Talk: Noun

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(Note that in German all types of nouns are capitalized.)??????? isn't that only for the the Subject of a sentence?

No. All nouns. -- Zoe

1) Many English nouns cannot be pluralized.

2) Names of games, such as "chess", "checkers", "baseball", etc., are not capitalized in English (except if they begin a sentence). Exception: names of trademarked games are capitalized.

A proper noun isn't the same as a regular noun, so why have the got the same article? -Adrian.

The one is a subset of the other. You can find out what a proper noun is by reading the Noun page, in the same way as you can find out what a transitive verb is by reading the Verb page.

I'd like to add that not every language makes a distinction between subject and object per se. Some languages have grammatical agent vs patient distinctions (this is basic in Wichita); some distinguish ergative (subject of a transitive verb) from absolutive (subject of a transitive verb and direct object of a transitive verb) (this is basic in most Caucasian languages). Neither of these grammatical distinctions could be said to be a distinction between subject and object. thefamouseccles 01:19 6 Dec 2003 (UTC)

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I removed the phrase referring to a language with 100-and-some words and maybe a score of speakers from the sentence

Some languages, such as Toki Pona, classify proper names as adjectives that modify a generic noun. Shades of this are found in the English language in phrases like "English language".

Having no specific example is better than refering here to a constructed language.

Please direct comments on my complete removal of the link to Talk:Toki Pona language rather than here, as i am finding other absurd or otherwise unsuitable links to Toki Pona language, and any challenges to the deletions that result should be discussed together. --Jerzy 23:17, 2004 Feb 14 (UTC)

--Jerzy 00:00, 2004 Feb 15 (UTC)

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Am i the only one who thinks the failure of this to distinguish between the part of speech and the syntactic role is a serious shortcoming? --Jerzy(t) 01:47, 2004 Feb 27 (UTC)

"Honesty" is a thing

Removed "though this is in practice inaccurate (for example nouns like "destruction" or "honesty" do not meet this description" as it is not true. Example: "honesty" is indeed a "thing", and so is "distruction". Look up "thing" in the dictionary. ChessPlayer 18:07, 27 May 2004 (UTC)

I think the point which the article was trying to make is that nouns and verbs can't be distinguished semantically, which is perfectly true. For example, there's no real semantic difference between "destroy" and "destruction"; they just play different roles in the syntax. It's important for this article to explain that the traditional definition of a noun as a "person, place or thing" is not a very helpful or accurate one. Cadr 19:21, 27 May 2004 (UTC)

Is some authority saying this? That the traditional defination is incorrect? ChessPlayer 21:06, 27 May 2004 (UTC)

Well there aren't really any authorities on this sort of thing, but any introductory book to (non-prescriptive) grammar/linguistics will give a different definition. I suppose it's true enough that all nouns are "things", at least in an abstract sense, but that tells us nothing about how nouns work grammatically. For example, it does not follow from the fact that a noun is a thing that it doesn't have tense, or that it can be the subject of a verb. Nouns certainly have their own semantic properties, but these properties are not sufficient to define the class of nouns.

Sorry if I'm being a bit confrontational here. I don't necessarily disagree with your edit, but the "person, place, thing" definition is not taken seriously by linguists, and the article should reflect this, I think. Cadr 21:39, 27 May 2004 (UTC)

If that is the case, it should be easy to find a linguist who says that, and the article could then quote the expert; that is how NPOV does things. Only the most indisputable hard facts can be just bluntly asserted by the article as facts under the NPOV policy. I was taught in school that a noun was a "person, place or thing" and therefore if all my English teachers were wrong, I would like to see a source, that's all. No offense at being confrontational here, I'm assuming we are both simply trying to make the article as correct as possible. ChessPlayer 23:03, 27 May 2004 (UTC)

Off the top of my head, I can think of a textbook by Richard Hudson and The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker (I don't have these to hand right now, I could get an actual quote from them in a few days). This is honestly not in dispute amongst linguists; the idea of a noun as a "person, place or thing" is just a rule of thumb taught to school children. I do not disagree that all nouns are things of some sort, but this statement is not sufficient to define nouns. If you think about it, it's trivially true: since "thing" is a noun which can refer to any other noun, all nouns are (trivially) things. Cadr 13:58, 28 May 2004 (UTC)

Ok, but before you go to that trouble, take a look at this dictionary definition of "noun": The part of speech that is used to name a person, place, thing, quality, or action and can function as the subject or object of a verb, the object of a preposition, or an appositive. Sounds to me like my teachers are still right, and the article was wrong when it discounted the "person, place, thing" definition. ChessPlayer 14:21, 28 May 2004 (UTC)

Dictionary definitions aren't written by people who study syntax. Anyway, the dictionary definition goes beyond simply saying that nouns are persons, places or things to give basic grammatical properties of nouns, which just goes to show that the fact that nouns refer to persons, places and things is just one property of nouns, and is not sufficient to define the class of nouns. It's a basic fact in the study of syntax that grammmatical categories cannot be defined semantically. I'll provide some quotes soon...Cadr

See for example the beginning of [1]. Cadr 15:32, 28 May 2004 (UTC)

ChessPlayer, your teacher lied to you if they said that was a definition. You had no need for a definition; you needed only some rough and ready principles to help you organize a little more consciously what your genes and your family trained you to do when you have a conscious or unconscious need to convey meaning to others. Studying grammar outside of linguistics mainly gives you tools to communicate more accurately, avoiding ambiguities by more clearly (but not rigorously) seeing how our supposition that "you say words that can express what you mean, and people will know what you mean" can go wrong. --Jerzy(t) 02:44, 2004 May 29 (UTC)

I am going to ask for citing sources for the material in the article, in particular for statements like Each noun is a word representing a thing, in a sense that probably cannot be defined rigorously, but is broad enough to include organisms, places, qualities, and actions, both actual and imagined. I think this sort of statement is in need of a citation, because the material which you replaced comes from a dictionary. If you are saying the dictionary definition is inferior to what you wrote, then I want to know who is saying that. ChessPlayer 05:10, 29 May 2004 (UTC)

ChessPlayer, I don't think anyone is disagreeing that all nouns are "people, places or things", at least with very few exceptions. The point is that while it is a property of nouns that they describe PPoT, this property alone is not sufficient to define the class of nouns because it is a syntactic (as opposed to semantic) class. One internet source has already been properly cited, and I've also cited Steven Pinker and Richard Hudson, though I admit I have yet to give page numbers. The former is a Cognitive Scientist at Harvard (previously at MIT) who has published widely in the academic literature on linguistics as well as writing several popscience books on the subject. The latter is a Professor of Linguistics at UCL who has published several books and many papers on syntax/English grammar. The dictionary definition which you cite goes far beyond "people, places and things" and mentions various grammatical properties of nouns. I'm fine with having something in the article saying that nouns refer to PPoT, but this should not be presented as a definition of what a noun is, at least if the article is to pay any attention to modern linguistics. Cadr 18:31, 29 May 2004 (UTC)

I think some consideration should be given to making the article useful to someone wanting a simple understanding of "noun" for use in understanding sentence structure. I have nothing against a broad linguistic treatment, if it doesn't replace the simple grammatical information, but instead expands on it for those wanting such information. I doubt if .01% of Wikipedia readers will be interested in that level of theory. Further, I think that sources should be cited in the article for whatever linguistic theory is being alluded to, as well as texts used being listed in the reference section. What I object to most, is some theoretical linguist's work being used that is highly abstract, and not cited in the article. ChessPlayer 15:26, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

The proper definition of a noun needn't be complex. For example, here's a completely accurate definition of the class of English nouns:

• A noun is any word which is either singular or plural (i.e. any word which has number). Although some nouns have identical singular and plural forms, and some nouns cannot be one of singular/plural for semantic reasons, all nouns must either refer to a single thing or a group of things. (This is crucially different from simply saying that nouns refer to things, because it introduces a grammatical property of nouns, i.e. number).

I've already cited some sources, so I'm not sure what you're getting at there. The abstract theoretical linguistics you're attacking is a straw man, for several reasons:

• Any serious study of anything is "theoretical".
• It isn't abstract. It's certainly no more abstract than defining something by saying it is a "thing".
• Lots of people will be interested in the level of theory I'm talking about. This is linguistics 101, you can find this sort of information in introductory books on language/linguistics (e.g. Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct, and Richard Hudson's book "English Grammar"). The Language Instinct sold loads of copies, and it goes into far more detail than I'm suggesting for this article.

I would also argue that the "simple grammatical information" cannot really be expanded on, because it is simply incorrect if given as a definition of the class of nouns (rather than as an example of some of the properties which nouns have). Cadr 22:39, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

I still don't see any citations in the article.ChessPlayer 00:50, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Well yeah, I haven't yet edited in any reference to the proper definition of a noun, so there'd be nowhere for a citation to go. Any response to my substantive points? Cadr 03:05, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Proper nouns as adjectives?

The article said in one 'graph

Some languages classify proper names as adjectives that modify a generic noun.

which is all well and good (though an example would help make some sense out of it for those unfamiliar with those languages). It immediately continued

Shades of this are found in the English language in phrases like "English language".

That makes no sense at all; although English can be a proper noun, it is here a capitalized adjective derived from the proper noun England. Nor can i think of an example that seems to me a "shade" of such a thing. The first sentence stands, but i have removed the second, awaiting a convincing example in English. --Jerzy(t) 03:17, 2004 May 29 (UTC)

Possibly the original author had something like "Wellington boot" or "Chomsky hierachy" in mind, but in such cases "Wellington" and "Chomsky" are still nouns, as is clear from the fact that you can't intensify them (*"A very Chomsky hierachy") and the fact that you can't paraphrase the compounds using a relative clause (the Chomsky hierachy is not "the hierachy which is Chomsky"). Cadr 03:16, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)