THE NOUN

The nouns are words which denote classes and

categories of things in the world, including
people,
animals,inanimate
things,
places,events,qualities and states. ~ is the
central lexical unit of language. It is the main
nominative part of speech and
possesses the categorical meaning of substance
(thingness).It functions as (a)the subject or
object of a verb (The dog barks. The man bit
the dog. In the first case, dog is the actor, or
the one that initiates the action of the verb. In
the second, dog is acted upon.In The dog
barks, dog is the subject of the verb. In the
other sentence, dog is the object of the verb.
(b)the object of a preposition(to, in, for, and by
-He gave a bone to the dog. The words to the
dog are called a prepos.phrase) (c)can be
modified by an adj(The sympathetic doctor
spoke to the overweight patient)The diligent
doctors are concerned about the American
population. (Diligent and American are adj,
and they modify the n doctors&population)
(They have warned them to modify their
daily diets for many years.Of course, not
all healthy people are at high risk.(d)can be
used with determiners in the sent.(Look at
those lovely flowers;A woman was lifted to
safety by a helicopter)As any other part of
speech, the ~ can be described by3criteria:
Semantic features (function) of ~ (the
meaning) denotes entity (e.g. dog) or abstract
notion (e.g. idea)Morphological features
(function) of ~(the form and grammatical
categories):The form of ~ is characterized by
the specific derivational affixes such as -ment,
-tion,
-sion,
-age,
-al,
-ance/-ence,
(engagement, destruction, marriage, arrival,
allowance, persistence, bribery) or inflect.
affix(mark dif form of the same word toytoys;ox-oxenIn
accordance
with
the
morphological structure of the stems all nouns
can be classified into: Simple (stem)
Derived (stem + affix, affix + stem
thingness); Compound (stem+ stem
armchair) The grammatical categories of noun
are number, gender and case. Syntactic
features (function) of ~. ~ can be used in the
sent. in all syntactic functions but predicate.
Functions as head of NP (e.g. the girl); can in
some cases function as premodifier in a NP
(e.g. an oak table; a Japanese custom) or post
modifier (the President of France, the book on
the table, civil conflict in Africa)~ are divided
into two major subclasses: proper and
common ~. A proper ~ is the name of a
particular member of a class or of a set of
particular
members.Pr
nouns
denote
individuals, places, oceans,institutions, etc.As
regards to their meaning proper nouns may be
personal names (Mary, Peter, Shakespeare),
geographical names (Moscow, London, the
Caucasus), the names of the months and of the
days of the week (February, Monday), names
of ships, hotels, clubs, etc.Some pr. ~ proper
were originally common nouns (Brown,
Smith, Mason).They may change their
meaning and become common nouns:When
proper nouns usually refer to s.th or s.o
unique, they do not normally take plurals or
preceded by the determiners the or a/an .
However when they have no unique reference,
behave like common names and take plurals or
determiners:Do you know the Jim who works
on the third floor? (=Do you know the man
named Jim who works on the third floor?)
Theres a Broadway in almost every city.

(Broadway
as
public
entertainment
place)When the number is specifically reffered
to:There are three Davids in my class.Proper
~ may occasionally have a definite article as
part of the name, as in the case of some ships,
organizations, and hotels, as The Titanic, The
Humane Society, and The Plaza. A common
noun is a common name, i.e. it is the name
common to the class as a whole.A noun which
refers to a class of entities (people, things and
so on) or phenomena, for example girl, tiger,
table, mustard, pessimism. Common nouns
make up a very large category, including most
count nouns and all non-count nouns. Other
categories largely included in that of common
nouns are: collective, concrete and abstract
~.Count ~ (or countable ~) are common nouns
that can take a plural, can combine with
numerals or quantifiers (e.g. "one", "two",
"several", "every", "most"), and can take an
indefinite article ("a" or "an"). Examples of
count nouns are "chair", "nose", and
"occasion".Non-count ~ (or non-countable ~)
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".Both countable and
uncountable ~ fall into two semantic varieties
concrete and abstract. Collective~are
treated grammatically as countable ~- They
denote a number or collection of similar
individuals or things as a single unit.Collective
~ fall under the following groups:(a) nouns
used only in the singular and denoting a
number of things collected together and
regarded as a single object: foliage,
machinery.It was not restful, that green foliage.
(London)Machinery new to the industry in
Australia was introduced for preparing land.
(Agricultural Gazette)(b) nouns which are
singular in form though plural in
meaning:police, poultry, cattle, people,
gentry.The verb used as predicate is in the
plural:I had no idea the police were so
devilishly prudent. Unless cattle are in good
condition in calving, milk production will
never reach a high level. The weather was
warm and the people were sitting at their
doors. (c) nouns that may be both singular
and plural: family, crowd, fleet, nation. We
can think of a number of crowds, fleets or
different nations as well as of a single crowd,
fleet, etc. A small crowd is lined up to see the
guests arrive. Crowds of people were already
pouring from a variety of quarters. Concrete ~
denote material:iron, gold, paper, tea, water.
They are uncountable and are generally used
without any article.There was a scent of honey
from the lime-trees in flower. Gold is
expensiveAbstract nouns denote immaterial
(some quality, state, action or idea: kindness,
sadness, fight. They are usually uncountable,
though
some
of
them
may
be
countable.Therefore when the youngsters saw
that mother looked neither frightened nor
offended, they gathered new courage.
I never had an idea of it.
It's these people with fixed ideas. Abstr ~ may
change their meaning and become class nouns.
This change is marked by the use of the article
and of the plural number:beauty a beauty
beauties; sight a sight sights He was
responsive to beauty and here was cause to
respond.
She was a beauty.