Noun as a Part of Speech

7/28/2019 Noun as a Part of Speech

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Noun as a Part of Speech. The noun is a word expressing substance in the widest

sense of the word.

In the concept of substance include not only names of

living beings (e.g. boy, girl, bird) and lifeless things(e.g. table, chair, book), but also names of abstractnotions, i.e. qualities, states, actions (kindness, fear,fight), abstract from their bearers.


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The noun has the following

morphological characteristics: Nouns that can be counted have two numbers:

singular (girl) and plural (girls). Many nouns have aspecial plural form if there is more than one. For

example, we sayone bookbut two books . Plurals areusually formed by adding an -s (books) or -es (boxes)but some plurals are formed in different ways (child-children, person - people, mouse - mice, sheep -

sheep). Nouns denoting living beings (and some nouns

denoting lifeless things) have two case forms: thecommon case and the genitive case.


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The genitive case of noun. It is doubtful whether the grammatical category of

gender exists in Modern English for its hardly everexpressed by means of grammatical forms.

There is practically only one gender-forming suffix inME, the suffix es, expressing thefeminine gender. Itis not widely used.

For example: heir heir-ess

poet- poet-esswaiter-waitr-ess

host- host-ess


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The noun has certain syntactical

characteristics. The chief syntactical functions of the noun in the

sentence are those of the subject and the object. But itmay be also used as an attribute or apredicative:

The sun was rising in all his splendid beauty.(Dickens) (subject)

Troy and Yates followed the tourists. (Heym) (object)

He (Bosinney) was an architect (Galsworthy)

(predicative) The hero and heroine, of course, just arrived fro hisfathersyacht. (Mansfield) (Attribute, the noun fatheris used in the genitive case).


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A noun preceded by a preposition (a prepositionalphrase) may be used as attribute, prepositional

indirect object, and adverbial modifier.

To the left were clean panes of glass. (Ch.Bronte)(attribute)

Bicket did not answer, his throat felt too dry. He hadheard of the police. (Galsworthy) (object)

Stop everything, Laura!, cried Jose inastonishment. (Mansfield) (adverbial modifier)


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According to the morphological composition

there are simple, derivative and compoundnouns.

Simple nouns are nouns which have neither prefixesnor suffixes. They are indecomposable: chair, room,

map. Derivative nouns are nouns which have derivative

elements (prefixes or suffixes or both): reader,childhood, blackness.

Compound nouns are nouns built fro two or morestems. Compound noun often have one stress. Themeaning of a compound often differs from themeanings of its elements.


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The main types of compound nouns are

as follows: Noun-stem + noun-stem: snowball, butterfly.

Adjective-stem + noun-stem: bluebell, blackboard.

Verb-stem + noun-stem:pickpocket;the stem of a gerund or of a participle may be the firstcomponent of a compound noun: dining-room,dancing-queen.


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Classification of nouns. Proper nouns are nouns which begin with a capital

letter because it is the name of a specific or particularperson place or thing:Mexico, John F. Kennedy,Atlantic Ocean, February, Monday, New York City,

Susan, Maple Street, Burger King. Common nouns are names that can be applied to any

individual of a class of persons or things (man, dog,table), collections of similar individuals or things

regarded as a single unit (peasantry, family),materials (snow, iron, silk) or abstract notions(kindness, development).


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Collective nouns are nouns that refer to groupsconsisting of more than one individual or entity, even

when they are inflected for the singular. Examplesinclude committee, herd, and school(of fish).These nouns have slightly different grammaticalproperties than other nouns. For example, the noun

phrases that they head can serve as the subject of acollective predicate, even when they are inflectedfor.

Concrete nouns refer to physical entities that can beobserved by at least one of the senses (chair, apple,

Janet or atom).Abstract nouns refer to abstract objects; ideas or

concepts (such asjustice or love).


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The category of gender.A classification of nouns, primarily according to sex;

and secondarily according to some fancied or imputedquality associated with sex. English has three gendersfor nouns and pronouns: masculine, feminine, and

neuter. Generally, the English language uses naturalgender rather than grammatical gender that is, thegender of a word is usually based on its biology (sothere is little need to remember whether a word is

masculine or feminine).


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There is no gender for nouns in English. Though therecan be exceptions, it mainly concerns personalpronouns, where a distinction is drawn between (he,she and it); possessive adjectives (his, her and its);and relative pronouns, where a distinction is drawnbetweenwho andwhich.

With the exceptions of the traditional, optional uses ofshe and herpronouns for ships (and analogousmachinery) and for nation states (e.g. "Britain and

her allies"), all other gender-related grammaticaldifferences have vanished.


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There still exist a few male and female forms(man/woman) and a few ess endings that refer to

females:waiter/waitress; lion/lioness. In the case ofpeople, the ess endings is becoming rare. In theinterests of sexual equality, words like author andmanager refer to both sexes, rather than using

authoress, or manageress for a woman.


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Identifying masculine and feminine

through nouns.

A few nouns are automatically replaced by masculine orfeminine pronouns, or byit. Some of these are as follows:

Contrasting nouns describing people(replaceable by e.g. 'he/she')

bachelor/spinster, boy/girl, brother/sister,father/mother gentleman/lady, grandfather'grandmother, grandson/granddaughter husband'wife,king/queen, man/woman monk/nun, Mr/Mrs,nephew/niece sir/madam, son/daughter, uncle/aunt

Contrasting nouns describing animals (normallyreplaceable by 'it')

bull/cow, cock (or rooster)/hen, dog/bitch gander/goosepig'sow ram/ewe stallion'mare


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Identifying masculine or feminine through

pronouns .With many nouns we don't know whether the person referred to is:

male or female until we hear the pronoun:

My accountant says he is moving his office.

My doctor says she is pleased with my progress .

This applies to nouns such as: adult, artist, cook, cousin, darling,doctor, enemy, foreigner, friend, guest, journalist, lawyermusician, parent, passenger, person, pupil, scientist, singer,speaker, student, teacher, etc.

Sometimes we can emphasize this choice by using both pronouns:

If a student wants more information he or she should apply inwriting.

However, this is becoming less acceptable. The tendency is toavoid this kind of construction by using plurals.


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The Category of noun. English countable nouns have two numbers the

singular and the plural.

The main types of the plural forms of English nounsare as follows:

The general rule for forming the plural of Englishnouns is by adding the ending s (-es) to the singular;-s pronounced in different ways:

[iz] after sibilants: noses, horses, bridges.

[z] after voiced consonants other than sibilants and aftervowels:flowers, beds, boys.

[s] after voiceless consonants other than sibilants: caps,books, hats.


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In the noun ends in s, -ss, -x, -sh, -ch, -tch, the pluralis formed by adding es to the singular:

bus-buses; box-boxes, bench-benches, glass-glasses, brush-brushes, match-matches.

If the noun ends in y preceded by a consonant,-y ischanged into i before es.

flu-flies; lady-ladies; army-armies. In proper names, however, the plural is formed by

simply adding s to the singular (Mary/Marys).

If the noun ends in o preceded by a consonant, theplural is generally formed by adding

es. Only a few

nouns in o form the plural in s:

cargo-cargoes; hero-heroes; but: piano-pianos, solo-solos.


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Nouns with irregular pronunciation and

spelling The following thirteen nouns with spellings ending in

-fe (pronounced/fI/) in the singular, are all spelt with -vesin the plural(pronounced/vz/) calf/calves; elf/elves;half/halves; knife/knives ; leaf/leaves; life/lives ;loaf/loaves;self/selves; sheaf/sheaves; shelf/shelves; thief/thieves;

wife/wives; wolf/wolves . The following nouns have regular and irregular plural

pronunciation and spellings:dwarf/dwarfs or dwarves;hoof/hoofs or hooves; scarf/scarfs or scarves;

wharf/wharfs or wharves. But note the following nouns which have regular spelling,

but both regular and irregular pronunciation in the plural(/fs/ or /vs/) handkerchief/handkerchiefs ; roof/roofs .


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Irregular spelling: internal vowel change The following nouns form their plurals by changing

the internal vowel(s) (this is a survival from oldEnglish)foot/feet ; goose/geese; louse/lice;man/men; mouse/mice; tooth/teeth;woman/women.

Compound nouns formed with man or woman as asuffix form theirplurals with -men or -womenpoliceman/policemen; policewoman/policewomen.

Both -man and men in such compounds (but not -woman/women) are often pronounced/man/

Other survivals from the past are a few nouns whichform their plurals with en:

brother/brethren; child/children; ox/oxen;penny/pennies.


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In some nouns the plural form does not differ from thesingular: deer, sheep, fish, swine.

Some words borrowed from Latin or Greek keep theirLatin or Greek plural forms:

phenomenon/phenomena; datum/data;formula/formulae; index/indices.

Some of these nouns have acquired English pluralforms: memorandums, formulas, terminuses, etc.

As a rule a compound noun forms the plural by adding

s to the head-word: editor-in-chief/editors-in-chiefs;brother-in-law/brothers-in-law.

In some compound nouns the final element takes theplural form: lady-bird/lady-birds.


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Nouns with different singular and plural

meanings . Some nouns have different meanings in the singular

and plural. Typical examples:

air/airs; ash/ashes; content/contents;custom/customs; damage/damages;drawer/drawers; fund/funds; glass/glasses;look/looks; manner/manners; minute/minutes;pain/pains; scale/scales; saving/savings;spectacle/spectacles; step/steps; work/works.

Noun as a Part of Speech

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