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Put simply, a '''noun''' is a word used to name a person, place, thing, animal, or abstract idea.  

In [[linguistics]], a noun is a member of a large, [[open class (linguistics)|open]] [[lexical category]] whose members can occur as the main word in the [[subject (grammar)|subject]] of a [[clause]], the [[object (grammar)|object]] of a [[verb]], or the object of a [[preposition]].<ref>Loos, Eugene E., et al. 2003. [http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsANoun.htm Glossary of linguistic terms: What is a noun?]</ref>

Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of expressions.  The [[syntactic]] rules for nouns differ from language to language. In [[English language|English]], nouns may be defined as those words which can occur with articles and [[adjective|attributive adjectives]] and can function as the [[head (linguistics)|head]] of a [[noun phrase]].

In [[traditional grammar|traditional]] English grammar, the noun is one of the eight [[parts of speech]].

== History ==
''Noun'' comes from the [[Latin]] ''nōmen'' "name",<ref>{{L&S|nomen|nōmen|ref}}</ref> a translation of [[Ancient Greek]] ''ónoma''.<ref>{{LSJ|o/noma|ὄνομα|ref}}</ref> Word classes like nouns were first described by {{IAST|[[Pāṇini]]}} in the [[Sanskrit]] language and by Ancient Greek grammarians, and were defined by the grammatical [[morphology (linguistics)|forms]] that they take. In Greek and Sanskrit, for example, nouns are categorized by [[grammatical gender|gender]] and inflected for [[grammatical case|case]] and [[grammatical number|number]].

Because nouns and adjectives share these three categories, [[Dionysius Thrax]] does not clearly distinguish between the two, and uses the term ''ónoma'' "name" for both, although some of the words that he describes as ''paragōgón'' (pl. ''paragōgá'') "derived"<ref>{{LSJ|paragwgo/s|παραγωγός|shortref}}</ref> are adjectives.<ref>Dionysius Thrax. [http://www.hs-augsburg.de/~harsch/graeca/Chronologia/S_ante02/DionysiosThrax/dio_tech.html τέχνη γραμματική] (Art of Grammar), section ιβ´ (10b): περὶ ὀνόματος (On the noun). Bibliotheca Augustana.
:εἴδη δὲ παραγώνων ἐστὶν ἑπτά· πατρωνυμικόν, κτητικόν, συγκριτικόν, ὑπερθετικόν, ὑποκοριστικόν, παρώνυμον, ῥηματικόν.
:There are seven types of derived [nouns]: patronymic, possessive, comparative, superlative, diminutive, derived from a noun, [and] verbal.</ref>

== Different definitions of nouns ==
The ''semantic'' definition of nouns as referring to a ''person'',''place'', ''thing'', ''event'', ''substance'', ''quality'', ''quantity'', or ''idea'', etc, has been criticized by contemporary linguists as being uninformative.<ref>Jackendoff, Ray. 2002. ''Foundations of language: brain, meaning, grammar, evolution.'' Oxford University Press. Page 124.</ref> Expressions of [[natural language]] have properties at different levels. They have ''formal'' properties, like what kinds of [[morphology (linguistics)|morphological]] [[prefix]]es or [[suffix]]es they take and what kinds of other expressions they combine with; but they also have [[semantics|semantic]] properties, i.e. properties pertaining to their meaning. The definition of a noun at the outset of this article is thus a ''formal'', traditional grammatical definition. That definition, for the most part, is considered uncontroversial and furnishes the means for users of certain languages to effectively distinguish most nouns from non-nouns. However, it has the disadvantage that it does not apply to nouns in all languages. For example in [[Russian language|Russian]], there are no definite articles, so one cannot define nouns as words that are modified by definite articles. There have also been several attempts to define nouns in terms of their [[semantics|semantic]] properties. Many of these are controversial, but some are discussed below. 

=== Predicates with identity criteria ===
The British logician [[Peter Thomas Geach]] proposed a more subtle semantic definition of nouns.<ref>Geach, Peter. 1962. Reference and Generality. Cornell University Press.</ref>  He noticed that adverbs like "same" can modify nouns, but no other kinds of parts of speech, like [[verbs]] or [[adjectives]]. Not only that, but there also do not seem to be any ''other'' expressions with similar meaning that can modify verbs and adjectives. Consider the following examples.
: grammatical: John and Bill participated in the '''same''' fight.
: ungrammatical: *John and Bill '''samely''' fought.
There is no English adverb ''samely''. In some other languages, like Czech, however there are adverbs corresponding to ''samely''. Hence, in Czech, the translation of the last sentence would be fine; however, it would mean that John and Bill fought ''in the same way'': not that they participated in the ''same fight''. Geach proposed that we could explain this, if nouns denote logical [[predicate (grammar)|predicates]]  with '''identity criteria'''. An identity criterion would allow us to conclude, for example, that ''person x at time 1 is ''the same person'' as person y at time 2''. Different nouns can have different identity criteria. A well known example of this is due to Gupta:<ref name="Anil_Gupta_Logic">Gupta, Anil. 1980, The logic of common nouns. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.</ref>
:National Airlines transported 2 million '''passengers''' in 1979.
:National Airlines transported (at least) 2 million '''persons''' in 1979.
Given that, in general, all passengers are persons, the last sentence above ought to follow logically from the first one. But it doesn't.  It is easy to imagine, for example, that on average, every person who travelled with National Airlines in 1979, travelled with them twice.  In that case, one would say that the airline transported 2 million ''passengers'' but only 1 million ''persons''. Thus, the way that we count ''passengers'' isn't necessarily the same as the way that we count ''persons''. Put somewhat differently: At two different times, ''you'' may correspond to two distinct ''passengers'', even though you are one and the same person. For a precise definition of ''identity criteria'', see Gupta.<ref name="Anil_Gupta_Logic"/>

===Prototypically referential expressions===
Another semantic definition of nouns is that they are ''prototypically referential''.<ref>Croft, William. 1993. "A noun is a noun is a noun - or is it? Some reflections on the universality of semantics". Proceedings of the Nineteenth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society, ed. Joshua S. Guenter, Barbara A. Kaiser and Cheryl C. Zoll, 369-80. Berkeley: Berkeley Linguistics Society.</ref>

Recently, [[Mark Baker (linguist)|Mark Baker]]<ref>Baker, Mark. 2003, Lexical Categories: verbs, nouns, and adjectives. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.</ref> has proposed that Geach's definition of nouns in terms  of identity criteria allows us to ''explain'' the characteristic properties of nouns. He argues that nouns can co-occur with (in-)definite articles and numerals, and are ''prototypically referential'' ''because'' they are all and only those [[parts of speech]] that provide identity criteria. Baker's proposals are quite new, and linguists are still evaluating them.

== Classification of nouns in English ==
===Proper nouns and common nouns===<!-- This section is linked from [[Czech language]] -->
{{main|Proper noun}}
A ''proper noun'' or ''proper name'' is a noun representing unique entities (such as ''[[Earth]]'', ''[[London]]'', ''[[Jupiter]]'',  ''[[Larry]]'', or ''[[Toyota]]''), as distinguished from common nouns which describe a class of entities (such as ''city'', ''planet'', ''person'' or ''car'').<ref>{{cite book | title = The McGraw-Hill Handbook of English Grammar and Usage | author = Lester, Mark; Larry Beason | publisher = McGraw-Hill | year = 2005 | page = 4| isbn = 0-07-144133-6}}</ref>

===Agent nouns===
{{Main|Agent noun}}
''Agent nouns'' are usually common nouns (although they may be proper nouns, such as in titles or adopted [[surname]]s) that take the form of a subject (typically a person) performing an action (verb). Examples in English are ''maker'' (from ''to make''), ''teacher'' (from ''to teach''), and ''actor'' and ''actress'' (from ''to act'').

=== Countable and uncountable nouns ===
{{Main|Count noun|Mass noun}}
''Count nouns'' are common nouns that can take a [[plural]], can combine with [[numeral system|numerals]] or [[quantifiers]] (e.g., ''one'', ''two'', ''several'', ''every'', ''most''), and can take an indefinite article (''a'' or ''an''). Examples of count nouns are ''chair'', ''nose'', and ''occasion''.

''Mass nouns'' (or ''non-count nouns'') differ from count nouns in precisely that respect: they can't take plural or combine with number words or quantifiers. Examples from English include ''laughter'', ''cutlery'', ''helium'', and ''furniture''. For example, it is not possible to refer to ''a furniture'' or ''three furnitures''. This is true even though the pieces of furniture comprising ''furniture'' could be counted. Thus the distinction between mass and count nouns should not be made in terms of what sorts of things the nouns ''refer'' to, but rather in terms of how the nouns ''present'' these entities.<ref>[[Manfred Krifka|Krifka, Manfred]]. 1989. "Nominal Reference, Temporal Constitution and Quantification in Event Semantics". In R. Bartsch, J. van Benthem, P. von Emde Boas (eds.), Semantics and Contextual Expression, Dordrecht: Foris Publication.</ref><ref>Borer, Hagit. 2005.  ''In Name Only.  Structuring Sense, Volume I.'' Oxford:  Oxford University Press.</ref>

=== Collective nouns ===
{{Main|Collective noun}}
''Collective nouns'' are nouns that refer to ''groups'' consisting of more than one individual or entity, even when they are inflected for the [[Grammatical number|singular]]. Examples include ''committee'', ''herd'', and ''school'' (of fish). These nouns have slightly different grammatical properties than other nouns. For example, the noun phrases that they [[head (linguistics)|head]] can serve as the [[subject (grammar)|subject]] of a collective predicate, even when they are inflected for the singular.

=== Concrete nouns and abstract nouns ===
''Concrete nouns'' refer to [[physical bodies|physical entities]] that can, in principle at least, be observed by at least one of the [[sense]]s (for instance, ''chair'', ''apple'', ''Janet'' or ''atom''). ''Abstract nouns'', on the other hand, refer to [[abstract object]]s; that is, ideas or concepts (such as ''justice'' or ''hatred''). While this distinction is sometimes exclusive, some nouns have multiple senses, including both concrete and abstract ones; consider, for example, the noun ''art'', which usually refers to a concept (e.g., ''Art is an important element of human culture'') but which can refer to a specific artwork in certain contexts (e.g., ''I put my daughter's art up on the fridge'').

Some abstract nouns developed etymologically by figurative extension from literal roots. These include ''drawback, fraction, holdout,'' and ''uptake''. Similarly, some nouns have both abstract and concrete senses, with the latter having developed by figurative extension from the former. These include ''view, filter, structure,'' and ''key''.

In English, many abstract nouns are formed by adding noun-forming suffixes (''-ness'', ''-ity'', ''-ion'') to adjectives or verbs. Examples are ''happiness'' (from the adjective ''happy''), ''circulation'' (from the verb ''circulate'') and ''serenity'' (from the adjective ''serene'').

===Noun phrases===
{{main|Noun phrase}}
A noun phrase is a phrase based on a noun, pronoun, or other noun-like word (nominal) optionally accompanied by modifiers such as adjectives.

=== Pronouns ===
{{main|Pronoun}}
Nouns and noun phrases can typically be replaced  by [[pronoun]]s, such as ''he'', ''it'', ''which'', and ''those'', in order to avoid repetition or explicit identification, or for other reasons. For example, in the sentence ''Janet thought that he was weird'', the word ''he'' is a pronoun standing in place of the name of the person in question. The English word ''one'' can replace parts of noun phrases, and it sometimes stands in for a noun.  An example is given below:
: John's car is newer than ''the one'' that Bill has.
But ''one'' can also stand in for bigger sub parts of a noun phrase. For example, in the following example, ''one'' can stand in for ''new car''.
: This new car is cheaper than ''that one''.

== ''Substantive'' as a word for ''noun'' ==
Starting with old [[Latin language|Latin]] grammars, many European languages use some form of the word ''substantive'' as the basic term for noun (for example, Spanish ''[[wikt:sustantivo|sustantivo]]'', "noun"). Nouns in the dictionaries of such languages are demarked by the abbreviation ''s.'' or ''sb.'' instead of ''n'', which may be used for proper nouns instead. This corresponds to those grammars in which nouns and adjectives phase into each other in more areas than, for example, the English term [[Predicative adjective#Predicative adjective|predicate adjective]] entails. In French and Spanish, for example, adjectives frequently act as nouns referring to people who have the characteristics of the adjective. The most common metalanguage to name this concept is ''[[nominalization]]''. An example in English is: 
: This legislation will have the most impact on the ''poor''.
Similarly, an adjective can also be used for a whole group or organization of people: 
: The Socialist ''International''.
Hence, these words are substantives that are usually adjectives in English.

The word ''[[Nominal (linguistics)|nominal]]'' also overlaps in meaning and usage with ''noun'' and ''adjective''.

== See also ==
* [[Description]]
* [[Grammatical case]]
* [[Phi features]]
* [[Reference]]
{{lexical categories|state=collapsed}}

==References ==
<references/>
=== Bibliography ===
* Laycock, Henry (2005). "[http://post.queensu.ca/%7Elaycockh/Mass%20nouns%20%20Count%20nouns%20%20Non-count%20nouns.pdf Mass nouns, Count nouns and Non-count nouns]", Draft version of entry in ''Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics'' Oxford: Elsevier.

== External links ==
{{Wiktionary}}
* [http://www.brighthub.com/education/languages/articles/19457.aspx Nouns - Singular and Plural Agreement]
* [http://esl.about.com/od/grammarforbeginners/a/g_cucount.htm ESL Guide to Countable and Uncountable Nouns]
* [http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/GRAMMAR/nouns.htm Nouns]

[[Category:Grammar]]
[[Category:Parts of speech]]
[[Category:Nomenclature]]

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