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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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