A noun is a special part of speech that denotes an object and expresses this meaning in inflectional categories such as case and number, as well as using the gender, which is a permanent category.
This article discusses the categories of nouns in meaning. We will describe each of them and give examples.
A noun denotes objects in the broadest sense of the word: the names of things ( sleigh, scissors, window, wall, table ), persons ( person, woman, young man, girl, child ), substances ( cream, sugar, flour ), living organisms and creatures ( microbe, pike, woodpecker, cat ), phenomena, events, facts ( performance, fire, vacation, conversation, fear, sadness ), as well as procedural and non-procedural signs, called as independent independent substances - properties, qualities, states, actions ( crush , decision, running, blue, stupidity, kindness ).
Basic lexical and grammatical categories of nouns
The following main categories are distinguished into which nouns are divided: 1) common nouns and proper nouns; 2) material; 3) collective; 4) abstract and specific; 5) inanimate and animated. These categories of nouns in meaning intersect. Proper names, for example, may include the names of both inanimate and animate objects. Real nouns that indicate the mass of a substance may have a collective meaning ( sugar, grape, cranberry ). Concrete (as a lexical and grammatical category) combine the animate and inanimate, called the considered names of objects. Other examples can be given. However, words included in certain categories of nouns in meaning have common morphological, and sometimes word-forming characteristics, which unites them.
Common and proper nouns
This division occurs on the basis of the name of the subject as a representative of the class or as an individual. Proper as a lexical and grammatical category of nouns (in other words “proper nouns”) are words that name individual objects that are part of the homogeneous class, but do not in themselves carry a special indication of this affiliation.
Common words are names that name an object by its inclusion in a certain class. This lexico-grammatical category of nouns denotes a name, respectively, as a carrier of features characteristic of objects of this class.
The border between common and proper names is mobile and inconstant: common nouns often become their own (nicknames and nicknames). Own are often used to denote homogeneous objects as a whole, and thus become common nouns: a quixote, a holding face, a don Juan.
Narrow proper names
Among proper names, such categories of nouns in meaning as proper in the narrow sense, and names are distinguished. The former are astronomical and geographical names and the names of animals and people. This is a slowly replenished, lexically limited circle consisting of names that are assigned to one subject. Here, repetitions, coincidences (names of villages, villages, rivers) are possible, they are also high-frequency with respect to the system of proper names of various persons and animals.
Names
For names, various common names or combinations of words are used. The common noun does not lose its lexical meaning, but only changes the function. For example: Izvestia newspaper, Hammer and Sickle factory, Lilac perfume . Proper names can also serve as names: the steamer "Ukraine", the hotel "Moscow".
Collective nouns
Collective nouns constitute a separate category (lexical and grammatical) among common names. They include words that call the totality of some homogeneous objects, and also express this meaning with the help of various suffixes: -st (o) ( youth, college students ); -i ( aristocracy, pioneer ) - from (a) ( poor ) and others. Collective nouns, with a broad understanding, can also include names that designate a combination of objects: furniture, trash, small fry, tops . Collectivity expresses such words lexically and not word-formation. A distinguishing feature of these nouns is that they do not have the plural.
Real nouns
They name various substances: materials ( cement, gypsum ), food products ( sugar, flour, groats, fat ), types of fabrics ( chintz, velvet ), metals, minerals (jasper, emerald, steel, tin, coal, iron ), medicines , chemical elements ( aspirin, pyramidon, uranium ), crops ( wheat, potatoes, oats ), as well as other divisible homogeneous masses.
Real nouns, unlike collective ones, usually do not have suffixes to denote real meaning. It is expressed only lexically.
Usually material nouns are used, either only in the singular or in the plural: cream, perfume, yeast; tin, flour, tea, honey . A real noun, which is usually used in the singular, taking the plural form, is distinguished lexically from the corresponding form: cereal (crushed or whole grain of plants), but cereal (varieties of cereal).
Abstract (abstract) and specific nouns
Among the names, such categories of nouns in meaning as abstract and concrete are distinguished. Concrete are words that call facts, persons, things, phenomena of reality that can be counted and presented separately: war, duel, engineer, ring, pencil.
This lexico-grammatical category of nouns, in other words, represents single objects and their plural forms.
With the exception of singular names (pluralia tantum), all concrete nouns are plural and singular. According to morphological features, specific nouns are not only opposed to abstract ones. They are also opposed by the material and collective categories of nouns, pluralia tantum; and their meanings are also different.
Abstract (abstract) - words that indicate abstract concepts, qualities, properties, states and actions: movement, running, agility, intimacy, kindness, captivity, blessing, laughter, glory . Most of them are nouns motivated by verbs and adjectives, formed by means of the zero suffix ( replacement, removal, ailment, bitterness ), suffix -ost ( cowardice , prettiness), -state (o) ( majority, insignificance, boasting, primacy ) , -chin (a) / - chin (a) ( piecework ), -ism ( humanism, realism ), -of (a) ( hoarseness, kindness, acid ) and others. A smaller part is made up of various unmotivated words: essence, sadness, comfort, grief, passion, sadness, torment, fear, temper, mind, trouble.
Usually, there are no plural forms in abstract nouns.
Animate and Inanimate Nouns
Nouns are divided into two categories: animate and inanimate. Animated - the names of animals and people: insect, pike, starling, cat, student, teacher, son, man.
Inanimate - the names of all other phenomena and objects: book, table, wall, window, nature, institute, steppe, forest, kindness, depth, trip, movement, accident .
These words have a different role and meaning. The categories of nouns in value have their own specific features. Animate ones are often derivational and morphologically different from inanimate ones. These are the names of various individuals, as well as female animals, which are often motivated by a word that names an animal or a person without a gender or a male gender: student, student, teacher, high school student, granddaughter, granddaughter, Muscovite Muscovite, lion lioness, cat-cat, etc.
As a rule, animated nouns have a morphological meaning of a feminine or masculine gender, and only a few mean ones, and semantic belonging to a particular genus of a noun is determined (except for the middle, which are called living creatures irrespective of gender: name of an unripe person (child ), or names like creature, face, insect, mammal, animal ). Inanimate nouns are divided into three morphological gender - middle, feminine and masculine.
Paradigms of inanimate and animated nouns
The paradigms of inanimate and animated consistently differ in the plural: animated in it have the form of accusative case, which coincides with the genitive. Example: there are no animals, there are no sisters and brothers (R.p.), I saw animals, I saw sisters and brothers (V.p.). Inanimate nouns in the plural have the accusative form, coinciding with the nominative. Example: apples, pears and peaches are on the table (I.p.); bought apples, pears and peaches (V.p.).
We considered the noun as part of speech, the ranks of nouns. We hope you find this article helpful. If there is not enough information, we recommend that you familiarize yourself with the works that O. N. Kochanova wrote on this topic. The categories of nouns by meaning are considered in its articles in quite some detail.