Nouns refer to things, entities, actions, relationships, qualities and phenomena. They have categories like number, gender and case. Nouns function as subjects, objects or complements in a clause. They can be count nouns, referring to individuals, or non-count nouns referring to masses. Proper nouns are names and common nouns are not. Pronouns replace nouns and noun phrases. There are different types of pronouns including personal, reflexive, possessive, interrogative, relative and demonstrative pronouns.
Nouns refer to things, entities, actions, relationships, qualities and phenomena. They have categories like number, gender and case. Nouns function as subjects, objects or complements in a clause. They can be count nouns, referring to individuals, or non-count nouns referring to masses. Proper nouns are names and common nouns are not. Pronouns replace nouns and noun phrases. There are different types of pronouns including personal, reflexive, possessive, interrogative, relative and demonstrative pronouns.
Nouns refer to things, entities, actions, relationships, qualities and phenomena. They have categories like number, gender and case. Nouns function as subjects, objects or complements in a clause. They can be count nouns, referring to individuals, or non-count nouns referring to masses. Proper nouns are names and common nouns are not. Pronouns replace nouns and noun phrases. There are different types of pronouns including personal, reflexive, possessive, interrogative, relative and demonstrative pronouns.
Nouns refer to things, entities, actions, relationships, qualities and phenomena. They have categories like number, gender and case. Nouns function as subjects, objects or complements in a clause. They can be count nouns, referring to individuals, or non-count nouns referring to masses. Proper nouns are names and common nouns are not. Pronouns replace nouns and noun phrases. There are different types of pronouns including personal, reflexive, possessive, interrogative, relative and demonstrative pronouns.
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ENGLISH NOUNS
Nouns and noun groups
Nouns semantically refer to things or entities, concrete entities, names of actions, relationships, emotions, qualities, phenomena and many other classes of entities. Nouns have the categories of number, gender and case. Nouns have distinctive dependents such as determinatives, AdjGs, NGs, PGs, PossessiveGs and clauses. The system of countability The count and mass distinction is expressed in English by morphological and syntactic means. Grammatical markers of NGs:
1. The singular form of the noun with zero
determiner: I always take coffee with milk 2. The singular form of the noun preceded by all: I say this in all sincerity. 3. The singular form of the noun quantified by much, little, a little. E.g.There is much noise in this room. Grammatical markers of count NGs 1. The singular form of the noun is preceded by a(n): I’m a teacher. 2. The singular form of the noun determined by each or every; Each day is different. 3. Plural form of the noun preceded by a plural determiner: few chances, these aircraft, those sheep, several series. 4. Plural number concord with the verb or pronoun; People like to be happy, don’t they? The system of definiteness Definite nouns=given information Indefinite nouns= new information(not known to the addressee The system of definiteness is expressed syntactically by the use of specific and non-specific determiners, in particular, by the definite, indefinite and zero articles. The class of nouns Syntactic structure: a noun is the main item (or head) of a noun phrase, as in the new telephones. It is often preceded by one of a small class of determiners, such as the or some. Syntactic function: a noun functions as the subject, object, or complement of a clause, as in Apples are popular, I like apples, Those objects are apples. Grammatical morphology A noun can change its form to express to express a contrast in singular/plural number or to mark the genitive case as in cat/cats/cat’s/cats. Lexical morphology: a noun can be formed by adding one of a small list of suffixes (e.g. –age, -ment, -tion) to a verb, and adjective, or another noun. The main subclasses Nouns
Proper Common
count noncount
concrete abstract concrete abstract
Proper and common nouns Proper nouns are names of specific people, places, events, publications, and so on. They differ from common nouns in 3 main ways. 1. Proper nouns can stand alone as a clause element as in (I like London. Fred is here. Today is Tuesday.),whereas only certain common can (Chess is fun, but *Egg is bad.*Book is red. *I see cat.) 2. Proper nouns do not usually allow a plural. (Londons, Freds, Everests), whereas most common nouns do (books, eggs, pens, but *musics) Proper and common nouns 3. Proper nouns are not usually used with determiners. (*A London, the Fred, some France), whereas common nouns are (a book, the music, some bread). In some cases, proper nouns can behave like common nouns: Look at all those Smiths. I used to know a Mary Jones. I hate Mondays. PNs are written with an initial capital letter. But not all words with initial capitals are proper nouns- That’s a Big Deal! Count and non-count nouns Common nouns are divided into two types. Count nouns refer to individual, countable entities, such as books, eggs, horses. Noncount nouns (mass nouns) refer to an indifferentiated mass or notion, such as butter, music, advice. Differences between count and noncount nouns Count nouns cannot stand alone in the singular (Book is red); noncount nouns can. (Chess is fun.) Count nouns allow a plural (books, eggs) Noncount nouns do not. (Musics) Count nouns occur in the singular with a (a book); noncount nouns with some (some music). Both types can occur with the (the book, the music) Differences between count and noncount nouns Some nouns can be either count or noncount, depending on their meaning. E.g. Cake is countable in Would you like a cake? But non count in Do you like cake? There are many such pairs. The lights were amazing. Light travels very fast. I’ve bought some bricks. It’s built of brick. I’ve had some odd experiences. I’ve not had much experience. A kindle of kittens A skulk of foxesA group of puppies A group of puppies
A skulk of foxes A flock of sheep
Abstract and concrete nouns Both count and noncount nouns can be divided into abstract and concrete types. Concrete nouns refer to entities which can be observed and measured, such as book, car, elephant, and butter. Abstract nouns refer to unobservable notions, such as difficulty, idea, certainty. There are nouns which permit both abstract and concrete interpretations. E.g. structure, music, permit. Gender No grammatical gender in English as in French and German. It has ways of identifying natural gender. We can distinguish animate beings from inanimate entities, personal from nonpersonal beings, and male from female sexes. Inanimate nouns (box, advice) pattern only with it and which. E.g. Here is a box. It is the box which was in the street. Gender Animate nouns make varying use of he/she and who, and are divided into personal and nonpersonal types. Personal animate nouns refer to males and females, and pattern with he/she/who, as in Here is a man. He is the man who was in the street. Here is a woman. She is the woman who was in the street. Such pairs as host/hostess and prince/princess, waiter/waitress make the gender clear. Gender Some nouns can be either he or she (dual gender). E.g. artist, cook, teacher, cousin. Your cousin is a teacher, isn’t she/he? Nonpersonal animate nouns refer to animals. Most take it/which, but those with a special place in human society take he/she/who, and some even have distinct male/female forms; bull/cow, dog/bitch, tiger/tigress Gender In British English, collective nouns such as government, committee, team, army and family, can take either it/which or they/who, depending on the point of view involved. The singular stresses the impersonal unity of the group, the plural the personal individuality of its members: The committee which has met … It is concerned… The committee who have met… They are concerned… Gender In American English plural forms are less common. E.g. Government always takes singular verb form as in Government develops a new action plan. Pronouns Pronouns are words which stand for nouns, a whole noun phrase or several noun phrases. They replace a noun in I’ve got a red hat and Jane’s got a brown one. They replace a noun phrase in My uncle John’s just arrived. He’s quite tired. They refer to a very general concept which includes the meaning of many possible noun phrases in I can see someone in the distance. (men, women, boys, girls, soldiers) Pronouns They refer to some unspecified event of the situation.(pointing) Look at that! He’s going to crash. Some pronouns have separate cases for subject and object functions, as in I vs, me. Some show a contrast between personal and nonpersonal gender and between male and female he/she vs it, who vs which. Types of pronoun There are many kinds of word which can act as a pronoun, but they express different kinds of meaning. Personal pronouns-the main means of identifying speakers, addressees and others: I, you, he, she, it, we, they Reflexive pronouns, always ending in –self or –selves (myself) Possessive pronouns-used to express a two-way relationship: each other, one another. Interrogative pronouns-used to ask questions about personal and nonpersonal nouns:who?, whom?whose?, which?, what? Types of pronoun Relative pronouns-(who, whom, whose, which, that)are used to link a subordinate clause to the head of the noun phrase, as in That’s the book which caused the trouble. Demonstrative pronouns(this/these, that/those)express a contrast between near and distant as in Take this one here , not that one over there. Types of pronoun They also have extended meanings. E.g. this may be used to introduce a new topic in familiar speech (I saw this girl) and that may express a negative attitude in That Roger! Indefinite pronouns express a notion of quantity. There are 2 main types. 1. Compound PNs consist of two elements every-, some-, any-, or no-+one, body or thing. Types of pronouns 2. Of- pronouns consist of several forms which may appear alone or be followed by of (I’ve eaten all the cake/all of the cake.) Their meanings range from the “universal” sense of all and both to “negative” sense of none and few. Other pronouns in this class are much, many, more, most, less, fewer, some, and neither.