Lecture 4 Noun and noun Phrases
4.1 Classification of nouns
4.2 Gender of nouns
4.3 Number forms of nouns
4.4 Partitives
4.5 Genitive noun
WHAT ARE NOUNS?
Nouns are naming words.
They name people, places and objects.
They can also name ideas, emotions,
qualities and activities.
Here are some examples of nouns:
Peter, Elizabeth, driver, sister,
friend.
4.1Classification of nouns
• Nouns can be classified according to word
formation:
• Simple Nouns
• Compound Nouns
• Derivative Nouns
lexical meaning
• Proper Nouns
• Common Nouns
Proper and common nouns
A proper noun is a name used for a
particular person, place or thing, and
spelt with a capital initial letter.
(eg: Anderson, Britain, The New York
times).
Proper nouns
Proper nouns start with capital
letters.
They are the names of people,
places, times, organisations etc.
They refer to unique individuals.
Most are not found in the dictionary.
• A common noun is a name common to a
class of people, things or abstract
ideas.
• Common nouns can be further classified
into individual, collective, material, and
abstract nouns
• (eg: boy, tiger, family, team, water, air,
honesty, glory).
Abstract nouns
• Abstract nouns name ideas, feelings and
qualities.
• Most, though not all, are uncountable.
• Many are derived from adjectives and
verbs and have characteristic endings
such as –ity, -ness, -ence, and -tion.
• They are harder to recognise as nouns
than the concrete variety.
• grammatical form
• Count Nouns
• Noncount Nouns
The diagram of nouns
proper
nouns
individual
countable
collective
common
material
uncountable
abstract
Function of Noun and Noun Phrases
• The noun phrase can function as all the elements in a
sentence except the predicate verb.
• eg:
Children at play seldom remember what time it is.
That was an attractive little black chair.
In the hall I saw some extremely valuable pictures.
They elected him chairman of the board.
Mr. Brown, director of the coal mine, should be
responsible for the accident.
Teachers should be concerned about the students’
moral culture. He returned last night.
A photo is taken each time this button is pushed.
4.2 Gender of nouns
• Nouns do not have grammatical gender in English.
• Some have a natural gender,
• e.g. male
female
uncle
aunt
groom
bride
son
daughter
father
mother
bull
cow
bachelor
spinster
monk
nun
.
Some nouns for jobs and roles do refer to males
or females ,often by their suffixes
e.g. actor, actress; waiter and waitress
businessman manageress
emperor empress host hostess
hero heroine
Some nouns often refer to males or females by
adding boy/girl, man/woman, male/female,
he/she before the nouns.
e.g. man doctor, girl -friend, he-wolf
4.3 Number forms of nouns
• Number is a grammatical distinction which
determines whether a noun or determiner
is singular or plural.
1) Regular and Irregular Plural
1. Individual nouns are all countable and
therefore have singular and plural forms.
The plural form of an individual noun
can be regular or irregular.
Regular:
The regular plural is formed by adding –s
or –es to the base. (page16 )
Irregular plurals
• The irregular plural is not formed in the
above way but by other means such as by
changing the internal vowel or by
changing the ending of the noun.
• (eg: tooth—teeth, man—men, mouse—
mice, child—children, ox—oxen)
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Irregular plurals also include some words of
foreign origin, borrowed from Greek, Latin or
French. The plural forms of these borrowed
words are known as “foreign plurals”,
eg:
Basis—bases criterion—criteria
stratum—strata alumnus—alumni
• Some borrowed words have two plural forms: a
foreign plural and an English plural, eg:
Medium—media—mediums index—indices—
indexes
Formula—formulae—formulas curriculum—
curricula—curriculums
• For some nouns, their singular and plural
number share the same form, eg:
a deer—ten deer one fish—several fish
a Japanese—a group of Japanese
an aircraft—a hundred aircraft
Exercises :
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monkey quiz negro
boss
Henry Chinese wolf
bamboo
basis
craft
datum
formula ox
phenomenon
volcano hypothesis trout
2) Number Forms of the Collective,
Material, Abstract and Proper Noun
• Number Forms of the Collective Noun
• Some collective nouns are countable,
some are not.
• There is also a kind of collective noun
which can be used either in the singular or
in the plural sense.
Number Forms of the Material Noun
• Material nouns are generally uncountable and
have no plural forms.
• When used to mean the material itself, they
are uncountable,
but when used in other senses, for example,
two coffees in the sense of “two cups of
coffee”, they are countable, behaving just like
individual nouns.
• The house is built of stone.
• They throw stones at him.
• There are also material nouns that can
take plural endings, for example,
sands/waters in the sense of “large
expanse of sand or water” and foods/fruits
in the sense of “a variety of food or fruit”;
those nouns, though ending in –s, remain
uncountable.
• The fish is rarely found in fresh waters.
Number Forms of the Abstract Noun
• Abstract nouns are mostly uncountable.
• In the case of some abstract nouns, the mere
addition of a plural ending has the effect of
changing the meaning of the base.
• We meet once a year to exchange our
teaching experience.
• We told each other our experiences in
foreign countries.
Number Forms of the Proper Noun
• Proper nouns are unique in reference and
therefore have no plural forms, except for such
proper names as the United States, the
Philippines, the Netherlands, etc which are
themselves plural in form.
• When a proper noun takes a plural ending, it
takes on some characteristics of a common
noun, eg:
Have you invited the browns?
There are two Miss Smiths/Misses Smith in
our class.
4.3 Partitives
• Partitives, also called unit nouns, are commonly
used to denote a part of a whole or the quantity
of an undifferentiated mass.
Both Count and Noncount nouns can enter
partitive constructions.
• With plural count nouns, partitive constructions
can denote the idea of “a group”, “a pack”, etc.
• With noncount nouns, such constructions can
achieve countablility.
Classification of partitives:
1) General Partitives
• With noncount nouns the expression of quantity can
be achieved by means of certain general partitives,
particularly piece, bit, article, and item, followed by an
of- phrase, eg: A piece of advice a bit of trouble
an article of furniture
2) Partitives Related to the Shape of Things
There are partitives that are semantically related to
the shape of things and whose power of collocation is,
therefore, quite limited, eg: A cake of soap a bar of
chocolate two ears of corn
• 3) Partitives Related to Volume
• A third class of partitives are those that are
semantically related to volume, and all of
which are common nouns. They can freely
collocate with related nonount nouns, eg:
A bottle of ink/oil several pails of water
• 4) Partitives Related to the State of Action
• The use of these partitives is limited to certain
set phrases, eg:
A fit of anger/coughing/laughter/fever
• A peal of applause/laughter/thunder
• 5) Partitives Denoting Pairs, Groups,
Flocks, etc
• These partitives commonly occur with
plural count nouns, eg:
A pair of shoes/scissors/trousers
• A swarm of bees/flies/animals/people
A gang of hooligans/criminals
A pack of hounds/cards/thieves
A bench of judges
page 21
4.4 Genitive noun
• Case is a grammatical category.
• It denotes the changes in the form of a
noun or a pronoun showing its
relationship with other words in a
sentence.
• The genitive was traditionally labeled
as the “possessive case”.
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1) Formation of genitive nouns
The genitive is formed in writing by
adding ’s to singular nouns and to
those plural nouns that do not ending
in –s.
Plural nouns ending in –s take an
apostrophe as genitive marker, eg:
the girls’ dormitory a teachers’ college
• In compound nouns or a post modified
noun phrases, the genitive ending is
adding to the compound or to the end of
the noun phrase,
• my mother-in-law ’s death
an hour and a half ’s talk
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In coordinate nouns, the genitive
ending is adding to each of the
coordinate elements when denoting
respective possession, and only to the
last coordinate element when
denoting common possession.
Mary’s and Bob’s books
Mary and Bob’s book
2) Meanings of genitive nouns
• The genitive is chiefly used to denote
“possession”, and therefore, is traditionally
called “possessive case”.
• But genitive meanings are by no means
restricted to possession.
• Possessive genitive, eg:
Taiwan is part of china’s territory.
• Subjective genitive, eg:
The Prime Minister’s arrival was reported in the morning
paper.
• Objective genitive, eg:
The criminal’s punishment will be ten years in prison.
• Genitive of origin, eg:
Newton’s law was developed in the 17th century.
• Descriptive genitive, eg:
This workshop makes men’s shoes.
• Genitive of time, distance, measure, value, etc, eg:
two hours’ delay 300kilometres’ distance
Genitive nouns vs. of-phrases
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As central determiner, genitive nouns are sometimes
interchangeable with of-phrases,
eg: China’s foreign policy= the foreign policy of China
But in some cases, we can only use genitive nouns
instead of of-phrases:
1.with nouns referring to people: Mary’s book
2. if the relation between the nouns is classification rather
than possession: women’s clothes
3. in some idiomatic combinations:
a wolf in sheep’s clothing
a bird’s-eye view
• In some other cases, however, we can only use
of-phrase instead of genitive nouns:
• 1.with nouns referring to inanimate, lifeless
objects:
• The color of the car
• 2.the opinion of the chairman appointed a month
ago
3.the income of the rich
4.the city of Rome
Independent genitive and double
genitive
• Independent genitive
– Mary’s is the largest apartment in the building.
– The doctor’s is on the other side of the street.
– Joe lives near St. Paul’s (cathedral) in London.
– Pickled vegetable are available at the grocer’s.
Double genitive
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The prepositional phrase (usually an ofphrase) that takes an independent
genitive as complementation is called a
“double genitive”, a combination of the
above two types of the genitives.
eg:
He is a friend of my father ’s = He is one
of my father’s friends.
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Semantically, a double genitive is
different from an ordinary of –phrase.
Compare:
he is a friend of my father’s= he is one
of my father’s friends
he is a friend of my father= he is friendly
to my father.
a portrait of Mr. Brown’s= one of the
portrait owned or collected by Mr. Brown
a portrait of Mr. Brown= a picture of Mr.
Brown himself
Double Genitive vs of-phrase vs
genitive
• he found a bone of the dog’s.
he found a bone of the dog.
he found the dog’s bone.
• I saw a portrait of Shakespeare’s.
I saw a portrait of Shakespeare.
I saw Shakespeare’s portrait.
• A criticism of the students’ from
a criticism of the students towards
• An opinion of my brother’s from
an opinion of my brother
towards
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Genitive vs. common case
The same meaning:
a horse’s tail=a horse tail
his life’s work=his life work
his eagle’s eye=his eagle eye
consumer’s goods=consumer goods
a 30 mile’s journey=a 30 mile journey
a bachelor’s life=a bachelor life
different meanings:
a peasant’s family
a peasant family
Exercises:
1. Foreign ships are not allowed to fish in our territorial water.
2. The militias were called out to guard the borderland.
3. The letter contained an important information.
4. Some youth were seen loafing in the street.
5. There is an egg on your nose.
6. The dean will be able to solve the problem of the student.
7. My brother was interested in the long poems of Milton.
8. He felt sympathy for her suffering.