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A noun () is a
word A word is a basic element of language that carries an semantics, objective or pragmatics, practical semantics, meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of w ...
that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for: *
Living creatures In biology, an organism () is any living system that functions as an individual entity. All organisms are composed of cells (cell theory). Organisms are classified by taxonomy into groups such as multicellular animals, plants, and fungi; ...
(including people, alive, dead or imaginary): ''mushrooms, dogs,
Afro-Caribbean Afro-Caribbean people or African Caribbean are Caribbean people who trace their full or partial ancestry to Sub-Saharan Africa. The majority of the modern African-Caribbeans descend from Africans taken as slaves to colonial Caribbean via the ...
s, rosebushes,
Nelson Mandela Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (; ; 18 July 1918 – 5 December 2013) was a South African Internal resistance to apartheid, anti-apartheid activist who served as the President of South Africa, first president of South Africa from 1994 to 1 ...
, bacteria,
Klingons The Klingons ( ; Klingon language, Klingon: ''tlhIngan'' ) are a fictional species in the science fiction franchise ''Star Trek''. Developed by screenwriter Gene L. Coon in 1967 for the Star Trek: The Original Series, original ''Star Trek'' ('' ...
'', etc. *
Physical object In common usage and classical mechanics, a physical object or physical body (or simply an object or body) is a collection of matter within a defined contiguous boundary in three-dimensional space. The boundary must be defined and identified by t ...
s: ''hammers, pencils, Earth, guitars, atoms, stones, boots, shadows'', etc. *
Places Place may refer to: Geography * Place (United States Census Bureau), defined as any concentration of population ** Census-designated place, a populated area lacking its own municipal government * "Place", a type of street or road name ** Often ...
: ''closets, temples, rivers, Antarctica, houses, Grand Canyon,
utopia A utopia ( ) typically describes an imaginary community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its members. It was coined by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book ''Utopia (book), Utopia'', describing a fictional ...
'', etc. *
Actions Action may refer to: * Action (narrative), a literary mode * Action fiction, a type of genre fiction * Action game, a genre of video game Film * Action film, a genre of film * ''Action'' (1921 film), a film by John Ford * ''Action'' (1980 fil ...
: ''swimming, exercises,
diffusion Diffusion is the net movement of anything (for example, atoms, ions, molecules, energy) generally from a region of higher concentration to a region of lower concentration. Diffusion is driven by a gradient in Gibbs free energy or chemical p ...
s, explosions, flight, electrification, embezzlement'', etc. * Qualities: ''colors, lengths, deafness, weights, roundness, symmetry,
warp speed The technology in ''Star Trek'' has borrowed many ideas from the scientific world. Episodes often contain technologies named after real-world scientific phenomena, such as tachyon beams, baryon sweeps, quantum slipstream drives, and photon torp ...
,'' etc. *
Mental Mental may refer to: * of or relating to the mind Films * ''Mental'' (2012 film), an Australian comedy-drama * ''Mental'' (2016 film), a Bangladeshi romantic-action movie * ''Mental'', a 2008 documentary by Kazuhiro Soda * ''Mental'', a 2014 O ...
or physical states of existence: ''jealousy, sleep, heat, joy, stomachache, confusion,
mind meld Vulcans, sometimes referred to as Vulcanians, are a fictional extraterrestrial humanoid species in the ''Star Trek'' universe and media franchise. In the various ''Star Trek'' television series and films, they are noted for their attempt to l ...
,'' etc. Lexical categories (
parts of speech In grammar, a part of speech or part-of-speech (abbreviated as POS or PoS, also known as word class or grammatical category) is a category of words (or, more generally, of lexical items) that have similar grammatical properties. Words that are assi ...
) are defined in terms of the ways in which their members combine with other kinds of expressions. The
syntactic In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituency), ...
rules for nouns differ between
language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...
s. In
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...
, nouns are those words which can occur with
articles Article often refers to: * Article (grammar), a grammatical element used to indicate definiteness or indefiniteness * Article (publishing), a piece of nonfictional prose that is an independent part of a publication Article may also refer to: G ...
and attributive adjectives and can function as the
head A head is the part of an organism which usually includes the ears, brain, forehead, cheeks, chin, eyes, nose, and mouth, each of which aid in various sensory functions such as sight, hearing, smell, and taste. Some very simple animals may ...
of a
noun phrase In linguistics, a noun phrase, or nominal (phrase), is a phrase that has a noun or pronoun as its head or performs the same grammatical function as a noun. Noun phrases are very common cross-linguistically, and they may be the most frequently oc ...
. "As far as we know, every language makes a grammatical distinction that looks like a noun verb distinction."


History

Word class In grammar, a part of speech or part-of-speech (abbreviated as POS or PoS, also known as word class or grammatical category) is a category of words (or, more generally, of lexical items) that have similar grammatical properties. Words that are assi ...
es (parts of speech) were described by
Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
grammarians from at least the 5th century BC. In
Yāska Yāska was an ancient Indian grammarian and linguist st. 7th–5th century BCE(disputed)">disputed.html" ;"title="st. 7th–5th century BCE(disputed">st. 7th–5th century BCE(disputed) Preceding Pāṇini st. 7th–4th century BCE(Controv ...
's ''Nirukta'', the noun (''nāma'') is one of the four main categories of words defined.Bimal Krishna Matilal">Nirukta">st. 7th–4th century BCE(Controv ...
's ''Nirukta'', the noun (''nāma'') is one of the four main categories of words defined.Bimal Krishna Matilal, ''The word and the world: India's contribution to the study of language'', 1990 (Chapter 3) The Ancient Greek equivalent was ''ónoma'' (ὄνομα), referred to by Plato in the Cratylus (dialogue), ''Cratylus'' dialog, and later listed as one of the eight parts of speech in ''The Art of Grammar'', attributed to
Dionysius Thrax Dionysius Thrax ( grc-gre, Διονύσιος ὁ Θρᾷξ ''Dionýsios ho Thrâix'', 170–90 BC) was a Greek grammarian and a pupil of Aristarchus of Samothrace. He was long considered to be the author of the earliest grammatical text on the G ...
(2nd century BC). The term used in
Latin grammar Latin is a heavily inflected languages, inflected language with largely free word order. Nouns are inflected for grammatical number, number and grammatical case, case; pronouns and adjectives (including participles) are inflected for number, cas ...
was ''nōmen''. All of these terms for "noun" were also words meaning "name". The English word ''noun'' is derived from the Latin term, through the
Anglo-Norman Anglo-Norman may refer to: *Anglo-Normans, the medieval ruling class in England following the Norman conquest of 1066 *Anglo-Norman language **Anglo-Norman literature *Anglo-Norman England, or Norman England, the period in English history from 1066 ...
''noun''. The word classes were defined partly by the grammatical
forms Form is the shape, visual appearance, or configuration of an object. In a wider sense, the form is the way something happens. Form also refers to: *Form (document), a document (printed or electronic) with spaces in which to write or enter data * ...
that they take. In Sanskrit, Greek and Latin, for example, nouns are categorized by
gender Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most cultures u ...
and inflected for
case Case or CASE may refer to: Containers * Case (goods), a package of related merchandise * Cartridge case or casing, a firearm cartridge component * Bookcase, a piece of furniture used to store books * Briefcase or attaché case, a narrow box to c ...
and
number A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers c ...
. Because
adjective In linguistics, an adjective (list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word that generally grammatical modifier, modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Tra ...
s share these three
grammatical categories In linguistics, a grammatical category or grammatical feature is a property of items within the grammar of a language. Within each category there are two or more possible values (sometimes called grammemes), which are normally mutually exclusiv ...
, adjectives are placed in the same class as nouns. Similarly, the Latin ''nōmen'' includes both nouns (substantives) and adjectives, as originally did the English word ''noun'', the two types being distinguished as ''nouns substantive'' and ''nouns adjective'' (or ''substantive nouns'' and ''adjective nouns'', or short ''substantives'' and ''adjectives''). (The word ''
nominal Nominal may refer to: Linguistics and grammar * Nominal (linguistics), one of the parts of speech * Nominal, the adjectival form of "noun", as in "nominal agreement" (= "noun agreement") * Nominal sentence, a sentence without a finite verb * Nou ...
'' is now sometimes used to denote a class that includes both nouns and adjectives.) Many European languages use a
cognate In historical linguistics, cognates or lexical cognates are sets of words in different languages that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymology, etymological ancestor in a proto-language, common parent language. Because language c ...
of the word ''substantive'' as the basic term for ''noun'' (for example, Spanish ''sustantivo'', "noun"). Nouns in the dictionaries of such languages are demarked by the abbreviation ''s.'' or ''sb.'' instead of ''n.'', which may be used for proper nouns or neuter nouns instead. In English, some modern authors use the word ''substantive'' to refer to a class that includes both nouns (single words) and
noun phrase In linguistics, a noun phrase, or nominal (phrase), is a phrase that has a noun or pronoun as its head or performs the same grammatical function as a noun. Noun phrases are very common cross-linguistically, and they may be the most frequently oc ...
s (multiword units, also called noun equivalents). It can also be used as a counterpart to ''attributive'' when distinguishing between a noun being used as the
head A head is the part of an organism which usually includes the ears, brain, forehead, cheeks, chin, eyes, nose, and mouth, each of which aid in various sensory functions such as sight, hearing, smell, and taste. Some very simple animals may ...
(main word) of a noun phrase and a noun being used as a
noun adjunct In grammar, a noun adjunct, attributive noun, qualifying noun, noun (pre)modifier, or apposite noun is an optional noun that grammatical modifier, modifies another noun; functioning similarly to an adjective, it is, more specifically, a noun funct ...
. For example, the noun ''knee'' can be said to be used substantively in ''my knee hurts'', but attributively in ''the patient needed knee replacement''.


Examples

* The ''cat'' sat on the ''chair''. * Please hand in your ''assignments'' by the ''end'' of the ''week''. * ''Cleanliness'' is next to ''godliness''. * ''Plato'' was an influential ''philosopher'' in ancient ''Greece''. * Revel the ''night'', rob, murder, and commit/The oldest ''sins'' the newest ''kind'' of ''ways''? Henry IV Part 2, act 4 scene 5. A noun can co-occur with an
article Article often refers to: * Article (grammar), a grammatical element used to indicate definiteness or indefiniteness * Article (publishing), a piece of nonfictional prose that is an independent part of a publication Article may also refer to: G ...
or an
attributive adjective In linguistics, an adjective (abbreviated ) is a word that generally modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives were considered one of the mai ...
. 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 article ''the'') * ''*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 adjective ''constant'') * ''*constant circulate'' (''circulate'' is a verb: cannot co-occur with the attributive adjective ''constant'') * ''a fright'' (''fright'' is a noun: can co-occur with the indefinite article ''a'') * ''*an afraid'' (''afraid'' is an adjective: cannot co-occur with the article ''a'') * ''terrible fright'' (the noun ''fright'' can co-occur with the adjective ''terrible'') * ''*terrible afraid'' (the adjective ''afraid'' cannot co-occur with the adjective ''terrible'')


Definitions

Nouns have sometimes been defined in terms of the grammatical categories to which they are subject (classed by gender, inflected for case and number). Such definitions tend to be language-specific, since nouns do not have the same categories in all languages. Nouns are frequently defined, particularly in informal contexts, in terms of their
semantic Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy, linguistics and comput ...
properties (their meanings). Nouns are described as words that refer to a ''person'', ''place'', ''thing'', ''event'', ''substance'', ''quality'', ''quantity'', etc. However this type of definition has been criticized by contemporary linguists as being uninformative. There are several instances of English-language nouns which do not have any reference: ''drought'', ''enjoyment'', ''finesse'', ''behalf'' (as found in ''on behalf of''), ''dint'' (''in dint of''), and ''sake'' (''for the sake of''). Moreover, there may be a relationship similar to reference in the case of other parts of speech: the verbs ''to rain'' or ''to mother''; many adjectives, like ''red''; and there is little difference between the adverb ''gleefully'' and the noun-based phrase ''with glee''.Nouns occur in idioms with no meaning outside the idiom: ''rock and roll'' does not describe two different things named by ''rock'' and by ''roll''; someone who falls for something ''lock, stock and barrel'' does not fall for something ''lock'', for ''stock'', and for ''barrel''; a trick using ''smoke and mirrors'' does not separate into the effect of ''smoke'' and each ''mirror''. See
hendiadys Hendiadys (; a Latinized form of the Greek phrase (') 'one through two') is a figure of speech used for emphasis—"The substitution of a conjunction for a subordination". The basic idea is to use two words linked by the conjunction "and" instea ...
and
hendiatris Hendiatris (; ) is a figure of speech used for emphasis, in which three words are used to express one idea. The phrases "sun, sea and sand", and "wine, women and song" are examples. A tripartite motto is the conventional English term for a motto ...
.
Linguists Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...
often prefer to define nouns (and other lexical categories) in terms of their formal properties. These include morphological information, such as what
prefix A prefix is an affix which is placed before the Word stem, stem of a word. Adding it to the beginning of one word changes it into another word. For example, when the prefix ''un-'' is added to the word ''happy'', it creates the word ''unhappy'' ...
es or
suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carry ...
es they take, and also their
syntax In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure ( constituency) ...
 – how they combine with other words and expressions of particular types. Such definitions may nonetheless still be language-specific since syntax as well as morphology varies between languages. For example, in English, 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 would not apply in
Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
, which has no definite articles. A
functional Functional may refer to: * Movements in architecture: ** Functionalism (architecture) ** Form follows function * Functional group, combination of atoms within molecules * Medical conditions without currently visible organic basis: ** Functional sy ...
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.


Classification

Nouns can have a number of different properties and are often subcategorized based on various of these criteria, depending on their occurrence in a language.


Gender

In some languages, genders are assigned to nouns, such as masculine, feminine and neuter. The gender of a noun (as well as its number and case, where applicable) will often entail
agreement Agreement may refer to: Agreements between people and organizations * Gentlemen's agreement, not enforceable by law * Trade agreement, between countries * Consensus, a decision-making process * Contract, enforceable in a court of law ** Meeting o ...
in words that modify or are related to it. For example, in
French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
, the singular form of the definite article is ''le'' for masculine nouns and ''la'' for feminine; adjectives and certain verb forms also change (with the addition of for feminine). Grammatical gender often correlates with the form of the noun and the inflection pattern it follows; for example, in both
Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...
and
Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
most nouns ending are feminine. Gender can also correlate with the
sex Sex is the trait that determines whether a sexually reproducing animal or plant produces male or female gametes. Male plants and animals produce smaller mobile gametes (spermatozoa, sperm, pollen), while females produce larger ones (ova, oft ...
of the noun's referent, particularly in the case of nouns denoting people (and sometimes animals). Nouns arguably do not have gender in Modern English, although many of them denote people or animals of a specific sex (or ''social gender''), and pronouns that refer to nouns must take the appropriate gender for that noun. (The ''girl'' lost ''her'' spectacles.)


Proper and common nouns

A ''proper noun'' or ''proper name'' is a noun representing unique entities (such as ''India'', ''
Pegasus Pegasus ( grc-gre, Πήγασος, Pḗgasos; la, Pegasus, Pegasos) is one of the best known creatures in Greek mythology. He is a winged divine stallion usually depicted as pure white in color. He was sired by Poseidon, in his role as hor ...
'', ''
Jupiter Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the List of Solar System objects by size, largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass more than two and a half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined, but ...
'', ''
Confucius Confucius ( ; zh, s=, p=Kǒng Fūzǐ, "Master Kǒng"; or commonly zh, s=, p=Kǒngzǐ, labels=no; – ) was a Chinese philosopher and politician of the Spring and Autumn period who is traditionally considered the paragon of Chinese sages. C ...
'', or ''
Pequod Pequod or Pequot may refer to: *The Pequod, or Pequot The Pequot () are a Native American people of Connecticut. The modern Pequot are members of the federally recognized Mashantucket Pequot Tribe, four other state-recognized groups in Conne ...
''), as distinguished from ''common nouns'', which describe a class of entities (such as ''country'', ''animal'', ''planet'', ''person'' or ''ship'').


Countable nouns and mass nouns

''Count nouns'' or ''countable nouns'' are common nouns that can take a
plural The plural (sometimes abbreviated pl., pl, or ), in many languages, is one of the values of the grammatical category of number. The plural of a noun typically denotes a quantity greater than the default quantity represented by that noun. This de ...
, can combine with
numerals A numeral is a figure, symbol, or group of figures or symbols denoting a number. It may refer to: * Numeral system used in mathematics * Numeral (linguistics), a part of speech denoting numbers (e.g. ''one'' and ''first'' in English) * Numerical d ...
or counting quantifiers (e.g., ''one'', ''two'', ''several'', ''every'', ''most''), and can take an indefinite article such as ''a'' or ''an'' (in languages which have such articles). Examples of count nouns are ''chair'', ''nose'', and ''occasion''. ''Mass nouns'' or ''uncountable'' (or ''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, 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 should not be made in terms of what sorts of things the nouns refer to, but rather in terms of how the nouns ''present'' these entities. 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

''Collective nouns'' are nouns that – even when they are inflected for the
singular Singular may refer to: * Singular, the grammatical number that denotes a unit quantity, as opposed to the plural and other forms * Singular homology * SINGULAR, an open source Computer Algebra System (CAS) * Singular or sounder, a group of boar, ...
– refer to ''groups'' consisting of more than one individual or entity. Examples include ''committee'', ''government'', and ''police''. 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. Examples of acceptable and unacceptable use given by Gowers in ''Plain Words'' include:


Concrete nouns and abstract nouns

''Concrete nouns'' refer to physical entities that can, in principle at least ''(i.e. different schools of philosophy and sciences may question the assumption, but, for the most part, people agree to the existence of something. E.g. a rock, a tree, universe)'', be observed by at least one of the
sense A sense is a biological system used by an organism for sensation, the process of gathering information about the world through the detection of Stimulus (physiology), stimuli. (For example, in the human body, the brain which is part of the cen ...
s (for instance, ''chair'', ''apple'', ''Janet'' or ''atom''). ''Abstract nouns'', on the other hand, refer to
abstract object In metaphysics, the distinction between abstract and concrete refers to a divide between two types of entities. Many philosophers hold that this difference has fundamental metaphysical significance. Examples of concrete objects include plants, hum ...
s; that is, ideas or concepts (such as ''justice'' or ''hatred''). While this distinction is sometimes exclusive, some nouns have multiple senses, including both concrete and abstract ones: for example, the noun ''art'', which usually refers to a concept (e.g., ''Art is an important element of human culture.'') but which can refer to a specific artwork in certain contexts (e.g., ''I put my daughter's art up on the fridge.'') Some abstract nouns developed etymologically by figurative extension from literal roots. These include ''drawback'', ''fraction'', ''holdout'' and ''uptake''. Similarly, some nouns have both abstract and concrete senses, with the latter having developed by figurative extension from the former. These include ''view'', ''filter'', ''structure'' and ''key''. In English, many abstract nouns are formed by adding a suffix (''-ness'', ''-ity'', ''-ion'') to adjectives or verbs. Examples are ''happiness'' (from the adjective ''happy''), ''circulation'' (from the verb ''circulate'') and ''serenity'' (from the adjective ''serene'').


Alienable vs. inalienable nouns

Some languages, such as the Awa language spoken in
Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country i ...
, refer to nouns differently, depending on how ownership is being given for the given noun. This can be broken into two categories: alienable possession and
inalienable ''InAlienable'' is a 2007 science fiction film with horror and comic elements, written and executive produced by Walter Koenig, and directed by Robert Dyke. It was the first collaboration of Koenig and Dyke since their 1989 production of ''Moont ...
possession. An alienably possessed noun is something that can exist independent of a possessor: for example 'tree' can be possessed ('Lucy's tree') but need not be ('the tree'), and likewise for 'shirt' ('Mike's shirt', 'that shirt') and 'roads' ('London's roads', 'those roads') . Inalienablly possessed nouns, on the other hand, refer to something that does not exist independently of a possessor; this includes kin terms such as 'father', body-part nouns such as 'shadow' or 'hair', and part-whole nouns such as 'top' and 'bottom'.


Noun phrases

A noun phrase is a phrase based on a noun, pronoun, or other noun-like words (nominal) optionally accompanied by modifiers such as
determiner A determiner, also called determinative (abbreviated ), is a word, phrase, or affix that occurs together with a noun or noun phrase and generally serves to express the reference of that noun or noun phrase in the context. That is, a determiner m ...
s and
adjective In linguistics, an adjective (list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word that generally grammatical modifier, modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Tra ...
s. A noun phrase functions within a clause or sentence in a role such as that of
subject Subject ( la, subiectus "lying beneath") may refer to: Philosophy *''Hypokeimenon'', or ''subiectum'', in metaphysics, the "internal", non-objective being of a thing **Subject (philosophy), a being that has subjective experiences, subjective cons ...
,
object Object may refer to: General meanings * Object (philosophy), a thing, being, or concept ** Object (abstract), an object which does not exist at any particular time or place ** Physical object, an identifiable collection of matter * Goal, an ai ...
, or
complement A complement is something that completes something else. Complement may refer specifically to: The arts * Complement (music), an interval that, when added to another, spans an octave ** Aggregate complementation, the separation of pitch-class ...
of a verb or preposition. For example, in the sentence "The black cat sat on a dear friend of mine", the noun phrase ''the black cat'' serves as the subject, and the noun phrase ''a dear friend of mine'' serves as the complement of the preposition ''on''.


Nouns in relation to other word classes


Pronouns

Nouns and noun phrases can typically be replaced by
pronoun In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun (abbreviated ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase. Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the parts of speech, but some modern theorists would not co ...
s, such as ''he'', ''it'', ''which'', and ''those'', in order to avoid repetition or explicit identification, or for other reasons. For example, in the sentence ''Gareth thought that he was weird'', the word ''he'' is a pronoun standing in place of the person's name. The word ''one'' can replace parts of noun phrases, and it sometimes stands in for a noun. An example is given below: But ''one'' can also stand in for larger parts of a noun phrase. For example, in the following example, ''one'' can stand in for ''new car''.


Nominalization

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:


See also

*
Description Description is the pattern of narrative development that aims to make vivid a place, object, character, or group. Description is one of four rhetorical modes (also known as ''modes of discourse''), along with exposition, argumentation, and narr ...
*
Grammatical case A grammatical case is a category of nouns and noun modifiers (determiners, adjectives, participles, and Numeral (linguistics), numerals), which corresponds to one or more potential grammatical functions for a nominal group in a wording. In vari ...
*
Phi features In linguistics, especially within generative grammar, phi features (denoted with the Greek letter φ 'phi') are the morphological expression of a semantic process in which a word or morpheme varies with the form of another word or phrase in the sa ...
*
Punctuation Punctuation (or sometimes interpunction) is the use of spacing, conventional signs (called punctuation marks), and certain typographical devices as aids to the understanding and correct reading of written text, whether read silently or aloud. An ...
*
Reference Reference is a relationship between objects in which one object designates, or acts as a means by which to connect to or link to, another object. The first object in this relation is said to ''refer to'' the second object. It is called a ''name'' ...


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Bibliography

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Further reading

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


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Nouns
– Nouns described by The Idioms Dictionary. {{Authority control Grammar Parts of speech Autological words