DEFINITION (fragment from Definition M1 in LSEG)
"Noun" is the sentence element representing people, animals, things,
abstract notions, and groups of each. In a sentence, nouns execute and suffer the actions/states expressed by the
verbs, and they may...
Nouns are principal sentence elements.
The noun is presented in this page according to the following simplified structure:
1. Categories of Nouns
2. The Number of the Noun
3. The Gender of the Noun
4. The Case of the Noun
5. Forming Noun Equivalents
(Some) morphologic sentence elements are commonly grouped into:
1. noun cluster
2. verb cluster
Noun cluster contains the following sentence elements:
1. nouns
2. articles
3. adjectives
4. pronouns
5. numerals
Nouns are used to represent people, animals, things, and abstract notions. Articles are noun determiners, and they
cannot exist by themselves. Adjectives qualify or determine nouns. Pronouns are needed to replace nouns in a
convenient manner, in order to avoid repetition. Lastly, numerals are very close to being "true" noun
determiners; they are, however, always related to nouns.
Verb cluster groups:
1. verbs
2. adverbs
Three sentence elements remain unbiased by either of the two grammatical poles above:
a. prepositions
d. conjunctions
c. interjections
Nouns are principal sentence elements, while articles, adjectives, pronouns, and numerals,
are secondary sentence elements. Studying noun cluster facilitates understanding few, very important grammatical
notions/categories; for example:
1. the number
2. the gender
3. the case
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When we refer to grammatical category of "number", the noun takes two forms:
1. singular
2. plural
The general rule is: nouns form the plural by adding (+s) ending to the singular form. However, there are
many exceptions, therefore the nouns are further grouped into:
1. regular plural nouns
2. irregular plural nouns
The addition of the (+s) ending to nouns' singular form comes with orthographic changes.
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Fragment from LSEG,
table: forming the plural of the nouns.
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A noun has a gender which may be expressed explicitly, or implicitly. The gender is important for
meaning, clarity, and to further "agree the noun in gender" with other sentence elements
(adjectives and pronouns).
Nouns' grammatical category of gender is one of the following:
1. masculine: man, boy, workman, he-goat
2. feminine: woman, girl, actress, hen, she-goat
3. common: teacher, student, turkey, book, car
Many grammar books perform titanic efforts trying to differentiate common gender into:
1. common gender
2. neuter gender
All those impressive efforts are just subjective, semantic interpretation; they are not backed by any
morphologic or syntactic functionality.
FORMAL INDICATION OF THE GENDER
A. Using a suffix; commonly (+ess)
B. Using different words for each gender
C. Using compound nouns particular to each gender
D. Using 3-rd person pronouns
E. Using personifications
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Grammatical category of case is best presented for nouns. The case also applies to pronouns,
adjectives, numerals, adverbs, and prepositions. Further, the case is the backbone on which the entire
syntax was built.
Morphology deals in principal with the "form" of the sentence elements. However, the form alone is
not sufficient to highlight specific, referenced grammatical categories. For example: the noun morphologic
element is used to name people, animals, and objects. Further, the noun takes only two forms: of singular
and of plural (there is also the synthetic genitive form). However, those forms are not sufficient to
explain the noun morphologic element in its totality, because the noun has:
1. a meaning
2. a gender
3. a person
4. an accent
5. a number
6. a case
Regarding the case of the noun, many authors of grammar books suggest two simplifications:
1. simplification A considers only: subjective, objective, and possessive case;
2. simplification B considers only: common, and possessive case.
Both simplifications above lead, naturally, to a certain result: confusion!
The case of the noun is:
1. nominative
2. dative
3. accusative
4. genitive (analytic or synthetic)
Understanding grammatical category of case appropriately is very important because nouns exhibit
"case-agreement" with other sentence elements. Besides, each case corresponds to specific
syntactic functions. Without knowing grammatical category of case appropriately, there is no way to
understand syntax, in particular, and English grammar in general.
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Genitive
is a bit particular case because it takes two different forms:
1. synthetic genitive (also known as Saxon genitive)
Examples:
John's wife; my friend's name; horse's leg; Alex's job.
2. analytic genitive (also known as Norman or French genitive)
Examples:
the future of mankind; the roof of the house;
the leaves of the tree.
Syntactically, the noun in genitive (the owner) is attribute of the determined noun (the owned noun). In
terms of functionality, the noun in genitive is used to express few types of possessive relations.
Accordingly, the genitive of the nouns can be further sub-categorized as being one of the following:
1. possessive genitive
2. subjective genitive
3. the genitive of the author
4. objective genitive
5. descriptive genitive
6. appositive genitive
7. partitive genitive
8. the genitive of gradation
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Fragment
from LSEG: rules of forming synthetic genitive.
ATTENTION
Very important are the following two aspects:
1. nouns in synthetic genitive may be used to form adjectives;
2. nouns in analytic genitive may be used to form compound-noun constructions.
Both grammatical constructions above eliminate the genitive case. (Details are presented in Logically Structured English Grammar.)
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In addition to the existing nouns, other sentence elements or particular grammatical constructions may
become noun equivalents using one of the following methods:
1. DERIVATION
2. GRAMMAR CATEGORY CONVERSION
3. COMPOSITION
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