC in "Ed becamea minister" contrasting with its role as an object (O) in "Ed attackeda minister".
^pages 218 and 225, and elsewhere inQuine, Willard Van Orman (2013) [1960 print]. "7 Ontic Decision".Word and Object. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. pp. 215–254.
^Krifka, Manfred. 1989. "Nominal Reference, Temporal Constitution and Quantification in Event Semantics". In R. Bartsch, J. van Benthem, P. von Emde Boas (eds.), Semantics and Contextual Expression, Dordrecht: Foris Publication.
For definitions of nouns based on the concept of "identity criteria":
Geach, Peter. 1962.Reference and Generality. Cornell University Press.
For more on identity criteria:
Gupta, Anil. 1980,The logic of common nouns. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
For the concept that nouns are "prototypically referential":
Croft, William. 1993. "A noun is a noun is a noun – or is it? Some reflections on the universality of semantics". Proceedings of the Nineteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, ed. Joshua S. Guenter, Barbara A. Kaiser, and Cheryl C. Zoll, 369–80. Berkeley: Berkeley Linguistics Society.
For an attempt to relate the concepts of identity criteria and prototypical referentiality:
Baker, Mark. 2003, Lexical Categories: verbs, nouns, and adjectives. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
