Noun

A noun is a kind of word (see part of speech) that is usually the name of
Examples
something such as a person, place, thing, quality, or idea. In English, nouns can
be singular or plural. The hog slept.
That is Mike.
Nouns often need a word called an article or determiner (like the or that). These
This is the Alton police
words usually do not go with other kinds of words like verbs or adverbs. (For
station.
example, people do not also describe nouns). In English, there are more nouns
The pay of the job is high.
than any other kind of word.
Go there on Monday.
Every language in the world has nouns, but they are not always used in the same I like sports.
ways. They also can have different properties in different languages. For
example, in some other languages, nouns do not change for singular and plural, and sometimes there is no word for
the.

Examples of nouns: time, people, way, year, government, day, world, life, work, part, number, house, system, company, end, party,
information.

Contents
History
Uses of nouns
Specificness
Proper nouns
Common nouns
Countability
Possessives
How adjectives become nouns
References
Other websites

History
The word noun comes from the Latin nomen meaning "name." Words like nouns were described in early days by the Sanskrit
grammarian Pāṇini and ancient Greeks likeDionysios Thrax.

Uses of nouns
In English sentences, nouns can be used as a subject, object, or complement. They often come after prepositions, as the 'object of
preposition'.

Nouns can sometimes describe other nouns (such as asoccer ball). When they do this, they are calledmodifiers or adjuncts.

There are also verb forms that can be used in the same way as nouns (such as 'I like running.') These are called verbals or verbal
nouns, and include participles (which can also be adjectives) andinfinitives.
Specificness
Nouns are classified into common and proper. Pronouns have commonly been considered a different part of speech from nouns, but
[1] as do many modern linguists.[2]
in the past some grammars have included them as nouns

Proper nouns
Proper nouns (also called proper name) are specific names. Examples of proper nouns are: London, John, God, October, Mozart,
Saturday, Coke, Mr. Brown, Atlantic Ocean.

Proper nouns begin with an upper case (capital) letter in English and many other languages that use the Roman alphabet. (However,
in German, all nouns begin with an upper case letter.) The word "I" is really a pronoun, although it is capitalized in English, like a
proper noun.

Some common nouns (see below) can also be used as proper nouns. For example, someone might be named 'Tiger Smith' -- even
though he is not a tiger or a smith.

Common nouns
Common nouns are general names. Sometimes the same word can be either a common noun or a proper noun, depending on how it
is used; for example:

there can be many gods, but there is only one God.

there can be many internets (two or more networks connected together), but the largest internet in the world is the
Internet.

Countability
In English and many other languages, nouns have 'number'. But some nouns are only singular (such as furniture, physics) and others
are only plural (such as clothes, police). Also, some nouns are countable (for example, one piece, two pieces) but others are
uncountable (for example, we do not sayone furniture, two furnitures).

The plural form of most nouns is created simply by adding the letters.

more than one snake = snakes

more than one ski = skis
more than one Barrymore = Barrymores
Note that some dictionaries list "busses" as an acceptable plural for "bus." Presumably, this is because the plural "buses" looks like it
ought to rhyme with the plural of "fuse," which is "fuses." "Buses" is still listed as the preferable plural form. "Busses" is the plural,
of course, for "buss," a seldom used word for "kiss."

There are several nouns that have irregular plural forms. Plurals formed in this way are sometimes called mutated (or mutating)
plurals.

more than one child = children

more than one woman = women
more than one man = men
more than one person = people
more than one goose = geese
more than one mouse = mice
more than one barracks = barracks
more than one deer = deer
And, finally, there are nouns that maintain their Latin or Greek form in the plural. (See media and data and alumni, below
.)
 more than one nucleus = nuclei
more than one syllabus = syllabi
more than one focus = foci
more than one fungus = fungi
more than one cactus = cacti (cactuses is acceptable)
more than one thesis = theses
more than one crisis = crises*
more than one phenomenon = phenomena
more than one index = indices i(ndexes is acceptable)
more than one appendix = appendices appendixes
( is acceptable)
more than one criterion = criteria
more than one octopus = octopuses

Possessives
Nouns are words for things, and since things can be possessed, nouns can also change to show possession in grammar. In English, we
usually add an apostrophe and an s to nouns to make them possessive, or sometimes just an apostrophe when there is already an s at
the end, like this:

This is Sam. This is Sam's cat.

The woman's hair is long.
There are three cats. Thecats' mother is sleeping.

How adjectives become nouns

Most adjectives become nouns by adding the suffix ness. Example: Take the adjective 'natural', add 'ness' to get 'naturalness', a noun.
To see a list of 100 adjectives used inBasic English, click here

References
1. "noun, a.1" The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1989. OED Online. Oxford University Press.
<http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/display/00327657?keytype=ref&ijkey=56n3orQ0BYHJo>.
2. Huddleston, R. & Pullum, G. K. (2002).The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language . Cambridge: Cambridge
UP.

Plural Noun Forms." Plural Noun Forms. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Sept. 2014.

Other websites
Nouns

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This page was last changed on 22 February 2018, at 21:25.

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