To understand what a noun is, we must first understand some previous notions. We call speech the use that each speaker makes of his language. And for there to be an understanding between the different speakers there must be some basic rules, an agreement between them so that communication can flow. Therefore, if we want to communicate, we must know not only the use and meaning of the words, whether they are nouns, adjectives or verbs, but also the grammatical category to which they belong, so that the structure of the sentences is correct to facilitate said understanding.
Words are linguistic units that have meaning, that is, for a spelling to have this category it must have a specific meaning.
Furthermore, words are the graphic representation of the sound we make when speaking. It is curious to think how the human being has come to assign specific sounds to a series of signs, scribbles or drawings. Now it is something that we have very much assumed, but let us think of those first years of the life of writing, where after a series of evolutions, a written sign was assigned to each sound emitted, and the union of these signs would ultimately form the words. And these united words give us the wonderful possibility of creating works of a very varied nature, from novels to poems, going through a vast range of writings.
Any language groups its words into different categories, according to their function within a sentence. Thus, we find verbs, adjectives, articles, pronouns, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and nouns.
Instructions
One of the most important elements is the noun or, as it is also known, the name, since it is used to “name” different beings or objects around us. Its definition tells us that it is that word that refers to an object, person or animal that has a real, proper and independent existence. That is, a noun is that word that designates realities and differentiates them from others. If we talk about a “bird” we are differentiating that animal from, for example, a “dog” or a “chair”.
Another meaning that we can attribute to these elements is based on the relationship it has with the elements of reality, designating something important, fundamental or essential.
We can classify the names in the following groups:
- Common: animated beings or things that belong to a certain species without being distinguished from each other.
- Own: people, animals or things that by name stand out from others. These names are usually written with capital letters.
- Concrete: we refer to those objects, people or things of reality that we can perceive through our senses.
- Abstract: those realities that fall within the world of ideas, feelings or sensations without being perceived by our senses (the beauty of a landscape, poverty in the world, the fear of driving…)
- Countable: We can count those objects that can differentiate their singular from their plural.
- Countless: They are objects that designate realities that cannot be counted individually, either because of their consistency or nature or because they describe something immeasurable.
- Collective: those words that designate a group of elements in the singular.
What do you need
- You have to take into account the different grammatical categories of a particular language.
- We must remember that the word is the written representation of the spoken language with its own meaning.
- Within the grammatical categories, we highlight the one that designates or names the objects, people or animals that make up our reality. Bearing in mind that nouns are words that refer to fixed realities, which present an entity, unlike pronouns, for example, which are contextual, that is, they refer to another element that appears in the context of the conversation.
- Nouns or names are divided and classified into different types depending on the reality they designate (common, proper, concrete, abstract, countable, uncountable, individual and collective).
- Nouns have the characteristics of having gender (masculine, feminine or neuter) and number (singular and plural), unlike, for example, others such as adverbs that do not have these characteristics, or verbs that only have one of them, number.
- Something very important about nouns comes to us when we talk about the topic of syntactic analysis, that is, the relationships that these words present with the others that make up a sentence. In this case we have to assign them one of the most important functions of phrases. A phrase is a group of words that have a specific meaning and function within a sentence. For example, the subject phrase is the group of words that perform the function expressed by the verb. Well, the nucleus, the most important word of this phrase falls on the name. We refer to nominal phrases, since there are others where the main word is the adverb or the verb.
Tips
- We must know the spelling and grammar rules of our own language to make correct use of it when communicating.
- Knowing the largest number of words in our lexicon will help us create writings where synonyms and antonyms abound. In this way, we make your reading more enjoyable, comfortable and agile.
- Our language comes from Latin. This language was inflectional, that is, the words presented some changes in the endings depending on their function within the sentence and also taking into account the gender and number of the sentence. This was simplified in the evolution of this language towards current Castilian, since, for example, currently the function of the word within a sentence is not given by a series of suffixes that were added. This has been lost in our language, but it does preserve the inflection by adding endings to some words depending on the gender and number of the word.
- It is used to provide information on the sex of the person or animal to which it refers. While in nouns that can refer to places, objects or feelings, this characteristic would provide little information.
- There are many words that present the genre not because of the reality they designate, but because of its origin. If we think of the word “rosa” we will say that it is a word whose gender is feminine and the reason for this is in the gender that this word had in Latin (word of the first declension with feminine gender “rosa rosae”.
- This previous characteristic means that only 20 percent of the languages of the world show distinction in gender when talking about nouns.
- Therefore, we can speak of a grammatical gender, which is the one that words present depending on their origin, and a semantic gender that is based on the distinction we make of gender depending on the sex of the living being to which it refers.
- There is a third type of gender that is neuter. It is used to say that something is generic or refers to abstract concepts. In addition to this, we use the neuter gender when we want to substantiate an adjective (turn an adjective into a noun so that it adopts its characteristics): the good, the bad, the ideal…
- In this way we can deduce that one way to know the gender of a word (we have already said that this does not imply that something is male or female) is to add a determiner to the noun. In this way, by having to agree in gender and number with the noun, we will be able to know the gender of said word.
- We consider that nouns represent the nucleus, the most important word, within the noun phrase group.
- Subject noun phrase. It is made up of several words, among which we can mention, a noun (core), an adjective and a determiner. The last teacher left the school quickly (in this sentence the subject is the group of words: the last teacher, of which the name teacher is the head of the word.
- Nominal Phrase Direct Object, like the previous one, it can be formed by a noun or a set of words that accompany the name. We deliver the instructions to the patient (in this sentence the noun phrase the instructions has the function of Direct Object, the noun being the nucleus of the same.
- Prepositional phrase, where a noun phrase is introduced by a preposition. The president’s mother did not attend the party. Del presidente forms a group of words with a noun nucleus and that function as a complement to the name or adjacent to it.
- Therefore, we can see how in all these groups of words the name is the main element that gives meaning to the whole.
- We conclude this section with one last classification that is important to take into account when we talk about nouns:
- Primitives: are those words that are formed simply by the root or lexeme of the original word and that serve as the basis for the formation of others; for example, bread (baker, bakery…)
- Gentiles: refer to the place of birth or origin of a person, animal or thing (Spanish, Madrid…)
- Patronymics: these nouns are those that derive from a proper name. In this case, we can mention the surnames that were mostly formed from a name by adding the suffix –ez. For example, from Gonzalo, González, from Pedro Pérez…
- Hypocoristic: are those nouns that are formed as a family abbreviation of a proper name. For example: from Francisco, Paco, from José, Pepe..