Talk:Noun/Archive 1

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Proper non-noun?

Could someone please clarify the sentence 'This "proper non-noun" phenomenon of English is by no means a universal trait of languages: it does not occur in Romance languages, nor, despite their common Germanic roots, in German' What does "This" refer to? What does "their" refer to? Ncik um a noun is a person place or thingInsert non-formatted text here justine

Capitalization in German

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

No. All nouns. -- Zoe

Comments

1) Many English nouns cannot be pluralized.

2) Names of games, such as "chess", "checkers", "baseball", "basketball", 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)

Toki Pona

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)

Syntactic role

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).

Am I the only one who sees a direct contradiction in this definition? "A noun is any word which is either singular or plural...some nouns cannot be one of singular/plural" I take it the latter is referring to mass nouns, like "dirt" or "water" or "love" (in the noun sense). Or else I'm not understanding the use of "either...or" here, or maybe "cannot be one of" (does that mean you can't tell whether the noun in question is singular or plural, or that it can be one but not the other?). Does this mean that a noun must be singular or it must be plural (but it can't be both at the same time)? And does this refer to semantic singular/plural, or grammatical singular/plural? (Think of 'scissors'.) Mcswell 18:48, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

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 and common nouns

"proper nouns are usually not translated between languages" What about "Chief Sitting Bull" and suchlike? I presume neither he was not a native speaker English, so his name must have been translated. Mcswell 18:40, 4 January 2007 (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)

For that matter, it's not clear that 'English' is an adjective. The English are a people, right? And in that usage, I believe it is a noun. It doesn't happen to have a singular-plural distinction, but 'Russian', which I take to be the same POS, does have a singular-plural distinction. But I agree that 'Chomsky' is a better example, since it has a distinct adjectival form ('Chomskian'). Mcswell 18:40, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Religious Capitalisation

In the God talk pages I started a discussion that got a bit messy, so I thought I'd better ask it here (to get the experts in on it). This article also seemed more appropriate than the Capitalisation article. I see there is already one mention of the subject in this article, but that doesn't fully cover it. In the God article some words are capitalised (or not) in a way that I find doubtful.

The first one is God versus gods. Someone said God (monotheistic) is capitalised because it has no article and gods (polytheistic) aren't because they do. I suppose that that is a matter of being a proper noun or just a noun. The second aspect is that the one is monotheistic and the other is polytheistic, so one can say "no gods exist, but God does". But then, the article is not (supposed to be) specifically about the Christian God but about the concept God (polytheism excluded for some reason (or not)). So it's about monotheistic Gods, but that's plural and a proper noun can't have a plural. Is God in this sense a mass noun? Then it should never be capitalised. In the end, God can mean three things: the Christian God (which doesn't have a name of its own - part of the problem), monotheistic Gods or gods (the centre of the problem) and polytheistic gods. A typical theological complication is that one could say all the monotheistic Gods/gods are one and the same entity. But then anyone could claim that is not true and it is common with religions to accept that (you can't say someone's religion is wrong) so that argument doesn't work.

Secondly there is the use of a capital in 'He' when referring to God. Is there any basis for that? (the use of male gender is an other issue.) Or is it a matter of tradition? (Like a king referrig to himself (or is that Himself?) in plural.) And does it also apply to other Gods/gods (so mono- or polytheistic)?

Thirdly there's the words Bible, Scripture and New Testament, all capitalised, but all with an article, so not proper nouns. I believe the Koran is also capitalised. Does the same go for any book that some consider in some way holy? To stretch the point; suppose I write a book and declare that holy (sorry, Holy), could I then, within the rules of English grammar, capitalise it's name? Or should that then be It's name?

Lastly, Jew (noun), Jewish and Jews aren't proper nouns. But still they are capitalised. Then again, I think this is normal English, like the capitalisation in "the English language".

To round off, apparently it used to be that just about any word could be capitalised to put stress on words. And thus the tradition came about to write God with a capital letter. Linked with this is the complication that the English language evolved in a monotheistic, Christian atmosphere, so not only did the monotheistic God get a capital letter, but it also was used exclusively for the Christian God.

DirkvdM 19:29, 18 July 2005 (UTC)

Capitalization was historically used as an honourific, to indicated respect for the thing to which the noun refered. This is why words like 'god' were capitalized by christians and jews (and the word jew, for example, was often not capitalized by christians. Leaving out an honour was often a quiet form of insult).

Similarly, to this day, the correct way for subjects of Queen Elizabeth to write Her Royal Highness's name is with a capital letter on all words related to Her, as a mark of respect for one's ruler.

And yes, if you invent a religion, your followers will probably capitalize it's name. That's what the Scientologists did with the religion invented (or "discovered") by L. Ron Hubbard.

Capitalization

"Proper nouns are capitalized" ...And yet I see "eBay" and "iPod" all over the internet... These are definitely grammatically incorrect, so why do people spell it that way? Shouldn't Wikipedia reflect correct grammar? --82.7.125.142 22:54, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

That's a recent advertiser's thrill -- they got you to noatice, dinnet thay? These are indeed "proper nouns," but the power they have is that of the Copyright Office, not that of the keenly discerning eye, sound mind, and iron will of H. W. Fowler. The English language has no authorizing body like the Academie Française or the German masters of Rechtschreibung. And even if it did, it couldn't alter the power of firms in this "neoliberal" age. Personally, I hate the name "DaimlerChrysler," but the hyphen only has friends in France. --Sobolewski 02:32, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

I have a question on this, I was told that starting a sentence with "pH" not capitalized is correct. For example "pH is used to..." Personally, I would just rewrite the sentence differently, but provided I would be starting it with pH, what would be correct? 71.72.251.140 05:08, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

The other kind of Collective Noun

I've noticed that the British refer to firms and other corporate bodies in the plural, which makes sense as they are not conjured spirits. "Rover are delighted with the Buick engine..." What is this called? It should be included, if anyone can tell. I thought it would be "collective," and that there's a fancier name for the sort of nouns (flock, herd) that use this term in Wikipedia. --Sobolewski 02:32, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Poor choice of examples

"Kill" and "die" are listed as examples of words which appear to be nouns, but are in fact verbs.

The problem is that both words are nouns as well. A "kill" for example, can refer to a recently killed body, and the noun "die" means both the singular of "dice", and a cutting tool used to cut a pattern.

If you're going to talk about parts of speech, check your examples carefully in the Oxford English Dictionary first! :-)

Bill Bryson in Mother Tongue (p. 135) put it this way, "...the parts of speech must be so broadly defined as to be almost meaningless. A noun, for example, is generally said to be a word that denotes a person, place, thing, action, or quality. That would seem to cover almost everything, yet clearly most actions are verbs and many words that denote qualities -- brave, foolish, good -- are adjectives." Is that clearer?

External link - spam?

External links: seems like a spam link to me. The link is not really very useful, and cannot be used (from safari, anyway) without registration.

Strange...

When I type in "proper noun" in the search bar, I get redirected to the "Noun" page... only it's not the noun page. It's just some dumbass's prank, full of racism and some serious anger issues.

Examples

What is the point of all those ungrammatical examples in the examples box? They seem to be just illustrating general grammatical rules, rather than being relevant to the subject of the article. I also don't understand on what basis words are emboldened - one would expect nouns to be in bold, but they're not. I'm tempted to just delete examples 3 through 5. Matt 19:02, 23 October 2006 (UTC).

the point is to illustrate the definition of nouns as given on the top of the page, i.e. all and only words that can combine with an article or an adjective are nouns. I suggest that they are kept. :) Neither 08:46, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Oh, and boldfacing is simply done to highlight the relevant part of the examples. I agree that highlighting nouns only would be another way of doing it, but then it would be somewhat harder to explain what's going on in the ungrammatical examples. Neither 08:51, 25 October 2006 (UTC) ... I've changed the examples to become a bit simpler now. I think that was an improvement. Neither 13:29, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm... I'm still not really convinced. I guess my main concern is that is the first thing you look at when you open the page, and I would really prefer to see some sentences showing a variety of different nouns in a variety of constructions, with the nouns highlighted, so that someone who is unsure what a noun is can get a quick handle on it. I would prefer to see the more technical grammatical explanations relegated to further down the page. Matt 23:46, 26 October 2006 (UTC).

Feel free to change it! I'm sort of still thinking that an illustration of how to apply the definition is in order, though...

Neither 02:02, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

Offensive writing

Have we missed the HUGE CAPITALISED SWEARING AND PROFANITIES(sp?) in the page. I'm gonna get rid of it, but we should keep an eye out for it happening again

Hey, it happened for the second time. I erased the profanities. Sakibou (talk) 22:04, 15 April 2008 (UTC)