The noun

The noun is one of the most important parts of speech. Its arrangement with the verb helps to express predication, the core of the sentence. The categorial meaning of the noun is 'substance' or 'thingness'. As a part of speech, the noun is characterized by a set of formal features, or markers:

a. word-building affixes such as -ment, -tion, -sion, -age, -al, -ance/-ence, -(e)ry, -ure, etc.

e.g. engagement, destruction, marriage, arrival, allowance, persistence, bribery, enclosure;

b. the categories of number, case, gender, and determination (restriction).

Syntactic functions performed by the noun in the sentence are:

a. Nouns may function as the Subject of the sentence

e.g. The old woman is resting;

b. Nouns may be Objective Complements and Adjuncts

e.g. Please give that man some money (Objective Complement);

Marty is working in London (Circumstantial Adjunct). The use of nouns as adjuncts of nouns is peculiar of English. Most such adjuncts are singular in form, but some may be plural, e.g. student activities not*students activities, women doctors. Many of them are merely set phrases that have been established by usage. But new adjunct structures are constantly being created because of the increasing need for naming new entities. Such structures are very common in technical, academic, and newspaper writing. As pointed out by M. Blokh (1983: 50-51), the status of the structures (whether they are compounds or free word-combinations) has presented quite a problem for many scholars. This problem is typical of English, in which compounds may not differ formally from free word-combinations. Cf. bathroom (a compound) vs. garbage dump (a compound or a free word-combination).

To solve the problem, M. Blokh suggests applying a special transformation test. If the structure cannot be transformed into the corresponding prepositional structure, it is a compound, e.g. bathroom -*a room for a bath. But: a stone wall - a wall of stone (a free word combination).

Another test to prove the quality of the structure is the addition of a modifier. As the most essential feature of the compound is its indivisibility, the added modifier restricts the structure as a whole, e.g. a big department store, not *a department big store.

The Semantic Classification of Nouns

We can distinguish two grammatically relevant classes of nouns: countable (discrete) and uncountable or mass (indiscrete). Countables are subdivided into proper and common nouns.

A proper noun is the name of a particular member of a class or of a set of particular members (cf. Smith and the Smiths). The function of a proper noun, or name, is similar to the definite article - both are particularizers: Smith means the man Smith/the Smith man. However, there is a difference between the man Smith/the Smith man and the man. It concerns the mode of naming. In the first case, man is restricted by the use of another name (i.e. Smith) while in the second case man is particularized by the definite article. The addition of a proper name renders the common name semantically redundant and it is deleted in the surface structure. Another problem concerns the way the two modes of naming solve the problem of the uniqueness of reference: proper names are not always 'proper', i.e. they may refer to more than one individual. Consider:

1. A. There's an Alice on the phone.

B. Is that the Alice you told me about?

2. A. There's a Broadway in almost every city,

B. The Broadway I'm referring to is in New York City.

This suggests that proper names may function as common names. To put it otherwise, proper names, when they have no unique reference, behave like common names. Such 'proper' nouns are to be determined by the definite article, i.e. by a grammatical element that marks the entity denoted by the noun as unique. Real proper names have unique reference and do not need to be used with the definite article.

A common noun is a name which is common to the class of objects as a whole. Common nouns form two grammatically relevant groups: animate and inanimate. Animate common nouns are further subdivided into person and non-person nouns. This subdivision of nouns constitutes the basis for the category of gender in English. Person nouns can be either masculine or feminine, while non-person nouns are neuter.

Count nouns are characterized by the category of number.

Uncountable nouns, in contrast to count nouns, do not denote individuals. They either denote substance as such (material nouns) or concepts, or ideas, which exist only in our minds (abstract nouns). Uncountables, naturally, cannot form the opposition of singular vs. plural within their class: they may be either plurals only or singulars only. Being singulars only (e.g. Beauty is rare), they do not behave in the same way as countables.

Nouns also take different quantifiers (i.e. a word which gives an indefinite indication of quantity, distinguished as such from a numeral, which gives a precise indication of quantity). Cf. few children vs. little money; fewer children vs. less money.