Survey of English Grammar Wiki: Week 4

Nouns

1. Semantic test:
   • Nouns name persons, things or places
   • Problems:
     • Abstract nouns (often properties): honesty, happiness
     • Nouns denoting events or activities: party, rodeo, development
2. Morphological test:
   • Nouns can combine with a plural morpheme (-(e)s) to mark plurality
   • Problems:
     • not all nouns form plural in -s: children
     • not all nouns have singular/plural distinction: milk (no plural); scissors, cattle (no singular); sheep (identical form in sg. and pl.)
3. Syntactic test:
   • Nouns can occur with the possessive 's, i.e. in the environment: __ 's
   • Problem:
     • The possessive 's is a phrasal affix, i.e. it attaches to the right edge of a noun phrase, independent of the part of speech of the word at the right edge. We can construct examples where this word is NOT a noun: [a colleague of mine]'s car got stolen.
   • Nouns can occur between a determiner and a verb, i.e. in the environment: Det __ V
   • Problem:
     • not all nouns can combine with a determiner, in particular proper names cannot: (*The) Pat walked.

Subclasses of noun

Common nouns

1. Count nouns
   • Examples:
   • Characteristics:
2. Non-count (mass nouns)
   • Examples:
   • Characteristics:
3. Count and Non-count nouns
   • Examples:
   • Characteristics:

Proper nouns

1. Examples:
2. Characteristics:

Pronouns

Pronouns	Example	Characteristics
Personal
Possessive	mine, yours, his, hers, its, ours, yours, theirs my, your, her, his, its, our, your, their	has the same distribution as an NP, but denotes an entity together with a possessive relation, i.e. mine refers to an entity that belongs to the speaker. has the same distribution as the definite determiner the.
Reflexive
Reciprocal
Relative
Interrogative

Noun Phrases

Exercises on Nouns and NPs

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