Types associated with the Noun class

There are five major types associated with the grammatical class Noun in English:

1. CONCRETE reference, e.g. girl, horse, wrist, piece, grass, star, fire, hill, city, table. This type can be divided into HUMAN; other ANIMATE; (body and other) PARTS; INANIMATE. INANIMATE may be further subdivided into: FLORA; CELESTIAL and WEATHER (e.g. sun, wind, shade); ENVIRONMENT (air, water, stone, oil, gold, forest); ARTEFACTS (building, market, door). One subgroup of HUMAN relates to RANK (lady, lieutenant, chief); another to SOCIAL GROUP (nation, army, crowd, company); and another to KIN terms (father, daughter, uncle, wife).

Members of this type are almost all basic noun roots, although there are a few which are derived from verbs (e.g. building).

2. ABSTRACT reference. Subtypes here include: TIME (time itself, as well as words referring to position in time, e.g. future, yesterday, and units of time, e.g. month, moment, night, summer); PLACE (place, together with words referring to position or direction, e.g. front, edge, north, and to units of measurement, e.g. mile); QUANTITY (number, amount, age, size, length, etc.); VARIETY (e.g. type, character, shape and types of shape such as circle, line); LANGUAGE (sound, word, sentence, noun); and general abstract terms such as idea, unit, problem, method, result, truth.

Members of this type are also predominantly basic noun roots although there are some derived stems, e.g. distance, height, truth.

3. STATES (and PROPERTIES). This covers both the mental (pleasure, joy, honor; ability, sagacity) and the corporeal (e.g. ache; strength) domains. Some are basic nouns (e.g. anger, hunger) but many are derived from adjectives (e.g. jealousy) and a few from verbs (e.g. delight).

4. ACTIVITIES. Some are basic nouns, e.g. war, game, but most are derived from verbs, e.g. decision, speculation, whipping, sale. For almost every activity noun there is a corresponding verb, even if it is not always cognate, e.g. play for game.

5. SPEECH ACTS, e.g. question, order, report, description, talk, promise. In each case there is a related verb; this is usually cognate, e.g. answer, congratulat(ion), although there are some exceptions, e.g. question/ask.

Every language has words of these five types, but they do not always belong to the Noun class. In the Australian language Dyirbal, for instance, almost all nouns are CONCRETE. Dyirbal has an ample supply of words dealing with states, properties, activities and speech acts, but they all belong to the Verb and Adjective classes; For example, the English words anger, game and question must be translated into Dyirbal through adjectives (‘angry’) and verbs (‘play’, ‘ask’). Dyirbal has only a few words with ABSTRACT reference, including some nouns like ‘summer’ and ‘night’. Reference to size is through DIMENSION adjectives, and general reference to number through the interrogative ‘how many?’ There are in Dyirbal no words—of any word class—directly corresponding to English time, past, idea or problem. (There is also a distinct word class which includes specific TIME words such as ‘long ago’, ‘yesterday’, ‘always’, ‘not yet’.)

In a fair number of languages it is appropriate to recognize KIN terms as making up a distinct type. Sometimes KIN is associated with the Verb class (e.g. ‘X fathers Y’). In other languages KIN functions as a grammatically marked subset of Noun, in that a kin term must take an obligatory possessive affix (that is, one cannot just say ‘mother’, but must specify ‘my mother’, ‘her mother’, etc.).

In English almost all the CONCRETE, ABSTRACT and SPEECH ACT nouns have a plural form (exceptions include those referring to non-discrete material, e.g. mud, milk). ACTIVITY nouns that refer to a discrete act may form a plural, but others, referring to a mode of activity, sound infelicitous in the plural (compare many mistakes with lots of ineptitude, rather than *many ineptitudes). STATE nouns seldom have a plural form—one does not hear *many hungers or *three jealousies. (Pleasure has a plural used in restricted contexts, e.g. It is one of my few pleasures, but note It gave me much pleasure, not *It gave me many pleasures.)

The main significance of the five Noun types lies in the verbs with which they can occur. Thus, the object of experience, used in its literal sense, is generally a STATE noun, or an ACTIVITY noun derived from an AFFECT verb (He experienced hunger/a whipping). The object of postpone will normally be an ACTIVITY or SPEECH ACT noun (They postponed the sale/the order). Punch requires a CONCRETE object. But discuss can have any type of noun as head of its object NP.