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Characteristics of Nouns in English

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Today we’ll be talking about the main characteristics of nouns.

Nouns can be characterized in a couple of ways, depending on which criteria you choose. So, one division would be into:

– common nouns: sugar, book, patience

– proper nouns: Paris, John, Jupyter

Nouns can be also divided into:

– count nouns: dog, man, chair

– noncount nouns: information, milk, anger

Here’s a video version of this article:

And now let’s have a look at the morphological, syntactic and semantic characteristics of nouns.

Morphological Characteristics of Nouns

Nouns are inflected for:

– number (only count nouns): catcats

– case: SteveSteve’s

Nouns also differ in structure. Here the division is into:

– simple nouns: car, table, water

– derived nouns: friendship, hopelessness, helper

– compound nouns: fingernail, arrowhead, windscreen

Syntactic Characteristics

Nouns can occur as the head of a noun phrase: the most interesting movie I ever saw

Nouns can have different syntactic roles, e.g.:

– subject: Tom wants to know the truth.

– direct object: I just bought a house.

– indirect object: I gave your sister some flowers.

Semantic Characteristics

Nouns can denote different things:

– concrete entities: girl, car, water

– qualities: darkness, obedience, likelihood

– states: freedom, imprisonment, death

Nouns can have different semantic roles, like for example:

– agent: The doctor examined the patient and gave him some pills.

– recipient: He sold Luke his car.

– affected: They painted the fence.


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