الأسماء في اللغة الإنجليزية English Nouns

A noun is a kind of word that is usually the name of something such as a person, place, thing, quality, or idea. In English, nouns can be singular or plural.

Nouns often need a word called an article or determiner (like the or that). These words usually do not go with other kinds of words like verbs or adverbs. (For example, people do not also describe nouns). In English, there are more nouns than any other kind of word.

Every language in the world has nouns, but they are not always used in the same ways. They also can have different properties in different languages. For example, in some other languages, nouns do not change for singular and plural, and sometimes there is no word for the.

Examples of nouns: time, people, way, year, government, day, world, life, work, part, number, house, system, company, end, party, information.

here are several different types of noun, as follows:

Common noun

A common noun is a noun that refers to people or things in general, e.g. boy, country, bridge, city, birth, day, happiness.

Proper noun

A proper noun is a name that identifies a particular person, place, or thing, e.g. Steven, Africa, London, Monday. In written English, proper nouns begin with capital letters.

Concrete noun

A concrete noun is a noun which refers to people and to things that exist physically and can be seen, touched, smelled, heard, or tasted. Examples include dog, building, coffee, tree, rain, beach, tune.

Abstract noun

An abstract noun is a noun which refers to ideas, qualities, and conditions - things that cannot be seen or touched and things which have no physical reality, e.g. truth, danger, happiness, time, friendship, humour.

Collective nouns

Collective nouns refer to groups of people or things, e.g. audience, family, government, team, jury. In American English, most collective nouns are treated as singular, with a singular verb:

-       The whole family was at the table.

 

In British English, the preceding sentence would be correct, but it would also be correct to treat the collective noun as a plural, with a plural verb:

The whole family were at the table.

 For more information about this, see matching verbs to collective nouns.

 A noun may belong to more than one category. For example, happiness is both a common noun and an abstract noun, while Mount Everest is both a concrete noun and a proper noun.

Count and mass nouns

Nouns can be either countable or uncountable. Countable nouns (or count nouns) are those that refer to something that can be counted. Uncountable nouns (or mass nouns) do not typically refer to things that can be counted and so they do not regularly have a plural form.

Possessives

Nouns are words for things, and since things can be possessed, nouns can also change to show possession in grammar. In English, we usually add an apostrophe and an s to nouns to make them possessive, or sometimes just an apostrophe when there is already an s at the end, like this:

-       This is Sam. This is Sam's cat.

-       The woman's hair is long.

-       There are three cats. The cats' mother is sleeping.

Word order for compound nouns

Nouns can be combined with many different words to form compound nouns, the core noun is modified as though with an adjective. Compound nouns are treated like a single unit, so the entire group of words take the position of a regular noun, and any modifiers come before or after the whole compound noun.

-        I danced with the Prime Minister’s daughter.

-       The Prime Minister’s daughter is not a good dancer.

However, more consideration must be given to how compound nouns are formed, and the word order within these structures.

Single word or simple compound nouns

Compound nouns formed with adjectives at the end are often combined into a simple noun, for example words using suffixes such as ‘ful’ (a form of ‘full’). Similarly, this happens when combining with a noun that represent quantities, such as ‘load’.

    bagful (a quantity that fills a bag)

    truckload (a quantity that fills a truck)

This also happens with nouns that are combined with a verb, often to describe an activity or event or an object used for a particular activity:

    Haircut – sunset -  skateboard

 And with prepositions and prepositional phrases, which usually describe a noun with an inherent relationship:

 Sister-in-law - downtown

With all these examples, the word order is very simple as they are usually compound nouns in the form of a single word or are collocations that should not be separated.

Compound nouns with two or more words

Compound nouns are also formed with nouns, adjectives, prepositions and verbs placed before a noun. Again, these are treated as one idea, taking the place in the sentence of a noun, but it is important to pay attention to the order of words within a compound noun.

The first word, whether a noun, adjective, verb or preposition, normally describes the final noun.

-       cat food (a kind of food, for cats)

-       car door (a type of door, belonging to a car)

-       swimming pool (a type of pool, for swimming)

-       full moon (a type of moon, when it is full)

Compound nouns must follow this word order, or it will not make sense – a door car, for example, would mean a car made of doors. In some cases, the words can be reversed for a logical, but different, meaning:

-       horse race (a type of race, with horses)

-       race horse (a type of horse, for races)

As the second word in these compound nouns represents the main idea, it can be useful to think of the preceding word as an object; additional, describing information.

-       football shirt – a shirt worn for football

-       finance book – a book used for finances

-        London taxi – a taxi from London

-       blackboard – a board that is black

With combinations of nouns, because the first noun describes a purpose, and not quantities, it is always in singular form.

    wedding ring / wedding rings

Any articles come before both the entire compound noun, but are based on the final noun, not any other nouns in the compound. For example, sun does not require the here:

-       Do you have some sun cream? (some cream)

-        Pass me the sun cream. (the specific cream)

Note that not all nouns can form compound by simply putting one word in front of another. Sometimes nouns must be linked with prepositions:

   a sense of longing (not a longing sense)

 Compound nouns with more than two nouns

Sometimes compound nouns of more than one word are used to describe additional nouns, which can form more complex compound nouns, similar to placing multiple adjectives in front of a noun. Additional information describes the noun (or compound noun) it comes directly before. Note that the main noun will be the final word in a series, so adding words at the end of these structures will change the noun:

-       sea creature analysis (a piece of analysis)

-       sea creature analysis centre (a location)

-       sea creature analysis centre report (a piece of writing)

If the final noun stays in the same position, additional words will change the description of the same noun:

-       creature analysis

-       sea creature analysis

-       sea creature egg analysis

-       Mediterranean Sea creature egg analysis

In this example, these are all types of analysis.

This is a brief introduction to compound nouns, mainly focusing on the idea of the word order. Individual nouns and structures can become more complex and in some cases it is necessary to use prepositional phrases and complements to describe ideas, instead of merely placing one word in front of another.

Noun complements and adding additional information after nouns

Basic word structure in English shows that a noun either be followed by a verb (when the noun is the subject) or a prepositional phrase or a time (when the noun is an object). However, nouns can be joined by additional information as part of a single grammatical unit. As we have seen with compound nouns, nouns can be formed with more than one word that describes different aspects of the noun. They can also be followed by complements which add additional information or complete the meaning of a noun, while remaining part of the subject or object’s grammatical unit.

Noun Complements

Noun complements are normally used with abstract nouns (nouns which represent an idea rather than a thing). The complement, or additional information, explains what that idea relates to. For example:

   - I like the thought of kittens sneezing.

In this case, thought is an abstract noun complemented by the phrase of kittens sneezing. Combined, the noun and complement make one complete, grammatical idea; a single thought (of kittens sneezing).

Often, as is the case above, a sentence will not make sense if an abstract noun does not have a complement. This is similar to verbs which require an object; unless we know what the noun relates to, it seems strange on its own. Examples include nouns such as idea, thought, reason, criticism, belief and need.

Noun complements can come in the form of prepositional phrases, full clauses or infinitives.

    The Mayor’s criticism of his rival was unfounded. (prepositional phrase)

    She did not like the idea that they were going to have to run home in the rain. (full clause)

    The dog did not feel the need to bark. (infinitive)

Different nouns can be followed by different complements, some more flexibly than others. For example:

-       There is no reason to cry.

-       What was the reason for the train delay?

-       I gave two reasons why I hated him.

However, different nouns can require different complements, so they must be learned individually.

Word order and noun complements

Noun complements always follow the noun they add information to. As such, they fit into a sentence as part of the noun’s grammatical unit, even if the complement is a full clause.

    Barry explained his idea that the water filter was being tampered with to his boss.

    His idea that the water filter was being tampered with angered Barry’s boss.

    Barry’s boss listened tiredly to his idea that the water filter was being tampered with.

You may sometimes see a noun split from its complement by parenthetical information (such as an independent clause).

    Barry explained his idea, which he had been thinking about for months, that the water filter was being tampered with.

This can be difficult to do correctly and clearly, as it divides the noun from crucial information, and it is clumsy if the noun complement is followed by additional information (the example above would sound confusing if we kept the final information to his boss). So try to keep nouns and their complements together!

How adjectives become nouns

Most adjectives become nouns by adding the suffix ness. Example: Take the adjective 'natural', add 'ness' to get 'naturalness', a noun.