Is every word a noun

A noun (from Latin nōmen ‘name’)^[1] is a word 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.^{[2][note 1]}

Lexical categories (parts of speech) are defined in terms of the ways in which their members combine with other kinds of expressions. The syntactic rules for nouns differ between languages. In English, nouns are those words which can occur with articles and attributive adjectives and can function as the head of a noun phrase. «As far as we know, every language makes a grammatical distinction that looks like a noun verb distinction.»^[3]

History [edit]

Word classes (parts of speech) were described by Sanskrit grammarians from at least the 5th century BC. In Yāska’s Nirukta, the noun (nāma) is one of the four main categories of words defined.^[4]

The Ancient Greek equivalent was ónoma (ὄνομα), referred to by Plato in the Cratylus dialog, and later listed as one of the eight parts of speech in The Art of Grammar, attributed to Dionysius Thrax (2nd century BC). The term used in Latin grammar was nōmen. All of these terms for «noun» were also words meaning «name».^[5] The English word noun is derived from the Latin term, through the Anglo-Norman noun.

The word classes were defined partly by the grammatical forms that they take. In Sanskrit, Greek and Latin, for example, nouns are categorized by gender and inflected for case and number. Because adjectives share these three grammatical categories, 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 is now sometimes used to denote a class that includes both nouns and adjectives.)

Many European languages use a cognate 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 phrases (multiword units, also called noun equivalents).^[6] It can also be used as a counterpart to attributive when distinguishing between a noun being used as the head (main word) of a noun phrase and a noun being used as a noun adjunct. 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[edit]

• 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 or an attributive 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 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[edit]

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 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.^[7]

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).^[8][9][10] 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.^{[note 2]}

Linguists often prefer to define nouns (and other lexical categories) in terms of their formal properties. These include morphological information, such as what prefixes or suffixes they take, and also their syntax – 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, which has no definite articles.

A functional 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.^[11][12]

Classification[edit]

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.

Gender[edit]

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 in words that modify or are related to it. For example, in French, 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 -e for feminine). Grammatical gender often correlates with the form of the noun and the inflection pattern it follows; for example, in both Italian and Russian most nouns ending -a are feminine. Gender can also correlate with the sex 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[edit]

A proper noun or proper name is a noun representing unique entities (such as India, Pegasus, Jupiter, Confucius, or Pequod), as distinguished from common nouns, which describe a class of entities (such as country, animal, planet, person or ship).^[13]

Countable nouns and mass nouns[edit]

Count nouns or countable nouns are common nouns that can take a plural, can combine with numerals 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.^[14][15]

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[edit]

Collective nouns are nouns that – even when they are inflected for the singular – 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.^[16] Examples of acceptable and unacceptable use given by Gowers in Plain Words include:^[16]

«A committee was appointed to consider this subject.» (singular)

«The committee were unable to agree.» (plural)

* «The committee were of one mind when I sat in on them.» (unacceptable use of plural)

Concrete nouns and abstract nouns[edit]

Concrete nouns refer to physical entities that can, in principle at least, be observed by at least one of the senses (for instance, chair, apple, Janet or atom). 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). Abstract nouns, on the other hand, refer to abstract objects; 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[edit]

Some languages, such as the Awa language spoken in Papua New Guinea,^[17] 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 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[edit]

A noun phrase is a phrase based on a noun, pronoun, or other noun-like words (nominal) optionally accompanied by modifiers such as determiners and adjectives. A noun phrase functions within a clause or sentence in a role such as that of subject, object, or complement 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[edit]

Pronouns[edit]

Nouns and noun phrases can typically be replaced by pronouns, such as he, it, she, they, these 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:

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

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.

This new car is cheaper than that one.

Nominalization[edit]

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 the poor.

The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the powerful.

The Socialist International is a worldwide association of political parties.

See also[edit]

• Description
• Grammatical case
• Phi features
• Punctuation
• Reference

Notes[edit]

References[edit]

Bibliography[edit]

• Lester, Mark; Beason, Larry (2005). The McGraw-Hill Handbook of English Grammar and Usage. McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-07-144133-6.
• Borer, Hagit (2005). In Name Only. Structuring Sense. Vol. I. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Gowers, Ernest (2014). Gowers, Rebecca (ed.). Plain Words. Particular. ISBN 978-0-141-97553-5.

Further reading[edit]

• 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.

External links[edit]

• Nouns – Nouns described by The Idioms Dictionary.

Of all the parts of speech, nouns are perhaps the most important. A noun is a word that identifies a person, animal, place, thing, or idea. Here, we’ll take a closer look at what makes a noun a noun, and we’ll provide some noun examples, along with some advice for using nouns in your sentences.

Identifying a Noun

A noun is a part of speech that denotes a person, animal, place, thing, or idea. The English word noun has its roots in the Latin word nomen, which means “name.” Every language has words that are nouns. As you read the following explanations, think about some words that might fit into each category.

• Person – A term for a person, whether proper name, gender, title, or class, is a noun.
• Animal – A term for an animal, whether proper name, species, gender, or class is a noun.
• Place – A term for a place, whether proper name, physical location, or general locale is a noun.
• Thing – A term for a thing, whether it exists now, will exist, or existed in the past is a noun.
• Idea – A term for an idea, be it a real, workable idea or a fantasy that might never come to fruition is a noun.

Noun Examples

When we first start to learn the parts of speech, trying to identify different words can seem like a challenge. This process gets easier with practice. Here are some noun examples to help you get started. The nouns in each sentence have been italicized.

• Person – He is the person to see.
• Person – John started to run.
• Person – Plato was an influential Greek philosopher.
• Person – Sharon admires her grandfather.
• Person – My mother looks a lot like my grandmother, and I look very much like them.

• Animal – The dog barked at the cat.
• Animal – Elephants never forget.
• Animal – Sophie is my favorite horse.

• Place – The restaurant is open.
• Place – Let’s go to the beach.
• Place – Look over there.
• Place – Come here.
• Place – Harvard and Yale are two famous universities.
• Place – Look! There’s the Eiffel Tower.

• Thing – Throw the ball.
• Thing – Please close the door and lock it.
• Thing – Use words properly to be understood.
• Thing – The lampsits on a table next to the sofa.
• Thing – Money doesn’t grow on trees.

• Idea – Follow the rules.
• Idea – The theory of relativityis an important concept.
• Idea – Love is a wonderful emotion.

How Nouns Function

Nouns have several important functions. While it’s impossible to list them all here, we’ll go over the most important jobs nouns are tasked with.

• Nouns are subjects.Every sentence has a subject, which is a noun that tells us what that sentence is all about. John swung the baseball bat.
• Nouns are direct objects.These nouns receive action from verbs. John swung the baseball bat.
• Nouns are indirect objects.These nouns receive the direct object. Brad threw John the ball.
• Nouns are objects of prepositions.These nouns follow the prepositions in prepositional phrases. John swung the baseball bat at Greg.
• Nouns are predicate nominatives.These nouns follow linking verbs and rename the subject. John is a baseball player.
• Nouns are object complements.These nouns complete the direct object. They named their dog Max.

This is just the beginning. Be sure to dig deeper and explore more for additional information about nouns and even more noun examples.

There is no single syntactic or distributional property of nouns which is sufficient to guarantee the inclusion of an item in the word class.

For most modern grammarians there is a major subcategory of the noun class, the ᴘʀᴏɴᴏᴜɴ, the members of which show slightly different properties and distributions. The remainder of the class can be subdivided into the subcategories of ᴄᴏᴍᴍᴏɴ ɴᴏᴜɴ and ᴘʀᴏᴘᴇʀ ɴᴏᴜɴ. Again, proper nouns have certain properties which mark them out from common nouns. For the purposes of this answer, I am concentrating solely on common nouns. Common nouns may be seen as the central, prototypical members of the noun class.

1. Four core syntactic functions/ grammatical relations

Huddleston & Pullum, 2005, describe four syntactic functions that may be carried out by phrases headed by nouns (including phrases consisting of just one word). Within the clause they function freely as Subjects, Objects and Predicative Complements. Within Preposition Phrase structure they occur freely as Complements. This fact is one aspect of nouns that is shared by all the subcategories of noun. Here are some examples with the common noun dog:

• Dogs bite. (Subject)
• I like dogs. (Direct Object)
• We are dogs. (Predicative Complement)
• I’m not scared of dogs. (Complement of Preposition)

If the word being investigated has one of these functions, or is the head of a phrase carrying out one of these functions then there is a good chance that it is a noun. Notice though, that all of these functions or syntactic roles may be carried out by other words or types of phrase. So having one of these functions is in no way a guarantee of nounship. For example, verbs, finite and non-finite clauses also frequently occur as Subjects:

• Smoking is bad for you. (Verb as subject)
• To err is human. (Verb phrase as Subject)
• That he was continuously late was a problem for us. (Finite clause as Subject)
• For him to do that would be inconvenient. (Non-finite clause as Subject)

A good question at this point might be: why does smoking count as a verb and not a noun here? The answer is that although it is in Subject function, it still retains the syntactic properties of being (a non-finite form of) a verb. For example, this verb can still take a Direct Object:

• Smoking cigarettes is bad for you.

It can still take a preposition phrase as a Modifier or Adjunct (read adverbial) like other verbs:

• Smoking in the morning is bad for you.

It can take an adverb as modifier:

• Smoking quickly is bad for you.

It is clear then that if we are to bother to have parts of speech these need to be separated out from the syntactic role or function that a word may have in a phrase or sentence. (We’ll do a more thorough investigation of a case study at the end of the post.)

The syntactic role that a word has may be more or less important depending on what categories are contenders for the word. So for example, adjectives commonly function as Predicative Complements, so if the contending word is in Predicative Complement function, and we are wondering if it’s an adjective or a noun, this is not much use to us. However, if we’re wondering whether an item is an adverb or a noun, then the fact that the word is a Predicative Complement would be fairly decisive in showing it is a noun. Adverbs generally can’t function as Predicative Complements:

• *They are worriedly. (adverb as PC — ungrammatical)
• They are worriers. (noun phrase as PC)

2. Other syntactic roles of common nouns

The prototypical functions described above apply to the whole class of nouns. Common nouns however have other syntactic roles that they often take. In particular nouns in English, as well as appearing as the Heads of Noun Phrases, can also be Modifiers within the Noun Phrase structure.

To illustrate, take any item that may have a wrapper, for example biscuits. We can freely generate the compound noun biscuit wrapper. Now if some mad people start collecting these, they will be biscuit wrapper collectors, where the compound noun biscuit wrapper is modifying collectors. If there were enough of them, these people might form a biscuit wrapper collectors association where you could be a Biscuit Wrapper Collectors Association member, a disgruntled one of whom might leave and become a Biscuit Wrapper Collectors Association member assassinator. You get the picture. Just in the same way that both adjectives and nouns can be Predicative Complements, they both freely function as Modifiers within Noun Phrases. If a word cannot be freely used to modify a common noun, then this word is almost definitely not a common noun (pronouns do not freely modify other nouns, nor are they freely modifiable by other nouns).

Nouns and noun phrases also occur much less freely in other types of syntactic roles. So for example, in the following sentence, the noun phrase every three weeks functions as Adjunct of the verb phrase (I use Huddleston & Pullum’s terminology here, where ᴀᴅᴊᴜɴᴄᴛ is a special term for a modifier of a verb phrase. Other grammars use the term Adjunct in the same way that the term ᴍᴏᴅɪғɪᴇʀ is used here, namely for an item which is syntactically extra within any given phrase structure):

• Bob gets his back waxed every three weeks.

The phrase every three weeks here is a Noun Phrase. The head of this phrase is the noun weeks. Although this phrase is an Adjunct, there are no grounds for considering it an Adverb Phrase, nor for considering weeks an adverb. The word weeks here retains all of the properties of nouns discussed elsewhere in this piece. It is this fact that makes it a noun. So, the point here is that although the occurrence of nouns as Adjuncts in Verb Phrases is quite restricted, being an Adjunct does not prevent a word from being a noun, although it may make it statistically less likely to be one.

There are many other functions that nouns can have. For example they can be Modifiers in preposition phrases:

• They were five minutes into the match.

I will not attempt to give a definitive list here — if such a list even exists. Suffice it to say, that if a word has a syntactic role that is known to be performed by nouns, then in order to determine the word class of the item, we need to compare the ability of rival word classes to fulfill that role , and look at other criteria too.

3. Modification

Nouns are prototypically modified by adjectives, but as has been shown they are also very commonly modified by other nouns. However, nouns are rarely if ever modified by adverbs. In the very rare instances where they are, the adverb must necessarily come after the noun and not before it:

• The arrival recently of the plague was going to have disastrous consequences for the farmers.
• *The recently arrival of the plague was going to have disastrous consequences for the farmers. (pre-modification of noun by an adverb — ungrammatical)

If a word is modifiable by an adjective, and not by an adverb then it is very, very likely to be a noun. Adverbs can modify many other types of words and phrase, but they are excluded from pre-modifying nouns.

Nouns are frequently post-modified by other phrases, notably preposition phrases, relative clauses and adjective phrases.

4. Complementation

Many nouns take various complements, such as finite clauses and preposition phrases:

• The knowledge that this will not be done easily.
• My dislike of it.

However, Huddleston & Pullum note that:

… nouns differ from verbs and prepositions in that they do not take objects: I dislike it, but not * my dislike it. (p. 326)

This is one of the factors that rules out smoking from being a noun in the examples further above.

5. Determiners

Certain words occur nearly exclusively in Determinative function in noun phrases. These external dependents of the noun are a good indication of a word being a noun. Here are some examples:

• this patient
• every opportunity

The determiner this in the example above shows that this is the noun patient and not the homonymous adjective. The word every here is a near cast iron guarantee that the word opportunity is a noun. However, not all determiners are as good as others for this job. In particular, the can occur in Determinative function in phrases that have no noun:

• I’ll take the blue one and the green.
• the good the bad and the ugly
• the bigger the better

Here we see the occurring with adjectives. Notice that every cannot be used in these ways.

6. Inflection for number

Common nouns usually inflect for number and for case. Typically, plurally inflected nouns take /s/ or /z/ as a suffix represented in the writing by the letter ‘S’. If we see a word which seems to have an ‘S ending because it is plural, this is a strong indication that the item is a noun. If a word doesn’t inflect for number then this may be a sign that it is not a noun. However, we need to be a bit careful. There are many irregular plurals in English:

• teeth
• mice
• data

There are also nouns which are the same in the singular or plural:

• a fish, five hundred fish
• a sheep, two sheep

There are also nouns that end in an ‘S’ whether they are singular or plural:

• crossroads, means, kennels

There are also nouns that only occur in the plural:

• police, cattle, minutae, odds, doldrums, clothes

There are nouns that only occur in the singular, or are uncountable:

• crockery, luggage, equipment.

What this shows is that the ability for a word to show singular and plural forms with ‘S’ is useful, but a lack of inflection, or of regular inflection, is not sufficient reason to exclude an item from being a noun.

7. Inflection for case

Common nouns inflect for case. They have two forms. The uninflected form is often called PLAIN CASE. The other case is GENITIVE. The genitive form involves the suffix/clitic /s/ or /z/, represented in the writing as ‘S’ used in conjunction with an apostrophe:

• people, people’s
• woman, woman’s
• women, women’s
• baboon, baboon’s

We need to be a little careful here. First of all, this clitic actually gets appended to noun phrases, not just nouns:

• The woman you like’s boyfriend

Here we see this clitic appearing after the noun phrase the woman you like. We should not infer from the writing that like is a noun here! Secondly some phrases without nouns can also take this clitic:

• The blind’s access to braille versions of periodicals …

Here we see the clitic after the phrase the blind. Some writers like Huddleston & Pullum regard the blind here as a noun phrase without a noun. Here we see this clitic attached to an adjective.

8. Negative attributes

Of course, when considering whether a phrase is a noun or some other type of word, it is the properties that another class of words have and that nouns don’t, which will provided the decisive data. Importantly, nouns can’t function as the head of a main clause. In other words they can’t assume the syntactic role of Predicator (the function carried out by the verb).

Another feature of nouns is that they are not gradable, whereas many other adjectives are. Equally it is the property of not being modifiable by adverbs which is crucial for demonstrating that a noun modifying other nouns is still a noun and not an adjective.

There are many other negative criteria we can use to demonstrate that a given word is likely to be or definitely isn’t a noun.

9. The pronoun substitution test

It is sometimes posited that a good test to see if an item is a noun is to see whether it can be grammatically replaced with a pronoun. In actual fact, although nouns will often be replaceable with pronouns, more often than not in declarative sentences so will any other phrase in Subject or Object function, or functioning as the Complement of a Preposition:

• 1 a. To err is human.
• 1 b. It is human.
• 2 a. I don’t like that you always take the window seat
• 2 b. I don’t like it
• 3 a. I’m worried about him eating all the strawberry ones when I’m not looking.
• 3 b. I’m worried about it

None of the items that have been replaced by the pronoun it here is a noun. Notice as well, that pronouns don’t ‘replace’ nouns if the noun has dependents. When we substitute a phrase with a pronoun, the entire noun phrase goes, determiners, modifiers and complements too. In addition we cannnot use this test when a noun has the function of Modifier within a phrase including when they are Adjuncts (- modifiers in verb phrases). The nouns and noun phrases in the following examples cannot be replaced by pronouns:

• three miles away from here
• miles wide
• two days late
• the writer James Joyce
• we went there the day before yesterday

It seems that the pronoun substitution test is of limited value. The item being replaced may not be a noun. Furthermore nouns can often not be replaced at all depending on their syntactic role. If we have to determine the syntactic role before we do the test there is no point doing it. The reason is that the syntactic role will already tell us how likely an item is to be a noun with the same reliability as the pronoun test. This is because in declarative sentences any item in Subject function will be able to be replaced by a pronoun, whether it’s a noun or not. So the chances of the word being replaceable by a pronoun are the same as the chances of the word being a Subject. Neither of these is a guarantee of nounship. The syntactic role that an item has in a given sentence is very rarely a definitive indication of the category of a word. The reason is, of course, that all syntactic roles apart from Predicator may be carried out by more than one type of word or phrase.

A trivial point, a red herring

There are of course some words which sound and are spelt the same. This includes words whose meaning is radically different, as well as words with very similar meanings which belong to different parts of speech. It is common in linguistics to talk about lexemes. We require the notion of a lexeme to indicate that words like liked and liking are versions of the same entity, namely they are inflections of the verb like. So liked and liking are instantiations of the same lexeme.

However, we would not say that man in man of the match and man the decks are instantiations of the same lexeme, even though they may look and sound identical. The reason is that the first is an instance of the noun man whereas the second is an instance of the verb. Because we consider them as instantiations of different lexemes with the same sound and the same spelling, these words are considered homonyms. Although they have some semantic similarities, they represent different types of concept. Also syntactically, the noun man belongs with other instantiations of the noun such as man’s, men and men’s, whereas the verb belongs with mans, manning, manned and the present tense form man.

So what does this have to do with the question here? Well, it is often said that the category of a word depends on how it used in a sentence. Now if «word» here means a particular series of sounds or a group of letters, then this is trivially, but maybe interestingly, true. We can only understand whether a group of letters represents the noun lexeme man or the verb lexeme man, for example by seeing this group of letters in context.

However, there’s another, very harmful and unprincipled idea which sounds very similar, which is that a word should be assigned its part of speech according to what syntactic role, or grammatical function it has in a particular sentence. People who have this kind of idea say things like:

• this word is modifying a noun therefore it is an adjective.

The problem with this type of theory is that it works on the schoolkid assumption that syntactic roles belong to specific word categories. This is because, sadly, the teaching of grammar in schools is of particularly poor quality. Most people are taught at school that words that describe nouns are adjectives, words that describe verbs are adverbs, nouns represent things and verbs represent actions. None of this of course is true.

Here is what Geoffrey Pullum has to say about this problem. The quote is taken from LEXICAL CATEGORIZATION IN ENGLISH DICTIONARIES AND TRADITIONAL GRAMMARS 2009:

Most of the deepest blunders in English grammar as traditionally presented over the past two or three centuries stem from a single long-standing confusion between (i) grammatical categories or word classes; (ii) syntactic functions or grammatical relations; and (iii) semantic and discourse-related notions.

It is surprising to see the tenacity of this confusion. It does not appear in other domains. People do not confuse butter knives with screwdrivers, even though occasionally someone who cannot find a screwdriver may use a butter knife to turn a screw. Yet in grammar people just cannot keep syntactically relevant categories or classes of words separate from the relational properties they have when used in particular constructions, and cannot keep either separate from meaning. They insist on trying to define the first of these in terms of the other two, and they have done so since the very earliest attempts to write grammars of English.

What this means is that we should be able to distinguish between the fact that something modifies a noun and the fact that it is a particular part of speech. Additionally, ideas such as «this word tells us when something happened, so it is an adverb» or even worse «this word tells us when something happened, so it is being used as an adverb» are severely misguided. Neither the semantic content of an item, nor its syntactic role are defining characteristics of its part of speech.

Case Studies

Probably the easiest way to understand how we might run various tests to check the noun status of an item, is to look at these tests in action. There are (or will be shortly) two case studies of particular words in a different post here.