English grammar - Roger Berry 2012

A2.1 Defining nouns
A2 Nouns
Section A. Introduction

Nouns are an open word class (see B1); new nouns are being devised almost every day, it seems. A recent example is chocoholic. Nouns are by far the most numerous word class; they also tend to make up more of a text than other open word classes.

Activity A2.1

Look at the paragraph above. How many nouns are there? (Do not count repetitions.)

The traditional notional definition of noun goes something like this:

’a noun is the name of a person, place or thing’

You can probably see some problems with this already. First, there is the question of what we mean by ’name’; we will see another situation below where this word is needed. More importantly, many nouns have nothing to do with people, places or things, for example, nouns referring to abstract concepts such as love, beauty, pain, war, or nouns referring to actions, such as singing, laughter, fight.

Activity A2.2

Look at these nouns and decide if they fit the above definition:

arrival, bomb, carpet, death, description, joke, science, teacher, tree, walk

As the activity shows, the notional definition is generally not very helpful. Because of this we look for formal features to help us to identify nouns. In this approach, a noun is a word which

a) changes its form for singular and plural and for the genitive: dog, dogs, dog’s, dogs’ (see below for an explanation of these terms)

b) can act as the head of a noun phrase (new information) and can be preceded by a determiner such as some: some people

Point b) is dealt with mainly in A3. Here we will concentrate on a) and related matters.

Activity A2.3

Glob is a word you won’t find in a dictionary because it is invented. Look at these sentences and work out if it is a noun.

1. There are two globs on your shoulder.

2. Her feelings were a mixture of embarrassment, anger and glob.

3. It is always useful to have a glob around.

4. You can glob all you like; I’m not coming.

5. He is a glob teacher.

Did you use the notional or the formal definition to decide? If you used the formal one, which point(s)?