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A
noun, or noun substantive, is a word or phrase
that refers to a person, place, thing, event,
substance or quality. Nouns are parts of speech
and can be classified in different ways such as
proper nouns (e.g. "Janet") versus common nouns
(e.g. "girl"), or collective nouns (e.g.
"bunch", "herd"). Nouns can be substituted by
pronouns (e.g. "she" and "which"). The word noun
derives from Latin nomen meaning "name" (as a
noun can be considered an object, person, or
concept's name).
Further classifications include the distinction
between concrete nouns and abstract nouns.
Concrete nouns refer to definite objects (e.g.
chair, apple, Janet) and abstract nouns refer to
ideas or concepts (e.g. justice, liberty). While
sometimes useful, the boundaries between these
two are not always clear.
In sentences, nouns occur in several different
ways, the most common being as subjects
(performers of action), or objects (recipients
of action). In the sentence "John wrote me a
letter", "John" is a subject; "me" and "letter"
are objects (of which "letter" is a noun and
"me" a pronoun). |
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