Descriptive Grammar and Use of English
Töltéssy Zoltán
WHAT IS A NOUN?
(1) SEMANTICS
The noun denotes substances (living beings, objects), or certain facts or phenomena
viewed as substances (qualities, processes, notions) (Ganshina and Vasilevkaya 1954:14).
Nouns refer to entities and their classes: human beings, objects, places, institutions,
actions, ideas, qualities, phenomena, feelings etc. (Down and Locke 2006:401)
By nouns concrete entities such as human beings (living beings in a broader sense) and
objects in the external world and also qualities and states are referred to (Biber [et al.]
1999:63).
Descriptive Grammar and Use of English
Töltéssy Zoltán
Nouns may be classified logically into the following categories⃰:
Diagram 1
Semantic classification of nouns (Budai 1986:323)
NOUNS
Concrete
Common
Class
⃰
Individual
man, girl,
book, house
Abstract
beauty, time, length, choice
Proper
John, Washington, the Thames, the High Tatras
Material
water, iron, wool, glass
Collective
crowd, class, company, family
Although no detailed explanation can be read in either edition, the two tables above and below may seem contradictory but they show how the same linguistic
phenomenon/factor can be viewed differently by the same author. (tz)
Descriptive Grammar and Use of English
Töltéssy Zoltán
Nouns may be classified logically into the following categories:
Diagram 2
Semantic classification of nouns (Budai 2009:272)
NOUNS
Concrete
Common
Class
Material
water, iron,
wool, glass
Abstract
beauty, time, length, choice
Proper
John, Washington, the Thames, the High Tatras
Individual
girl, book, house, man
Collective
crowd, class, company, family
Descriptive Grammar and Use of English
Töltéssy Zoltán
(2) PRONUNCIATION
There are some cases in which the shift of stress denotes the parts of speech which a word
may belong to, as follows:
Table 1
Shift of stress in different parts of speech
Verb
Noun
/rɪˈkɔːd/
/ˈrekɔːd/
/ɪnˈkriːs/
/ˈɪnkriːs/
/ɪnˈsʌlt/
/ˈɪnsʌlt/
/ɪkˈspɔːt/
/ˈekspɔːt/
/dɪˈzɜːt/
/ˈdezɜːt/
The change of part of speech may be indicated by the change of voice, as shown below:
Table 2
Change of voice in different parts of speech
Verb
Noun
/ədˈvaɪz/
/ədˈvaɪs/
/briːð/
/breθ/
/haʊz/
/haʊs/
/maʊð/
/maʊθ/
/waɪv/
/waɪf/
Descriptive Grammar and Use of English
Töltéssy Zoltán
(3) SYNTACTIC FUNCTION
Nouns turn up in a sentence as a subject, subject complement, object, object complement
and as part of a prepositional phrase (prepositional object).
Table 3
Syntactic functions of a noun
E x a m p l e s
S y n t a c t i c
f u n c t i o n s
Where are the children? Kate is playing in the yard, Peter
is studying in his bedroom.
subject
Mr Black has been appointed chief manager.
subject complement
Barack Obama was elected president in 2008.
It was Thomas Alva Edison who invented the efficient light
bulb.
Mrs Smith sent his husband an urgent message.
It was the staff meeting that nominated Mrs Taylor vicepresident.
The tribe moved across the plain and settled at the foot of
the hill about ten years ago.
direct object
indirect object
object complement
part of a prepositional
phrase
(4) MORPHOLOGY
From the viewpoint of morphology English is a poor language. It results from its nature,
namely English is a typical case of isolating tongues. It means that the majority of words are
unanalysable. These words are simple like take, go, sit, quick, slow, high, red, eight, ten,
eleven; and nouns such as book, thumb, tree, wood, timber, Earth etc.
New nouns are created by connecting two nouns. This way compound nouns are
introduced into language. E.g. bookkeeping and e-book; thumbnail, treetop, woodpecker,
timberline, earthquake etc.
There are many derivative affixes by means of which new form can be invented.
Derivative nouns are created with prefixes, e.g. co-author, ex-minister, misconduct,
counteraction, anticyclone etc.; with suffixes, e.g. teacher, hostess, majority, knighthood,
friendship, marriage, darkness, cruelty, freedom etc.
Descriptive Grammar and Use of English
Töltéssy Zoltán
As there is not any declension in English (except for the gentive ’s), uncountable nouns
usually have a single form, countable nouns regularly have an extra stem+(e)s for the plural
use.
(5) GENDER
Gender is a grammatical category, a feature of nouns in several languages. It has hardly
anything to do with biology or biological sexes. As for linguistic and biological animacy, it is
obvious that biological sexes and grammatical genders match up irregularly. Sex has to be
differentiated from grammatical gender, which is a morphosyntactic category which flective
languages have for keeping track for nouns. Sex is a semantic property in language; gender is
a formal/coding property (Frawley 1992:99). (See Chapter (7) Cases and declension of nouns
below.)
There is no gender at all in Hungarian. Neither does Esperanto have gender in the case of
nouns: all nouns end in –o, e.g. knabino ‘girl’, edzo ‘husband’, barilo ‘fence’. In this sense
English nouns do not have gender, e.g. teacher GERMAN der Lehrer (masculine), die
Lehrerin (feminine); ROMANIAN profesor (masculine), profesoară (feminine); SLOVAK učiteľ
(masculine), učiteľka (feminine).
(6) NUMBER
English native speakers instinctively make a distinction with regard to how a referent is
cognitively perceived: whether it is a discrete, countable entity, such as pig, or as an
indivisible, noncountable mass entity, such as pork. This count‒mass is made in all languages.
It cannot be assumed that particular items are conceptualised and lexicalised in the same way
in different languages. E.g. news is a singular mass noun in English. By contrast in Spanish,
noticia is a normal count noun as hír in Hungarian: una noticia, dos noticias, muchas
noticias; egy hír, két hír, sok hír, hírek (respectively) (Down and Locke 2006:405).
As regards concepts in human mind, there are bounded and unbounded entities. They
have three distinct internal properties. Bounded and unbounded entities diverge on their
internal homogeneity/heterogeneity, their expansibility and their replicability (Frawley
1992:83—5).
Bounded entities have internal organisation. They can be considered to be composed of
different parts and are thus heterogeneous. Because they have internal structure, they cannot
be conceptually expanded or contracted without losing their status. They can be repeated.
Bounded entities can incremented (the term introduced by Ronald W. Langacker is
incrementation) in discrete units because the bounding serves to demarcate one unit from
another.
Descriptive Grammar and Use of English
Töltéssy Zoltán
Figure 1
Countable noun

This key has a definite contour; its different parts functioning in different
ways can be easily distinguished. It has two distinct parts, a bow and a blade.
(This is the English way of thinking!)
Figure 2

Figure 3

Nonexpansibility of a countable noun
If a key is divided/broken into two parts, it will not work.
Duplicability of a count noun
It can be duplicated.

By contrast, unbounded entities have no internal structure, they are internally
undifferentiated. If an amount of this entity is subtracted, or more added for that matter, image
of entity remains intact. There can be more or less of an unbounded entity because it is
seemingly continuous (not breakable into separate parts), noncomposite (amorphous) and
thus scalable.
Figure 4
Uncountable noun
Bounded entities are generally countable because they have a delimitation and thereby
replicable. Therefore bounded entities tend to receive the morphological changes of number in
whatever manner a language construes this formal device. In English, countability is
associated with the indefinite article, numerals, the distributive quantifiers each and every,
and pluralisation.
Descriptive Grammar and Use of English
Töltéssy Zoltán
Unbounded entities tend to be uncountable or nonenumerable because of their
continuousness and expansibility. (After all, how can nondelimited entities be enumerated
when enumeration presupposes differentiation of the entities to be enumerated?) Unbounded
entities therefore overwhelmingly tend to be marked differently in the number systems of
languages. In English, mass nouns tend not to take the indefinite article, numerals and
pluralisation. They tend to occur either with no marker or with nondistributive quantifiers like
some, much and little.
In English there are three numbers: singular (a book, some milk), dual (scissors, pants)
and plural (two books).
(7) CASES AND DECLENSION OF NOUNS
Cases indicate the functional role of nouns (noun phrases) in relation to other words in a
sentence (clause). German has four cases, Romanian has five cases, Russian six cases, Polish
seven, and Lithuanian ten. (See Table 4 Cases of nouns in some European languages below.)
Unlike many languages, there is not a system of declension of nouns in English. Nouns
have only one form for all cases, e.g. accusative, dative etc. There is only one exception, in
which the form of the noun takes the possible ’s ending but does not change. Thus all nouns
have a common case both in singular and plural:
a soldier’s duty, man’s liberty, the department’s homepage, women’s weekly, the
children’s timetable, ladies’ dressing room, BA students’ English grammar
An English noun in the common case may have all syntactic functions (nominative,
accusative, preposition+accusative, dative ‘indirect object’) (Budai 2009:279).
By contrast, Slavic languages and German have complicated systems of declension. (See
Table 5 Declension in German below.)
As regards Hungarian, grammar is not approached traditionally from the viewpoint of
cases. Attempts have recently been made to work out a systematic case grammar of
Hungarian. The linguist is Béla Korponay and his latest book on the topic is entitled A
Hungarian—English case grammar ([Budapest] : ELTE Eötvös Kiadó, 2001, ISBN 963-463382-x).
Descriptive Grammar and Use of English
Töltéssy Zoltán
Table 4
Cases of nouns in some European languages
Romanian
Russian
Nominative





Accusative





Genitive





Dative





Instrumental





C a s e s
Polish
German
Lithuanian
(Lithuanian
declension)
L a n g u a g e s
Inessive
(locative)





(locative)
Illative





Allative





Addessive





Vocative





Prepositional





Locative
Descriptive Grammar and Use of English
Töltéssy Zoltán
Table 5
Declension in German
Irregular declension in German – Die starke Beigung
Einzahl – Singular
Der männlich Gender
– Masculine
Der sächlich Gender –
Neuter
Der weiblich Gender
– Feminine
Werfall – Nominative
der Vater
das Kind
die Mutter
Wenfall – Accusative
den Vater
das Kind
die Mutter
Wemfall – Dative
dem Vater
dem Kind(e)
der Mutter
Wesfall –
Genitive/Possessive
des Vaters
des Kindes
der Mutter
Mehrzahl – Plural
Der männlich Gender
-- Masculine
Der sächlich Gender –
Neuter
Der weiblich Gender
– Feminine
Werfall – Nominative
die Väter
die Kinder
die Mütter
Wenfall – Accusative
die Väter
die Kinder
die Mütter
Wemfall – Dative
den Vätern
den Kindern
den Müttern
Wesfall –
Genitive/Possessive
der Väter
der Kinder
der Mütter
Notizen – Notes
Descriptive Grammar and Use of English
Töltéssy Zoltán
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modified: 27-07-2013 Retrieved: 02-03-2014