Noun

For other uses, see Noun (disambiguation).

In grammar, a noun is a word that represents a concrete or abstract thing, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, and ideas. A noun may serve as an object or subject within a phrase, clause, or sentence.[1][note 1]

In linguistics, nouns constitute a lexical category (part of speech) defined according to how its members combine with members of other lexical categories. The syntactic occurrence of nouns differs among languages.

In English, prototypical nouns are common nouns or proper nouns that can occur with determiners, articles and attributive adjectives, and can function as the head of a noun phrase. According to traditional and popular classification, pronouns are distinct from nouns, but in much modern theory they are considered a subclass of nouns.[2] Every language has various linguistic and grammatical distinctions between nouns and verbs.[3]

  1. ^ "Noun". Encyclopedia Britannica. 2024.
  2. ^ Huddleston, Rodney, and Geoffrey K. Pullum. The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, p. 327.
  3. ^ David Adger (2019). Language Unlimited: The science behind our most creative power. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 78. ISBN 978-0-19-882809-9.


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