Nouns

Put simply, a noun is a word that refers to a person, place, thing or idea. Nouns are usually the first words which small children learn.

Classification

Linguistically, a noun can be classified by using three different methods: Semantic/Notional Method, Morphological Method, or Distributional Method.

To classify the noun using the semantic method, decide if the word refers to a tangible concrete object. For example, a "person" is an object that can be weighed, it has mass. Whereas "liberty" is something we cannot weigh or measure.

• The rock is heavy.

The rock is something we can weigh.

A noun can also be classified using the morphological method if the affix plural -s can be applied to the word. Such as,

• The dog walked. -> The dogs walked. (Meaning more than one dog.)

Another method of classifying nouns is using the distributional method. This method looks at basic combinations of words. A noun is able to follow determiners (DET). If a word can directly follow a determiner, then it is a noun.

• The man ran. The = DET, so man = Noun

A word only needs to pass one of these tests to function as a noun.

Types of Nouns

There are three different subclasses of nouns: Proper, Common, and Pronoun.

Proper Noun- A proper noun refers unique or specific thing. Proper nouns are often capitalized.

• The White House
• Ypsilanti
• Bob Barker

Common Noun- A common noun refers to a set entity. Common nouns are further divided into the categories of count and mass. Count nouns refer to specific objects, such as "cat" or "books". Mass nouns refer to undifferentiated "stuff", such as "water" in the sentence "I like water".

• grass
• doll
• balloons

Pronouns- A pronoun replaces or substitutes for nouns. There are several types of pronouns: personal pronouns (such as "I, me, you, he, she, it"), reflexive pronouns (such as "himself, herself"), and reciprical (such as "eachother"). They occur without determiners.

Noun Phrases

A noun phrase (abbreviated NP) is a group of words that work together within a sentence and are focused around a noun. Often, these phrases are the subject or direct object of a sentence.

You can determine whether a group of words is a noun phrase by moving the group of words to the front of the sentence and and putting a pronoun in its place if the sentence makes sense and maintains its original meaning.

• Alex was bouncing the ball.

• The ball, Alex was bouncing it.

In this example, the ball is a noun phrase because it passes the movement test.

However, we can use the same test to determine that bouncing the ball is not a noun phrase.

• Alex was bouncing the ball.

• Bouncing the ball, Alex was it.

While we can imagine a context when this sentence might be grammatical, the meaning of the sentence is altered when we perform this test. Thus bouncing the ball is not a noun phrase in this sentence.