The notional, or semantic, defination of a noun is as you have seen- a noun is the name of a person,place, or thing. Some linguists add "or idea" to account for abstract nouns such as democracy,environment, and life.
As we also noted earlier, nouns have endings or derivational morphemes that formally indicate that a word is a noun: recall the -ness of sadness. They also have grammatical morphemes or inflections for plural and possessive. In terms of their position, they are frequently preceeded by determiners,such as articles.
As pointed out earlier, noun serve functionally as subjects of verbs. They can also, however, be :
Direct objects of verbs : He watered his lawn.
Subject noun predicates: We are all learners.
Object noun predicates : They elected Ann president.
Indirect object of verbs : Ann gave the people confidence.
Appositives : Albany, capital of New York, is located on the Hudson River.
Objects of prepositions : Troy is also located on the Hudson River.
Vocatives : Let me tell you, my friend, grammar is just plain fun!
Another facts worth knowing about nouns is that there are three types. By far the most frequent in occurence are commmon nouns, or nouns referring to a kind of a person, thing, or idea. Common nouns themselves are divisible into two subcategories : Count nouns, which take the plural inflection ( e.g farmers), and mass, or Noncount nouns, which don't (e.g air).
In contrast to commmon nouns are proper nouns, or names for unique individuals or places (e.g Kevin). Proper nouns can be singular or plural. A small number of nouns that refer to group are called collective nouns, singular or plural verbs forms, depending on the interpretation given to the noun- that is, whether it is seen as a unit ( The family is together again) or as a collection of individuals ( The family are all coming for the weekend).
To conclude this section on nouns, we should note that gender is not an important features of English grammar as it is in other languages. Gender is only marked in certain pairs of English nouns ( e.g actor/actress : widow/widower) and is evident in some personal pronouns such as she-he and him-her.
As we also noted earlier, nouns have endings or derivational morphemes that formally indicate that a word is a noun: recall the -ness of sadness. They also have grammatical morphemes or inflections for plural and possessive. In terms of their position, they are frequently preceeded by determiners,such as articles.
As pointed out earlier, noun serve functionally as subjects of verbs. They can also, however, be :
Direct objects of verbs : He watered his lawn.
Subject noun predicates: We are all learners.
Object noun predicates : They elected Ann president.
Indirect object of verbs : Ann gave the people confidence.
Appositives : Albany, capital of New York, is located on the Hudson River.
Objects of prepositions : Troy is also located on the Hudson River.
Vocatives : Let me tell you, my friend, grammar is just plain fun!
Another facts worth knowing about nouns is that there are three types. By far the most frequent in occurence are commmon nouns, or nouns referring to a kind of a person, thing, or idea. Common nouns themselves are divisible into two subcategories : Count nouns, which take the plural inflection ( e.g farmers), and mass, or Noncount nouns, which don't (e.g air).
In contrast to commmon nouns are proper nouns, or names for unique individuals or places (e.g Kevin). Proper nouns can be singular or plural. A small number of nouns that refer to group are called collective nouns, singular or plural verbs forms, depending on the interpretation given to the noun- that is, whether it is seen as a unit ( The family is together again) or as a collection of individuals ( The family are all coming for the weekend).
To conclude this section on nouns, we should note that gender is not an important features of English grammar as it is in other languages. Gender is only marked in certain pairs of English nouns ( e.g actor/actress : widow/widower) and is evident in some personal pronouns such as she-he and him-her.
The notional, oremantic, definition of a verb is that it is a word that denotes an action or state of being.
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