::Noun
::concepts
Nouns::example English::article Grammar::nouns Phrase::language Co-occur::which Speech::object
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A noun can co-occur with an article or an attributive adjective. Verbs and adjectives can't. In the following, an asterisk (*) in front of an example means that this example is ungrammatical.
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A noun (from Latin nōmen, literally meaning "name")<ref></ref> is a word that functions as the name of some specific thing or set of things, such as living creatures, objects, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref group=note>Example nouns for:
- Living creatures (including people, alive or dead): mushrooms, dog, Afro-Caribbeans, rosebush, Nelson Mandela, bacteria, etc.
- Physical objects: hammer, pencils, Earth, guitar, atom, stones, boots, etc.
- Places: closet, temple, river, Antarctica, houses, Grand Canyon, etc.
- Actions: swimming, eating, diffusion, explosions, flight, electrification, etc.
- Qualities: color, length, deafness, weight, roundness, symmetry, etc.
- Mental or physical states of existence: jealousy, sleep, heat, joy, stomachache, confusion, etc.
- Ideas or abstract entities: musicianship, cooperativeness, perfection, The New York Times, mathematics, The Beatles, etc.</ref> Linguistically, a noun is a member of a large, open part of speech whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition.<ref>Loos, Eugene E., et al. 2003. Glossary of linguistic terms: What is a noun?</ref>
Lexical categories (parts of speech) are defined in terms of the ways in which their members combine with other kinds of expressions. The syntactic rules for nouns differ from language to language. In English, nouns are those words which can occur with articles and attributive adjectives and can function as the head of a noun phrase.
Noun sections
Intro Definitions of nouns Gender Classification of nouns Noun phrases Pronouns Nominalization See also Notes References Further reading External links
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