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]
- ^ Example nouns for:
- Living creatures (including people, alive, dead or imaginary): mushrooms, dogs, Afro-Caribbeans, rosebushes, Nelson Mandela, bacteria, Klingons, etc.
- Physical objects: hammers, pencils, Earth, guitars, atoms, stones, boots, shadows, etc.
- Places: closets, temples, rivers, Antarctica, houses, Grand Canyon, utopia, etc.
- Actions: swimming, exercises, diffusions, explosions, flight, electrification, embezzlement, etc.
- Qualities: colors, lengths, deafness, weights, roundness, symmetry, warp speed, etc.
- Mental or physical states of existence: jealousy, sleep, heat, joy, stomachache, confusion, mind meld, etc.
- ^ 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 and hendiatris.
References[edit]
- ^ nōmen. Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short. A Latin Dictionary on Perseus Project.
- ^ «Noun». The Idioms Dictionary (online). The Idioms, Incorporated. 2013.
- ^ David Adger (2019). Language Unlimited: The science behind our most creative power. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 78. ISBN 978-0-19-882809-9.
- ^ Bimal Krishna Matilal, The word and the world: India’s contribution to the study of language, 1990 (Chapter 3)
- ^ nōmen. Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short. A Latin Dictionary on Perseus Project.; ὄνομα. Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; A Greek–English Lexicon at the Perseus Project
- ^ Chicago Manual of Style, «5.10: Noun-equivalents and substantives», The Chicago Manual of Style, University of Chicago Press.
- ^ Jackendoff, Ray (2002). «§5.5 Semantics as a generative system» (PDF). Foundations of language: brain, meaning, grammar, evolution. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-827012-7. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2022-10-09.
- ^ pages 218, 225 and elsewhere in Quine, Willard Van Orman (2013) [1960 print]. «7 Ontic Decision». Word and Object. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. pp. 215–254.
- ^ Reimer, Marga (May 20, 2009). Zaita, Edward N. (ed.). «Reference §3.4 Non-Referring Expressions». Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2010 Edition). Retrieved 15 July 2014.
- ^ English nouns with restricted non-referential interpretation in bare noun phrases
- ^ Rijkhoff, Jan (2022). «Nouns». Oxford Handbook of Word Classes. Cambridge: Oxford University Press.
- ^ Hengeveld, Kees (1992). Non-verbal predication: theory, typology, diachrony. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 9783110883282.
- ^ Lester & Beason 2005, p. 4
- ^ Krifka, Manfred. 1989. «Nominal Reference, Temporal Constitution and Quantification in Event Semantics». In R. Bartsch, J. van Benthem, P. von Emde Boas (eds.), Semantics and Contextual Expression, Dordrecht: Foris Publication.
- ^ Borer 2005
- ^ a b Gowers 2014, pp. 189–190
- ^ «Inalienable Noun». SIL International. 3 December 2015. Retrieved 6 February 2020.
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]
Look up noun in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
- Nouns – Nouns described by The Idioms Dictionary.
The first words children learn are likely to be nouns, describing things, people or places, or ideas. Nouns also tend to be the first grammatical form that are explained in schools, since it’s easy to give examples of nouns. Pencil, computer, table, window…. they are all solid things that we can see and touch, and are good examples of basic nouns.
When we talk about objects, there can be either just one, or more than one. When there is more than one, we make a plural form, usually by adding the letter -s onto the end. So examples of plural nouns are: pencils, computers, tables, windows.
Collective nouns
Some word are used to describe groups of objects or animals – such as a herd (of cows) or a class (of children). They are not plural words as such, but are words for collections of individuals. They are known as collective nouns.
Proper nouns
In addition to general items or objects, the names given to people or places (or animals, or cars, or books …) are also a form of noun. They are distinguished by having the first letter written as a capital (uppercase). So John, Mr Dickson, Africa, London, Wuthering Heights…. all are examples of names, and are proper nouns.
Abstract nouns
A third category of noun, which can be harder for small children to grasp, is that of ideas or concepts. Words like happiness, anger, rules, truth – all convey ideas and are classified as abstract nouns.
What makes a word a noun?
So why do we group all these disparate kinds of word together? With other parts of speech, such as adjectives, it’s easier to see what they have in common. But an abstract noun seems a long way from a collective noun or a proper noun. Why not give them all distinct names and treat them differently?
The reason for this is that nouns – all of them – can be used in certain ways in sentences. This concept is unlikely to be studied in any great depth in British schools, but if it interests you, there are many websites explaining further. See below.
Why does it matter anyway?
Is there any reason for learning this? It may seem like a lot of academic balderdash, with little practical use. The theory is that a good understanding of English grammar can help when writing, and also when learning foreign languages. However many people succeed in learning second or third languages without any deep knowledge of how grammar works in English. Moreover, there are plenty of successful writers who barely know what a noun is, let alone the various kinds.
Personally, I find it interesting to understand better how our language works. Some people find linguistics fascinating in general; others like to see the logical structure of language. Knowing the correct forms may help in better writing if it doesn’t come naturally, too. But if you have no interest, and your child asks no questions, there is no need to study this topic in depth.
If you want to know more about how nouns are used in sentences in English, the page basic use of nouns explains about subjects and two kinds of object. These are really the only uses that are important for most people. For grammar geeks, there’s a further page on the complex use of nouns in English.
If you would like further examples, here are a few sites that go into more detail:
Ginger Software on nouns – this site looks at several different ways that nouns can be used in sentences. Lots of examples.
Wikipedia on the noun – historical background, very detailed description of how they work, and even more complexity. Fascinating.
See also:
Basic English grammar – why it’s worth studying, an overview of the different parts of speech
Verbs – different forms, tenses, and voices
Pronouns – how to use pronouns, and their different uses in sentences
Adjectives – what adjectives are, how to use them, comparative and superlative forms
Adverbs – what adverbs are, when and how to use them
What makes a word a noun?
A noun is a word that refers to a thing (book), a person (Betty Crocker), an animal (cat), a place (Omaha), a quality (softness), an idea (justice), or an action (yodeling). It’s usually a single word, but not always: cake, shoes, school bus, and time and a half are all nouns.
How do you know if a word is a noun or adjective?
When in doubt, use the word in a sentence, then see how it’s being used.
- A noun will be something – a thing. It will be the thing that is acting or upon which it is being done.
- A verb will be the action the noun is experiencing.
- An adjective tells us more about the noun.
- An adverb tells us more about the verb.
What is the difference between verb and noun?
Noun: a word that refers to a person, place, thing, event, substance or quality e.g.’nurse’, ‘cat’, ‘party’, ‘oil’ and ‘poverty’. Verb: a word or phrase that describes an action, condition or experience e.g. ‘run’, ‘look’ and ‘feel’.
Who said love is a verb?
Stephen R. Covey
Is Loved a noun?
verb (used without object), loved, lov·ing. to have love or affection for another person; be in love.
What is the present tense of love?
PRESENT PERFECT TENSE
What is the present tense of laugh?
The past tense of laugh is laughed. The third-person singular simple present indicative form of laugh is laughs. The present participle of laugh is laughing.
What is the present tense of teach?
The past tense of teach is taught. The third-person singular simple present indicative form of teach is teaches. The present participle of teach is teaching.
Is see present tense?
The past tense of see is saw. The third-person singular simple present indicative form of see is sees. The present participle of see is seeing. The past participle of see is seen.
What kind of verb is teach?
1[intransitive, transitive] to give lessons to students in a school, college, university, etc.; to help someone learn something by giving information about it She teaches at our local high school.
What is the present tense of treat?
treat Definitions and Synonyms
| present tense | |
|---|---|
| I/you/we/they | treat |
| he/she/it | treats |
| present participle | treating |
| past tense | treated |
What is the noun of treat?
treatment. The process or manner of treating someone or something.
What is the verb form of treat?
Regular verb: treat – treated – treated.
Is treat a word?
verb (used with object) to act or behave toward (a person) in some specified way: to treat someone with respect. to consider or regard in a specified way, and deal with accordingly: to treat a matter as unimportant.
What is the verb form of threat?
verb. threated; threating; threats. Definition of threat (Entry 2 of 2) archaic. : threaten.
What is the verb form of complication?
complicate. (transitive) To make complex; to modify so as to make something intricate or difficult. (transitive) to expose involvement in a convoluted matter.
Is mix up a word?
noun. a confused state of things; muddle; tangle.
What is the verb form of modern?
transitive verb. : to make modern (as in taste, style, or usage) intransitive verb.
What is the root word of complicate?
complicate (v.) 1620s, “to intertwine,” from Latin complicatus “folded together; confused, intricate,” past participle of complicare “to involve,” literally “to fold together,” from com “with, together” (see com-) + plicare “to fold, weave” (from PIE root *plek- “to plait”).
What are 5 forms of the word complicate?
- baroque,
- byzantine,
- complex,
- complicated,
- convoluted,
- daedal,
- elaborate,
- intricate,
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.
The Standard Definition of a Noun
Many people define a noun simply as a word that names a person, place, thing, or concept (e.g., Tom, library, monkey, and freedom).
However, not all such words are always nouns.
For example, depending on how it is used in a sentence, monkey might not be a noun. In the phrase, “The kids often monkey around,” monkey is a verb. And if someone asks you to pass them a monkey wrench, they’ve used monkey as an adjective.
Three Types of Nouns
A good place to begin discussion about what actually makes a word a noun is with a quick explanation of the three types of nouns. Nouns can be categorized into three basic groups: common nouns, proper nouns, and pronouns.
A common noun is a word used to identify a person, place, or thing (e.g., girl, tower, movie). However common nouns do not give the name of one specific person, place, or thing. That is the job of a proper noun (e.g., Rosie, the Eiffel Tower, Back to the Future). A person, place, or thing can also be identified by using a pronoun. A pronoun is a single word that substitutes for either a common noun or a proper noun (e.g., I, he, she, it, they).
Properties of Nouns
It is not entirely accurate to classify a word as a noun simply because it names something. A more precise definition is needed. A noun should be thought of as a word that, given its purpose in a sentence, has most or all of the properties of nouns,¹ which are as follows:
A noun can be pluralized without making a sentence confusing.
The sentences, “The monkey climbed up the tree,” and “The monkeys climbed up the tree,” both make perfect sense. This is an indicator that monkey is a noun as it is used in this sentence.
Monkey cannot be pluralized in “The kids often monkey around.” “The children continued to monkeys around” is an ungrammatical expression.
A noun can be preceded by the articles “the” or “a.”
Our example, “The monkey climbed up the tree,” shows this property in action. If a word cannot be preceded by the in a phrase, that word is probably not a noun. Monkey cannot be a noun in “The kids often monkey around” because “The kids often the monkey around” is not proper English.
It is important to note that the word the or a does not need to immediately precede a noun for the noun to have this property. Often, adjectives are placed between articles and their corresponding nouns, such as in “The short, hairy monkey climbed up the tree.”
This property is sometimes tricky to spot. For instance, in the phrase, “The monkey wrench was too small for the job,” it might appear as though monkey is a noun because it is preceded by the. However, monkey is an adjective in this sentence. Notice that the first property of nouns does not apply to monkey this phrase — “The monkeys wrench were too small for the job” is incorrect.
A noun can be preceded by adjectives.
We will again look at the sentence, “The monkey climbed up the tree.” Monkey is a noun because it can be modified by adjectives, as in the example we saw earlier: “The short, hairy monkey climbed up the tree.” Monkey cannot be a noun in “The kids often monkey around” because it is not grammatically correct to put adjectives in front of it. “The kids often short, hairy monkey around” is nonsense.
As with the previous property, this one can be deceiving sometimes, as words that are not nouns occasionally appear to be preceded by adjectives. In the sentence, “They would slow dance to their favorite song,” it looks like dance follows an adjective (slow). However, dance is a verb in this sentence because “They would a slow dance to their favorite song” and “They would slow dances to their favorite song” are improper English. Because dance is not a noun in this sentence, slow is not an adjective but rather an adverb.
A noun functions as the head of a noun phrase.
An example of a noun phrase is “the small, funny monkeys” as it appears in “We watched the small, funny monkeys.” We can be sure the underlined string of words in this sentence is a noun phrase because all of these words describe the noun monkeys (which we know is a noun because it is pluralized and preceded by adjectives and the word the).
If we strip all the words except for monkey from the phrase, the sentence retains its meaning, simply with less detail: “We watched monkeys.” Sentences that contain other segments from the noun phrase do not make sense: “We watched the funny.” Thus, it is without question that the string of words revolves around the word monkeys. For this reason, we say that monkeys is the head of this noun phrase.
Any word that serves as the head of a noun phrase is always a noun even if it does not have all of the other characteristics of a noun. Conversely, if a word does not head a noun phrase, it is not a noun even if has other characteristics of a noun. Because of this, proper nouns and pronouns are considered nouns even though they often do not have all the properties of nouns.
Proper Nouns vs.Pronouns
Proper nouns have only the third and fourth properties of nouns from the list given above. Meanwhile, pronouns have only the fourth property. Nonetheless, this is enough to make these words nouns according to most grammarians.
The proper noun John is a noun in “Big John plays baseball.” John is the head of a noun phrase in this sentence, and so John is a noun even though “The big John plays baseball” and “Big Johns play baseball” are not grammatical.
The pronoun he, by itself, is a noun phrase in the sentence, “He plays baseball.” Therefore, he is a noun in this sentence even though “The he plays baseball,” “Hes play baseball,” and “Big he plays baseball” are all incorrect.
Because pronouns share so few properties with nouns, some view pronouns as being a part of speech of their own rather than being a subgroup of the noun word class. The next article in this series discusses pronouns in detail.
Nouns that Don’t Look Like Nouns
We now have a more accurate idea of what a noun is, and we can classify more words as nouns than we would if we were to use the standard definition given at the beginning of this article. For instance, consider the word run, which as an “action word” is generally thought to be a verb.
Prior to reading this article, you may have thought the word run is a verb in the sentence, “I will not have time for a run.” However, run is a noun in this sentence. Notice that it has all the properties of a noun:
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Run can be pluralized without creating an ungrammatical sentence: “I will not have time for runs.”
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Run is preceded by an article: “I will not have time for a run.”
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Run could have adjectives placed in front of it: “I will not have time for a long, grueling run.”
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Run is the head of the noun phrase, “a run.”
To simply define a noun as a word that names a person, place, thing, or concept is not always accurate. Hopefully, this article has shown you how to identify nouns in any sentence and how to avoid misidentifying other kinds of words as nouns.
¹Pronouns and proper nouns are exceptions — they are nouns despite not having most of these properties
Reference:
Aarts, B. (2011). Oxford modern English grammar. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.