Talk:Noun/Archive 1

I've got nothing against simple explanations of simple things. However, this

trees, cars, houses, people, etc. These are all nouns.

is false. A tree is not a word and hence not a noun. --Larry Sanger 13:41, 17 April 2007 (CDT)

I agree. This is terribly written. After a correct definition, we might see things like grammatical number, grammatical case, etc., then things on the syntactic roles of nouns within a sentence. The last time I read anything similar to a statement that a tree is a noun was when humor columnist Dave Barry ran his annual holier-than-thou condescending column explaining grammar. Among other things, after mentioning the idea that verbs can have objects, he explained that an object is a noun that weighs at least two pounds. Michael Hardy 17:16, 17 April 2007 (CDT)

Agreed. And indeed, even though "tree" (the word, thus in quotes) can function as a noun, that does not necessarily mean it always is a noun. What about "fish" or "photograph"? We really need more work here from linguists; I have had a try at fixing Pronoun and English grammar, but there's too much work for just one person! Russell Potter 11:23, 18 April 2007 (CDT)

Nouns and words

Michael, glad to see another person taking an interest in this entry -- but not all nouns are words (as odd as that may seem). In linguistics, it's common speak of the noun phrase (NP) as the basic functional category of the noun, acknowledging that "Joe's slice of burnt toast" can have a grammatical function (serving as the subject or object of a sentence) identical to single-word nouns such as "shoe" or "penny." For this reason, it's more accurate to call a noun a category into which some word or words which are functioning as nouns may be included, rather than to limit it to single words, or to say that a given word is a noun, since this really depends in many cases on how it's used in a sentence. Russell Potter 14:23, 24 April 2007 (CDT)

Strange definition

A noun is a member of one kind of grammatical category, part of speech, that linguists use to divide up the part of language that deals with meaning.. Within linguistics, the study of meaning is called semantics which is surely not the same as grammar. So this should be adapted, I think. Stefan Olejniczak 08:53, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Semantics is part of grammar in the very broad sense of the word 'grammar' that linguists use, but I agree the old introduction was confusing. I have written a lot more to try to emphasise that words we call 'nouns' are not inherently nouns, but merely units used as nouns, and can be identified according to their function and modification in the sentence. Whether it's any clearer or not...