A noun is a special part of speech that denotes an object and expresses a given meaning in such inflectional categories as case and number, as well as with the help of gender, which is a constant category.
This article deals with the ranks of nouns by meaning. We will describe each of them and give examples.
The noun denotes objects in the broadest sense of the word: the names of things (sleigh, scissors, window, wall, table), persons (person, woman, boy, girl, child), substances (cream, sugar, flour), living organisms and creatures (microbe, pike, woodpecker, cat), phenomena, events, facts (performance, fire, holidays, conversation, fear, sadness), as well as procedural and non-procedural signs, named as independent independent substances - properties, qualities, states, actions (crush, decision, run, blue, stupidity, kindness).
Basic vocabularygrammatical noun positions
The following main categories are distinguished into which nouns are divided: 1) common nouns and proper ones; 2) real; 3) collective; 4) abstract and concrete; 5) inanimate and animate. These ranks of nouns intersect in meaning. Proper names, for example, can include the names of both inanimate and animate objects. Real nouns that denote the mass of a substance may have a collective meaning (sugar, grapes, cranberries). Concrete (as a lexical and grammatical category) unite animate and inanimate names of objects that are considered to be considered. Other examples can be cited. However, words that are included in certain categories of nouns by meaning have common morphological and sometimes word-building characteristics, which unites them.
Common and proper nouns
This division occurs on the basis of the name of the object as a representative of a class or as an individual. Proper as a lexical and grammatical category of nouns (in other words - "proper names") - words that name individual objects that are included in the class of homogeneous, but do not in themselves carry a special indication of this belonging.
Common nouns - names that name an object by its inclusion in a certain class. This lexical and grammatical category of nouns denotes the name, respectively, as a carriercharacteristics inherent in objects of this class.
The border between common nouns and proper names is mobile and inconstant: common nouns often become proper names (nicknames and nicknames). Own are often used to refer to homogeneous objects in general, and thus become common nouns: donquixote, jimmorda, don juan.
Proper names in the narrow sense
Among proper names, such categories of nouns are distinguished by meaning, as proper in the narrow sense, and denominations. The first are astronomical and geographical names and the names of animals and people. This is a slowly replenished, lexically limited circle, consisting of names that are assigned to one subject. Here repetitions, coincidences (names of settlements, villages, rivers) are possible, they are also high-frequency in relation to the system of proper names of various persons and animals.
Names
For names, various common names or combinations of words are used. In this case, the common noun does not lose its lexical meaning, but only changes its function. For example: the Izvestia newspaper, the Hammer and Sickle plant, Lilac perfumes. Proper names can also serve as names: steamship "Ukraine", hotel "Moscow".
Collective nouns
Collective nouns make up a separate category (lexico-grammatical) among common nouns. These include words that call the totality of some homogeneousobjects, and also express this meaning with the help of various suffixes: -stv (o) (youth, students); -ia (aristocracy, pioneer); -ot (a) (the poor) and others. Collective nouns, in a broad sense, can also include names that denote a set of objects: furniture, trash, small fry, tops. Such words express collectiveness lexically, and not word-formation. The distinguishing feature of these nouns is that they do not have a plural.
Real nouns
They name various substances: materials (cement, gypsum), foodstuffs (sugar, flour, cereals, fat), types of fabrics (chintz, velvet), metals, fossils (jasper, emerald, steel, tin, coal, iron), drugs, chemical elements (aspirin, pyramidon, uranium), agricultural crops (wheat, potatoes, oats), as well as other divisible homogeneous masses.
Real nouns, unlike collective nouns, as a rule, do not have suffixes to denote a real value. It is expressed only lexically.
Usually real nouns are used either only in the singular or in the plural: cream, perfume, yeast; tin, flour, tea, honey. A real noun, which is usually used in the singular, taking the plural form, is lexically separated from the corresponding form: groats (crushed or whole grains of plants), but groats (varieties of groats).
Distracted (abstract) and concretenouns
Among the names, such categories of nouns are distinguished by meaning, as abstract and concrete. Concrete are words that name facts, persons, things, phenomena of reality that can be counted and presented separately: war, duel, engineer, ring, pencil.
This lexical and grammatical category of nouns, in other words, represents singular items and their plural forms.
Except for non-singular names (pluralia tantum), all specific nouns have plural and singular forms. According to morphological features, concrete nouns are not only opposed to abstract ones. They are also opposed by the material and collective categories of nouns, pluralia tantum; and their meanings are also different.
Abstract (abstract) - words that denote abstract concepts, qualities, properties, states and actions: movement, running, dexterity, proximity, kindness, captivity, goodness, laughter, glory. Most of them are nouns motivated by verbs and adjectives, formed with the help of a zero suffix (replacement, export, ailment, bitterness), suffix -ost (cowardice, beauty), -stvo (o) (majority, insignificance, boasting, primacy), -chin (a) / -schin (a) (piecework), -ism (humanism, realism), -from (a) (hoarseness, kindness, acid) and others. A smaller part is made up of various unmotivated words: essence, sadness, comfort, grief, passion, sadness, torment, fear, temper, mind,trouble.
Usually there are no plural forms for abstract nouns.
Animate and inanimate nouns
Nouns are divided into two categories: animate and inanimate. Animated - names of animals and people: insect, pike, starling, cat, student, teacher, son, man.
Inanimate - the names of all other phenomena and objects: book, table, wall, window, nature, institute, steppe, forest, kindness, depth, trip, movement, incident.
These words have different roles and meanings. The ranks of nouns by meaning have their own specific features. Animate ones often derivate and morphologically differ from inanimate ones. These are the names of various persons, as well as female animals, which are often motivated by a word naming an animal or person without indicating gender or male: student-student, teacher-teacher, student-schoolgirl, grandson-granddaughter, Muscovite-Muscovite, lion -lioness, cat-cat, etc.
As a rule, animate nouns have a morphological meaning of the feminine or masculine gender, and only some - of the middle one, while semantically belonging to one or another gender of the noun is determined (except for the middle one, which are called living beings regardless of gender: the name of a non-adult person (child) ornames such as creature, face, insect, mammal, animal). Inanimate nouns are divided into three morphological genders - neuter, feminine and masculine.
Paradigms of inanimate and animate nouns
The paradigms of inanimate and animate consistently differ in the plural: animate have an accusative form in it, coinciding with the genitive. Example: no animals, no sisters and brothers (R.p.), saw animals, saw sisters and brothers (V.p.). Inanimate nouns in the plural have the accusative form, which is the same as the nominative. Example: there are apples, pears and peaches on the table (I.p.); bought apples, pears and peaches (V.p.).
We considered the noun as a part of speech, ranks of nouns. We hope you found this article helpful. If the information is not enough, we recommend that you familiarize yourself with the works that Kochanova O. N. wrote on this topic. Noun ranks by meaning are covered in some detail in her articles.
