In linguistics, a noun or noun substantive is a lexical category which is defined in terms of how its members combine with other kinds of expressions. Linguistics is the scientific study of Language, encompassing a number of sub-fields In Grammar, a lexical category (also word class, lexical class, or in traditional grammar part of speech) is a linguistic category of words (or Since different languages have different inventories of kinds of expressions, the definition of noun will differ from language to language. In English, nouns may be defined as those words which can co-occur with definite articles and attributive adjectives, and function as the head of a noun phrase. English is a West Germanic language originating in England and is the First language for most people in the United Kingdom, the United States In grammatical theory, definiteness is a feature of Noun phrases distinguishing between entities which are specific and identifiable in a given context (definite noun In Grammar, an adjective is a word whose main syntactic role is to modify a Noun or Pronoun, giving more information about the In Grammar, a phrase is a group of Words that functions as a single unit in the Syntax of a sentence. In grammatical theory, a noun phrase (abbreviated NP) is a Phrase whose head is a Noun or a Pronoun, optionally accompanied The noun can be replaced by a pronoun of first person, second person, or even third person. Also the noun is known for being one of the eight parts of speech.

History

The word comes from the Latin nomen meaning "name". Latin ( lingua Latīna, laˈtiːna is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. A name ( Etymology: from OE nama akin to OHG namo, Latin Nomen, and Greek όνομα ( Word classes like nouns were first described by the Sanskrit grammarian Pāṇini and ancient Greeks like Dionysios Thrax; and were defined in terms of their morphological properties. Pāṇini ( IAST: Pāṇini Dēvanāgarī: sa पाणिनि a Patronymic meaning "descendant of {{IAST|Paṇi}} " was an ancient Dionysius Thrax ( (170 BC‑90 BC was a Hellenistic Grammarian who lived and is thought by some to have worked in Alexandria and later at Rhodes Morphology is the field of Linguistics that studies the internal structure of words For example, in Ancient Greek, nouns inflect for grammatical case, such as dative or accusative. In Grammar, the case of a Noun or Pronoun indicates its Grammatical function in a greater Phrase or Clause; such as the Verbs, on the other hand, inflect for tenses, such as past, present or future, while nouns do not. For English usage of verbs see the wiki article English verbs. Grammatical tense is a temporal linguistic quality expressing the time at during or over which a state or action denoted by a verb occurs Aristotle also had a notion of onomata (nouns) and rhemata (verbs) which, however, does not exactly correspond with modern notions of nouns and verbs. Aristotle (Greek Aristotélēs) (384 BC – 322 BC was a Greek philosopher a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. Nouns are words that describe person, place, thing, animal or abstract idea. ^[1]

Different definitions of nouns

Expressions of natural language have properties at different levels. In the Philosophy of language, a natural language (or ordinary language) is a Language that is spoken or written in phonemic-alphabetic or phonemically-related They have formal properties, like what kinds of morphological prefixes or suffixes they take and what kinds of other expressions they combine with; but they also have semantic properties, i. Morphology is the field of Linguistics that studies the internal structure of words A prefix is a type of Affix attached to a stem which modifies the meaning of that stem In Grammar, a suffix (also postfix, ending) is an Affix which is placed at the end of a word Semantics is the study of meaning in communication The word derives from Greek σημαντικός ( semantikos) "significant" from e. properties pertaining to their meaning. The definition of a noun at the outset of this page is thus a formal, traditional grammatical definition. That definition, for the most part, is considered uncontroversial and furnishes the propensity for certain language users to effectively distinguish most nouns from non-nouns. However, it has the disadvantage that it does not apply to nouns in all languages. For example in Russian, there are no definite articles, so one cannot define nouns as words that are modified by definite articles. Russian ( transliteration:,) is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages There are also several attempts of defining nouns in terms of their semantic properties. Semantics is the study of meaning in communication The word derives from Greek σημαντικός ( semantikos) "significant" from Many of these are controversial, but some are discussed below.

Rodin's "Thinker". Should we refer to this with a verb ("think", "ponder") or a noun ("thought", "thinker"), or an adjective ("pensive", "thoughtful")? In different contexts, any of these would do. However, when the statue itself is referred to, in any context, it is in the form of a noun, as the statue itself is an object.

Names for things

In traditional school grammars, one often encounters the definition of nouns that they are all and only those expressions that refer to a person, place, thing, event, substance, quality, or idea, etc. In Linguistics, "traditional grammar" is a cover name for the collection of concepts and ideas about the structure of language that Western societies have received This is a semantic definition. It has been criticized by contemporary linguists as being uninformative. Contemporary linguists generally agree that one cannot successfully define nouns (or other grammatical categories) in terms of what sort of object in the world they refer to or signify. In general a reference is a relation between objects in which one object designates by linking to another object A sign is an entity which signifies another entity A natural sign is an entity which bears a causal relation to the signified entity as thunder is a sign of storm Part of the conundrum is that the definition makes use of relatively general nouns ("thing", "phenomenon", "event") to define what nouns are. The existence of such general nouns demonstrates that nouns refer to entities that are organized in taxonomic hierarchies. Taxonomy is the practice and science of classification The word comes from the Greek, taxis (meaning 'order' 'arrangement' and, nomos @@@ main@@@ - title Hierarchy@@@ keywords structure; sociology; information@@@ review@@@ - But other kinds of expressions are also organized into such structured taxonomic relationships. For example the verbs "stroll", "saunter", "stride", and "tread" are more specific words than the more general "walk". Moreover, "walk" is more specific than the verb "move", which, in turn, is less general than "change". But it is unlikely that such taxonomic relationships can be used to define nouns and verbs. We cannot define verbs as those words that refer to "changes" or "states", for example, because the nouns change and state probably refer to such things, but, of course, aren't verbs. Similarly, nouns like "invasion", "meeting", or "collapse" refer to things that are "done" or "happen". In fact, an influential theory has it that verbs like "kill" or "die" refer to events,^[2][3] which is among the sort of thing that nouns are supposed to refer to. The word theory has many distinct meanings in different fields of Knowledge, depending on their methodologies and the context of discussion. The point being made here is not that this view of verbs is wrong, but rather that this property of verbs is a poor basis for a definition of this category, just like the property of having wheels is a poor basis for a definition of cars (some things that have wheels, such as my suitcase or a jumbo jet, aren't cars). Similarly, adjectives like "yellow" or "difficult" might be thought to refer to qualities, and adverbs like "outside" or "upstairs" seem to refer to places, which are also among the sorts of things nouns can refer to. But verbs, adjectives and adverbs are not nouns, and nouns aren't verbs, adjectives or adverbs. One might argue that "definitions" of this sort really rely on speakers' prior intuitive knowledge of what nouns, verbs and adjectives are, and, so don't really add anything over and beyond this. Speakers' intuitive knowledge of such things might plausibly be based on formal criteria, such as the traditional grammatical definition of English nouns aforementioned.

Prototypically referential expressions

Another semantic definition of nouns is that they are prototypically referential. ^[4] That definition is also not very helpful in distinguishing actual nouns from verbs. But it may still correctly identify a core property of nounhood. For example, we will tend to use nouns like "fool" and "car" when we wish to refer to fools and cars, respectively. The notion that this is prototypical reflects the fact that such nouns can be used, even though nothing with the corresponding property is referred to:

John is no fool.

If I had a car, I'd go to Marrakech.

The first sentence above doesn't refer to any fools, nor does the second one refer to any particular car.

Predicates with identity criteria

The British logician Peter Thomas Geach proposed a very subtle semantic definition of nouns. Peter Thomas Geach (giːtʃ born 29 March 1916) is a British philosopher ^[5] He noticed that adjectives like "same" can modify nouns, but no other kinds of parts of speech, like verbs or adjectives. For English usage of verbs see the wiki article English verbs. In Grammar, an adjective is a word whose main syntactic role is to modify a Noun or Pronoun, giving more information about the Not only that, but there also doesn't seem to be any other expressions with similar meaning that can modify verbs and adjectives. Consider the following examples.

Good: John and Bill participated in the same fight.

Bad: *John and Bill samely fought.

Identity criteria allow us to represent who is identical to whom

There is no English adverb "samely". In some other languages, like Czech, however there are adverbs corresponding to "samely". Hence, in Czech, the translation of the last sentence would be fine; however, it would mean that John and Bill fought in the same way: not that they participated in the same fight. Geach proposed that we could explain this, if nouns denote logical predicates with identity criteria. In traditional Grammar, a predicate is one of the two main parts of a sentence (the other being the subject, which the predicate modifies An identity criterion would allow us to conclude, for example, that "person x at time 1 is the same person as person y at time 2". Different nouns can have different identity criteria. A well known example of this is due to Gupta:^[6]

National Airlines transported 2 million passengers in 1979.

National Airlines transported (at least) 2 million persons in 1979.

Given that, in general, all passengers are persons, the last sentence above ought to follow logically from the first one. But it doesn't. It is easy to imagine, for example, that on average, every person who travelled with National Airlines in 1979, travelled with them twice. In that case, one would say that the airline transported 2 million passengers but only 1 million persons. Thus, the way that we count passengers isn't necessarily the same as the way that we count persons. Put somewhat differently: At two different times, you may correspond to two distinct passengers, even though you are one and the same person. For a precise definition of identity criteria, see Gupta. ^[6]

Recently, Baker has proposed that Geach's definition of nouns in terms of identity criteria allows us to explain the characteristic properties of nouns. He argues that nouns can co-occur with (in-)definite articles and numerals, and are "prototypically referential" because they are all and only those parts of speech that provide identity criteria. In Grammar, a lexical category (also word class, lexical class, or in traditional grammar part of speech) is a linguistic category of words (or Baker's proposals are quite new, and linguists are still evaluating them.

Classification of nouns in English

Proper nouns and common nouns

Proper nouns (also called proper names) are nouns representing unique entities (such as London, Universe or John), as distinguished from common nouns which describe a class of entities (such as city, well or person)^[7]. "A proper name a word that answers the purpose of showing what thing it is that we are talking about" writes John Stuart Mill in A System of Logic

In English and most other languages that use the Latin alphabet, proper nouns are usually capitalized. English is a West Germanic language originating in England and is the First language for most people in the United Kingdom, the United States Capitalization (or capitalisation &mdash see spelling differences) is writing a word with its first letter as a Majuscule (upper case letter ^[8] Languages differ in whether most elements of multiword proper nouns are capitalised (e. g. , American English House of Representatives) or only the initial element (e. g. , Slovenian Državni zbor 'National Assembly'). In German, nouns of all types are capitalized. The German language (de ''Deutsch'') is a West Germanic language and one of the world's major languages. The convention of capitalizing all nouns was previously used in English, but ended circa 1800. In America, the shift in capitalization is recorded in several noteworthy documents. The end (but not the beginning) of the Declaration of Independence (1776) and all of the Constitution (1787) show nearly all nouns capitalized, the Bill of Rights (1789) capitalizes a few common nouns but not most of them, and the Thirteenth Constitutional Amendment (1865) only capitalizes proper nouns. The United States Declaration of Independence is a statement adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4 1776 announcing that the thirteen American colonies then The Constitution of the United States of America is the supreme Law of the United States. In the United States the Bill of Rights is the name by which the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution are known The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution officially abolished and continues to prohibit Slavery, and with limited exceptions such as those

Sometimes the same word can function as both a common noun and a proper noun, where one such entity is special. For example the common noun god denotes all deities, while the proper noun God references God specifically. God is the principal or sole Deity in Religions and other belief systems that worship one deity.

Owing to the essentially arbitrary nature of orthographic classification and the existence of variant authorities and adopted house styles, questionable capitalization of words is not uncommon, even in respected newspapers and magazines. The orthography of a language specifies the correct way of using a specific Writing system to write the language A style guide or style manual is a set of standards for design and writing of documents either for general use or for a specific publication or organization Most publishers, however, properly require consistency, at least within the same document, in applying their specified standard.

The common meaning of the word or words constituting a proper noun may be unrelated to the object to which the proper noun refers. For example, someone might be named "Tiger Smith" despite being neither a tiger nor a smith. The tiger ( Panthera tigris) is a member of the Felidae family the largest and the most powerful of the four " Big cats quot in the Genus A smith, or metalsmith, is a person involved in the shaping of Metal objects For this reason, proper nouns are usually not translated between languages, although they may be transliterated. Translation is the interpreting of the meaning of a text and the subsequent production of an equivalent text likewise called a " translation Transliteration is the practice of Transcribing a Word or text written in one Writing system into another writing system or system of rules for such practice For example, the German surname Knödel becomes Knodel or Knoedel in English (not the literal Dumpling). However, the transcription of place names and the names of monarchs, popes, and non-contemporary authors is common and sometimes universal. Transliteration is the practice of Transcribing a Word or text written in one Writing system into another writing system or system of rules for such practice History See also History of the Papacy Catholics recognize the Pope as a successor to Saint Peter, who Jesus named as the "shepherd" and An author is defined both as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created For instance, the Portuguese word Lisboa becomes Lisbon in English; the English London becomes Londres in French; and the Greek Aristotelēs becomes Aristotle in English. Portuguese ( or língua portuguesa) is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia (Spain and northern Portugal. Lisbon (Lisboa liʒˈboɐ is the Capital and largest city of Portugal. English is a West Germanic language originating in England and is the First language for most people in the United Kingdom, the United States The Ancient Greek language is the historical stage in the development of the Hellenic language family spanning the Archaic (c Aristotle (Greek Aristotélēs) (384 BC – 322 BC was a Greek philosopher a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great.

Countable and uncountable nouns

Main articles: Count noun and Mass noun

Count nouns are common nouns that can take a plural, can combine with numerals or quantifiers (e. In Linguistics, a count noun (also countable noun) is a noun which can be modified by a Numeral and occur in both singular and Plural In Linguistics, a mass noun (also uncountable noun or non-count noun) is a common Noun that presents entities as an unbounded mass Plural is a Grammatical number, typically referring to more than one of the Referent in the real world Quantification has two distinct meanings In Mathematics and Empirical science, it refers to human acts known as Counting and Measuring g. "one", "two", "several", "every", "most"), and can take an indefinite article ("a" or "an"). Examples of count nouns are "chair", "nose", and "occasion".

Mass nouns (or non-count nouns) differ from count nouns in precisely that respect: they can't take plural or combine with number words or quantifiers. Examples from English include "laughter", "cutlery", "helium", and "furniture". For example, it is not possible to refer to "a furniture" or "three furnitures". This is true even though the pieces of furniture comprising "furniture" could be counted. Thus the distinction between mass and count nouns shouldn't be made in terms of what sorts of things the nouns refer to, but rather in terms of how the nouns present these entities. ^[9][10]

Collective nouns

Main article: Collective noun

Collective nouns are nouns that refer to groups consisting of more than one individual or entity, even when they are inflected for the singular. In Linguistics, a collective noun is a word used to define a group of objects where "objects" can be People, Animals Inanimate things In linguistics grammatical number is a Grammatical category of nouns pronouns and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions (such as "one" Examples include "committee", "herd", and "school" (of herring). These nouns have slightly different grammatical properties than other nouns. For example, the noun phrases that they head can serve as the subject of a collective predicate, even when they are inflected for the singular. In grammatical theory, a noun phrase (abbreviated NP) is a Phrase whose head is a Noun or a Pronoun, optionally accompanied According to a tradition that can be tracked back to Aristotle, every sentence can be divided in two main constituents, one being the subject of the sentence and the A collective predicate is a predicate that normally can't take a singular subject. An example of the latter is "talked to each other".

Good: The boys talked to each other.

Bad: *The boy talked to each other.

Good: The committee talked to each other.

Concrete nouns and abstract nouns

Further information: physical body and abstract object

Concrete nouns refer to physical bodies which you use at least one of your senses to observe. In Physics, a physical body (sometimes called simply a body or even an object) is a collection of Masses taken to be one For other uses see Abstract In Philosophy it is commonly considered that every object is either abstract or concrete In Physics, a physical body (sometimes called simply a body or even an object) is a collection of Masses taken to be one Senses are the physiological methods of Perception. The senses and their operation classification and theory are overlapping topics studied by a variety of fields For instance, "chair", "apple", or "Janet". Abstract nouns on the other hand refer to abstract objects, that is ideas or concepts, such as "justice" or "hate". For other uses see Abstract In Philosophy it is commonly considered that every object is either abstract or concrete While this distinction is sometimes useful, the boundary between the two of them is not always clear; consider, for example, the noun "art". In English, many abstract nouns are formed by adding noun-forming suffixes ("-ness", "-ity", "-tion") to adjectives or verbs. Examples are "happiness", "circulation" and "serenity".

Nouns and pronouns

Noun phrases can typically be replaced by pronouns, such as "he", "it", "which", and "those", in order to avoid repetition or explicit identification, or for other reasons. In grammatical theory, a noun phrase (abbreviated NP) is a Phrase whose head is a Noun or a Pronoun, optionally accompanied In Linguistics and Grammar, a pronoun is a Pro-form that substitutes for a (including a noun phrase consisting of a single Noun) with or For example, in the sentence "Janet thought that he was weird", the word "he" is a pronoun standing in place of the name of the person in question. The English word one can replace parts of noun phrases, and it sometimes stands in for a noun. In grammatical theory, a noun phrase (abbreviated NP) is a Phrase whose head is a Noun or a Pronoun, optionally accompanied An example is given below:

John's car is newer than the one that Bill has.

But one can also stand in for bigger subparts of a noun phrase. For example, in the following example, one can stand in for new car.

This new car is cheaper than that one.

Substantive as a word for "noun"

Starting with old Latin grammars, many European languages use some form of the word substantive as the basic term for noun. Latin ( lingua Latīna, laˈtiːna is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Nouns in the dictionaries of such languages are demarked by the abbreviation "s" instead of "n", which may be used for proper nouns instead. This corresponds to those grammars in which nouns and adjectives phase into each other in more areas than, for example, the English term predicate adjective entails. In Grammar, an adjective is a word whose main syntactic role is to modify a Noun or Pronoun, giving more information about the In French and Spanish, for example, adjectives frequently act as nouns referring to people who have the characteristics of the adjective. An example in English is:

The poor you have always with you.

Similarly, an adjective can also be used for a whole group or organization of people:

The Socialist International.

Hence, these words are substantives that are usually adjectives in English.

References

Bibliography

• Laycock, Henry, 2005 'Mass nouns, Count nouns and Non-count nouns', Draft version of entry in Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics Oxford: Elsevier (pdf)

See also

• verbs
• adjectives
• part of speech
• noun phrase
• mass noun
• agent noun
• collective noun
• proper name
• reference

External links

• WebWorkbooks: Spanish/English Nouns.

• The Collective Noun Page