What is a noun?

Definition
	A noun is a member of a syntactic class
	that includes words which refer to people, places, things, ideas, or concepts whose members may act as any of the following: subjects of the verb, objects of the verb, indirect object of the verb, or object of a preposition (or postposition), and most of whose members have inherently determined grammatical gender (in languages which inflect for gender).

Discussion
	Nouns embody one of the most time-stable concepts in a language. As with verbs, however, this time-stability criterion defines only the prototypical nouns. Other, non-prototypical nouns must be identified by distributional similarities to prototypical nouns.

Examples (English)
	rock tree dog person
	These nouns are prototypical nouns in English because they are perceived as concrete, physical, compact entities which do not change significantly over time.
	The following nouns are less prototypical because they represent concepts or items that are not perceived as staying the same for a long period of time, or are not concrete:
	fist beauty

Kinds
	Here are some kinds of nouns:
	What is an abstract noun? What is an alienable noun? What is a collective noun? What is a concrete noun? What is a count noun? What is an inalienable noun? What is a mass noun? What is a verbal noun?

Generic
	A noun is a kind of
	What is a substantive?

Sources
	Crystal 1980 244
	Hartmann and Stork 1972 154
	Mish 1991 808
	Givón 1984 51–52
	Payne, T. 1997a 33, 39–41

Context for this page:

Concept module: noun
In overview module: Glossary (Linguistics): N
In modular book: Glossary of linguistic terms, by Eugene E. Loos (general editor), Susan Anderson (editor), Dwight H., Day, Jr. (editor), Paul C. Jordan (editor), and J. Douglas Wingate (editor)
In bookshelf: Linguistics

This page is an extract from the LinguaLinks Library, Version 5.0 published on CD-ROM by SIL International, 2003. [Ordering information.]

Page content last modified: 5 January 2004

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