The Major Parts of SpeechFunctional characteristics of nouns
Nouns have two main functions. The first, and perhaps less important one,
is that of modifier of other nouns, e.g., metal door, linguistics class. The
more dominant function is that of being the head of a noun phrase. Many
functions traditionally associated with nouns (e.g., subject, direct and in-
direct object of clauses, object of a preposition, subject and object comple-
ment) are really the functions of noun phrases. Hence we will postpone
discussion of these functions to our chapter on Basic Clause Patterns.
Subclasses of nouns
There are lots of different kinds of nouns, and in spite of our reservations
about using meaning as a criterion to determine parts and subparts of speech,
we will use aspects of meaning to distinguish the traditional subclasses of
nouns, but we will back up the semantic distinctions by pointing out formal
patterns that correlate with them. In fact, we can only be certain that meaning
distinctions really exist in the language if they correspond to distinct formal
patterns.
Proper nouns, as we have seen, are the words that best fit the traditional
definition of a noun—i.e., a word that names a person, place, or thing. Thus
your personal name names you (though it may also name other people); Den-
ver names the capital city of Colorado, and Colorado names the state that Den-
ver is the capital of—both of which are places and things. Note that proper
nouns are spelled with an initial capital letter, and if the proper name consists
of more than one word, e.g., the Statue of Liberty, then all the major words are
spelled with initial capitals. We will deal with complex proper names like this
in our chapter on Phrases. Some texts may vary in their treatment of nouns.
For example, McBeth (2001) sometimes capitalizes Gay and sometimes does
not, and Gee (1996) distinguishes discourse from Discourse.
Common nouns name classes of things. Individual physical objects are the
most straightforward instances of things, and the words that name classes of
such things are indeed generally nouns, e.g., book names the class of books and
hard drive names the class of hard drives. Nouns that name classes of physical
things are called concrete nouns. Other examples include sneeze, floor, and
paper.
Not all things are physical; some, like ideas, exist only in our minds. Words
for classes of things that exist only in minds, e.g., goodness, truth, beauty, and
reason, are called abstract nouns. Abstract nouns tend to be non-count (see
below) and to end in certain derivational suffixes, e.g., {-ness}, {-ity}, {-th},
{-ude}.
Common nouns may also name classes of collections of things; for exam-