Noun: Encyclopedia II - Noun - Classification of nouns

Noun - Classification of nouns

Noun - Proper nouns and common nouns

Proper nouns (also called proper names) are the names of unique entities. For example, "Janet", "Jupiter" and "Germany" are proper nouns. Proper nouns are capitalized in English and most other languages that use the Latin alphabet, and this is one easy way to recognise them. This fails, however, in German, in which nouns of all types are capitalized.

All other nouns are called common nouns. For example, "girl", "planet", and "country" are common nouns.

Sometimes the same word can function as both a common noun and a proper noun, where one such entity is special. For example: "There can be many gods, but there is only one God."

The common meaning of the word or words constituting a proper noun may be unrelated to the object to which the proper noun refers. For example, someone might be named "Tiger Smith" despite being neither a tiger nor a smith. For this reason, proper nouns are usually not translated between languages, although they may be transliterated. For example, the German surname Knödel becomes Knodel or Knoedel in English (not the literal Dumpling). However, the translation of placenames and the names of monarchs, popes, and non-contemporary authors is common and sometimes mandatory. For instance, the Portuguese word Lisboa becomes Lisbon in English; the English London becomes Londres in French; and Aristotle was, in Greek, Aristotelēs.

Noun - Count nouns and mass nouns

In everyday terms, count nouns (or countable nouns) refer to discrete, countable objects. Count nouns can take a plural, can combine with 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-countable nouns) refer to objects that cannot be individually enumerated. Examples from English include "laughter", "cutlery", "helium", and "furniture". For example, it is not possible to refer to "a furniture" or "three furnitures".

Some words function in the singular as a count noun and, without a change in the spelling, as a mass noun in the plural: she caught a fish, we caught fish; he shot a deer, they shot some deer; the craft was dilapidated, the pier was chockablock with craft.

Noun - Collective nouns

Noun - Concrete nouns and abstract nouns

Concrete nouns refer to definite objects—objects in which you use at least one of your senses. For instance, "chair", "apple", or "Janet". Abstract nouns on the other hand refer to ideas or concepts, such as "justice" or "hate". While this distinction is sometimes useful, the boundary between the two of them is not always clear. In English, many abstract nouns are formed by adding noun-forming suffixes ("-ness", "-ity", "-tion") to adjectives or verbs. Examples are "happiness", "circulation" and "serenity".

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Classification of nouns", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki