Contents introduction chapter I

Noun Examples: The cows are grazing on the grass in the field. 
In new cities, people are unconcerned about you.
Rule 2: Some nouns are always in the plural form and require a plural verb. Scissors, Premises, Thank You, Spectacles, and so on. 
Noun Examples: ‘I can’t seem to locate my pants; where are they?’ 
She bought a pair of shoes online, and they are very stylish. 
Some nouns, such as news, ethics, machinery, advice, stationery, physics, and mathematics, always accept the singular verb. 
Noun Examples: My favorite subject is Science. 
It is not true that he committed suicide. 
Some words denote a number, measure, amount of money, length, weight, and so on. When these nouns are preceded by a definite numeral, they stay intact. 
Noun Examples: She went to the store and bought two dozen eggs. (As opposed to dozens)
My office is just 5 kilometers away from my home. (Instead of a kilometer) 
Singular and plural forms of collective nouns are used. 
Noun Examples: Civilization’s greatest achievement is the government.
The jury was split down the middle. Nouns are basically naming words.They are used to name objects, places, persons, qualities etc. There are different types of nouns. One should learn about the differences, purposes and their uses not to mistake them in spoken or written communication.

1. 
   The definition of nouns
   

The noun as a part of speech has the categorical meaning of “substance” or “thingness”. The categorical functional properties of the noun are determined by its semantic properties. The most characteristic substantive function of the noun is that of the subject of the sentence. The function of the object is also typical of the noun as the substance word. Its other syntactic functions (attributive, adverbial and predicative) are performed with equal ease but are not the characteristic of its substantive quality. While performing the non-substantive functions, the noun essentially differs from the other parts of speech because of the transformations as a result of which the noun from various non-subject syntactic positions can be shifted into subject syntactic positions of the same general semantic value.
e.g. Mary is a flower-girl.
The flower-girl is Mary.
He lives in Glasgow.
Glasgow is his place of residence.
This happened three years ago.
Three years have elapsed since it happened.
The noun is characterized by some special types of combinability:
a) the prepositional combinability with another noun, a verb, an adjective, an adverb:
e.g. an entrance to the house; to turn round the corner; red in the face; far from its destination;
b) the casal (possessive) combinability of the noun with another noun:
e.g. the speech of the President – the President’s speech;
the cover of the book – the book’s cover
c) combinability of the noun with another noun where the noun in preposition plays the role of a semantic qualifier to the noun in post-position:
e.g. a cannon ball; a sports event; film festival.
As a part of speech, the noun is also characterized by a set of formal features. It has its word-building distinctions, including typical suffixes, compound stem models, conversion patterns. It discriminates the grammatical categories of gender, number, case, article determination. These formal features are relevant for the division of the nouns into several strictly delimited subclasses which are grouped into four oppositional pairs:
1. Proper and common nouns (the foundation of this division is type of “nomination”).
2. Animate and inanimate (“the form of existence”).
3. Human and non-human (“personal quality”).
4. Countable and uncountable (“quantitative structure”). Somewhat less explicitly and strictly realized is the division of English nouns into concrete and abstract.
THE CATEGORY OF GENDER
The category of gender is expressed in English by the obligatory correlations of nouns with the personal pronouns of the 3rd person. These are specific gender classifiers of nouns.The category of gender is strictly oppositional. It is formed by two oppositions related to each other on a hierarchical basis:⁴
- one opposition functions in the whole set of nouns, dividing them into person (human) nouns and non-person (non-human) nouns;
- the other opposition functions in the subset of person nouns only, dividing them into masculine and feminine. Thus, the first, general opposition can be referred to as the upper opposition in the category f gender, while the second - partial opposition - can be referred to as the lower opposition in this category.As a result of the double oppositional correlation, a specific system of three genders arises:
- the neuter (i.e. non-person) gender,
- the masculine gender,
-the feminine gender.
The strong member of the upper opposition is the human subclass of nouns, its mark being “person” or “personality”. The weak member of the opposition comprises both inanimate and animate non-person nouns. Here belong such nouns as: tree, mountain, love; cat, swallow, ant; society, crowd, association; bull and cow, cock and hen. In cases of oppositional reduction, non-person nouns and their substitute (it) are used in the position of neutralization: e.g. Suddenly something moved in the darkness ahead of us. Could it be a man, in this desolate place, at this time of night?
The strong member of the lower opposition is the feminine subclass of person nouns, its mark being “female sex”. Here belong such nouns as: woman, girl, mother, bride, etc. The weak member of the opposition is the masculine subclass of person nouns. Here belong such nouns as: man, boy, father, bridegroom, etc. A great many person nouns in English are capable of expressing both feminine and masculine person genders by way of the pronominal correlation in question. These are referred to as nouns of the “common gender”. Here belong such words as: person, parent, cousin, doctor, president, etc.
The capability of expressing both genders makes the gender distinctions in the nouns of the common gender into a variable category. But when there is no need to indicate the sex of the person referents of these nouns, they are used neutrally as masculine. Alongside of the grammatical gender distinctions, English nouns can show the sex of their referents lexically, either by means of being combined with certain notional words used as sex indicators, or by suffixal derivation:
e.g. boy-friend, girl-friend; man-producer, woman-producer; landlord, landlady; he-bear, she-bear; actor-actress, etc.
The referents of such nouns as lenny-ass or pea-hen or the like are represented as it and so are the corresponding masculine nouns jack-ass, pea-cock and the like. This kind of representation is different from corresponding representation of such nounal pairs as woman-man, sister-brother, etc.

On the other hand, when the pronominal relation of the non-person animate nouns is turned into he/she, we can speak of a grammatical personifying transposition, which is very typical of English. This kind of transposition affects not only animate nouns, but also a wide range of inanimate nouns. The names of countries, vehicles, weaker animals, etc. are referred to as she. The names of stronger animals, the names of phenomena suggesting crude strength and fierceness are referred to as he.

NUMBER
The category of number is expressed by the opposition of the plural form of the noun to the singular form. The strong member of this binary opposition is the plural, its productive formal mark being the suffix – (e)s / -z, -s, -iz / as in the forms dog- dogs, clock – clocks, box – boxes. The productive formal mark correlates with the absence of the number suffix in the singular form of the noun. Thus, it is possible to speak about the zero suffix of the singular in English.
The other, non-productive ways of expressing the number oppositions are:
- vowel interchange in several archaic forms: man- woman, tooth – teeth;
- the archaic suffix –(e)n supported by phonemic interchange in a couple of other archaic forms: ox – oxen, child – children, brother – brethren
- the correlation of individual singular and plural suffixes in a limited number of borrowed nouns: formula – formulae, phenomenon- phenomena.
In some cases the plural form of the noun is homonymous with the singular form: sheep, deer, fish.
The most general quantitative characteristics of individual words constitute the lexico-grammatical base for dividing the nounal vocabulary as a whole into countable nouns and uncountable nouns. Uncountable nouns are treated grammatically as either singular or plural. Namely, the singular uncountable nouns are modified by the quantifiers much/little and they take the finite verb in the singular, while the plural uncountable nouns take the finite verb in the plural.

The two subclasses of uncountable nouns are usually referred to as:

- singularia tantum (only singular),
- pluralia tantum (only plural).
Since the grammatical form of the uncountable nouns of the singularia tantum is not excluded from the category of number, it is possible to speak of it as the “absolute singular”, as different from the “common singular” of the countable nouns. The absolute singular excludes the use of the modifying numeral one, as well as the indefinite article.
The absolute singular is characteristic of the names of:
- abstract notions: peace, love, joy, courage, friendship;
- the branches of professional activity: chemistry, architecture, mathematics, linguistics;
- materials: water, snow, steel, hair;
- collective inanimate objects: foliage, fruit, furniture.
Some of these words can be used in the form of the common singular, but in this case they come to mean either different sorts of materials or separate concrete manifestations of the qualities denoted by abstract nouns or concrete objects exhibiting the respective qualities:
e.g. Joy is absolutely necessary for normal human life. It was a joy to see her among us. Common number with uncountable singular nouns can also be expressed by means of combining them with words showing discreteness, such as bit, piece, item, sort. e.g. The last two items of news were quite sensational.
Now I’d like to add one more bit of information. In the sphere of the plural we must recognize the common plural as the regular feature of countability, and the absolute form peculiar to the uncountable subclass of pluralia tantum nouns. The absolute plural cannot directly combine with numerals, and only occasionally does it combine with discrete quantifiers, e.g. many/few, etc. The absolute plural is characteristic of the uncountable nouns which denote:
- objects consisting of the two halves: trousers, scissors, tongs, spectacles;
- the nouns expressing some sort of collective meaning, i.e. rendering the idea of indefinite plurality, both concrete and abstract: supplies, outskirts, clothes, contents, politics, police, cattle, poultry ; the nouns denoting some diseases: measles, mumps, hysterics. The absolute plural can be represented in countable nouns having the form of the singular and also in countable nouns having the form of the plural. The representation of the absolute plural in different combinations is possible due to functional oppositional reduction which can be of three types:
1. The first type of reduction, consisting in the use of the absolute plural with countable nouns in the singular form, concerns collective nouns, which are treated as “nouns of multitude”.
e.g. The family were gathered round the table. The government are unanimous in disapproving the move of the opposition. This form of the absolute plural is called “multitude plural”.
2. The second type consists in the use of the absolute plural with uncountable nouns in the plural form and concerns cases of stylistical marking of nouns. Thus, it results in expressive transposition.
e.g. the sands of the desert; the snows of the Arctic; the waters of the ocean, etc. This form is called “descriptive uncountable plural”.
3. The third type of reduction concerns common countable nouns used in repetition groups. The nouns in repetition groups may themselves be used either in the plural or in the singular.
e.g. There were trees and trees all around us. I lit cigarette after cigarette. This form is called “repetition plural”.
CASE
Case is the immanent morphological category of the noun manifested in the form of noun declension and showing the relations of the nounal referent to other objects and phenomena. This category in English is expressed by the opposition of the form –‘s /-z, -s, -iz/, usually called the possessive case, or more traditionally, the genitive case, to the unfeatured form of the noun, usually called the common case. In the course of linguistic investigation the category of case in English has become one of the vexed problems of theoretical discussion.