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A proper noun is a noun that identifies a single entity and is used to refer to that entity (Africa; Jupiter; Sarah; Walmart) as distinguished from a common noun, which is a noun that refers to a class of entities (continent, planet, person, corporation) and may be used when referring to instances of a specific class (a continent, another planet, these persons, our corporation).
A noun phrase (or NP) is a phrase usually headed by a common noun, a proper noun, or a pronoun. The head may be the only constituent, or it may be modified by determiners and adjectives . For example, "The dog sat near Ms Curtis and wagged its tail" contains three NPs: the dog (subject of the verbs sat and wagged ); Ms Curtis (complement of the ...
While proper names may be realized by multi-word constituents, a proper noun is word-level unit in English. Thus, Zealand, for example, is a proper noun, but New Zealand, though a proper name, is not a proper noun. [4] Unlike some common nouns, proper nouns do not typically show number contrast in English.
Nouns are also created by converting verbs and adjectives, as with the words talk and reading (a boring talk, the assigned reading). Nouns are sometimes classified semantically (by their meanings) as proper and common nouns (Cyrus, China vs frog, milk) or as concrete and abstract nouns (book, laptop vs embarrassment, prejudice). [4]
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z Usage of collective nouns Notes Further reading External links Generic terms The terms in this table apply to many ...
The name of a specific entity is sometimes called a proper name (although that term has a philosophical meaning as well) and is, when consisting of only one word, a proper noun. Other nouns are sometimes called "common names" or "general names". A name can be given to a person, place, or thing; for example, parents can give their child a name ...
Nouns for inanimate objects and abstract concepts also had (grammatical) genders. [5] Mark Twain parodied this grammatical structure (which exists in many languages like German) by rendering it literally into modern English: [8] It is a bleak Day.
The English pronouns form a relatively small category of words in Modern English whose primary semantic function is that of a pro-form for a noun phrase. [1] Traditional grammars consider them to be a distinct part of speech, while most modern grammars see them as a subcategory of noun, contrasting with common and proper nouns.