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In the above sentence, "computer" is acting as an Adjectival modifier of "company", and together the two words — each of them a noun in itself — make up the compound noun "computer company".
A noun, or '''noun substantive''', is a Part Of Speech (a Word or Phrase ) which can co-occur with (in)definite articles and Attributive Adjectives , and function as the Head of a Noun Phrase . The word "noun" derives from the Latin ''nomen'' meaning " Name ", and a traditional definition of nouns is that they are all and only those expressions that refer to a ''person'', ''place'', ''thing'', ''event'', ''substance'', ''quality'' or ''idea''. They serve as the subject or object of a verb, and the object of a preposition. That definition has been criticized by contemporary linguists as being quite uninformative. For example, it appears that verbs like ''kill'' or ''die'' refer to events, and so they fall under the definition. Similarly, adjectives like ''yellow'' or ''difficult'' might be thought to refer to qualities, and adverbs like ''outside'' or ''upstairs'' seem to refer to places. But verbs, adjectives and adverbs are not nouns, so the definition is not particularly helpful in distinguishing nouns from other parts of speech. Word classes like nouns were first discovered by ancient Greek and Sanskrit grammarians like Dionysios Thrax and Panini (grammarian) , and defined in terms of their Morphological properties. For example, in Ancient Greek, nouns can be inflected for Grammatical Case , such as dative or accusative, while verbs cannot be so inflected. Verbs, on the other hand, can be inflected for Tenses , such as past, present or future, while nouns cannot. Aristotle also had a notion of ''onomata'' (nouns) and ''rhemata'' (verbs) which, however, does not exactly correspond our notions of verbs and nouns. CASE, NUMBER, AND GENDER In sentences, noun phrases may function in a variety of different ways, the most obvious being as '' Subjects '' or '' Objects ''. For example, in the sentence "John wrote me a letter", "John" is the subject, and "me" and "letter" are objects (of which "letter" is a noun and "me" a pronoun). These different roles are known as '' Noun Cases ''. Variant forms of the same noun—such as "he" (subject) and "him" (object)—are called '' Declension s''. The '' Number '' of a noun indicates how many objects the noun refers to. In the simplest case, number distinguishes between singular ("man") and plural ("men"). Some languages, like Arabic (and also Saami and Aleut ) also distinguish Dual from plural. Many languages (though not English) have a concept of noun '' Gender '', also known as ''noun class'', whereby every noun is designated as, for example, masculine or feminine. CLASSIFICATION OF NOUNS Proper nouns and common nouns ''Proper nouns'' (also called '' Proper Name s'') are the names of unique entities. For example, "Janet", "Jupiter" and "Germany" are proper nouns. Proper nouns are Capitalized in English and most other languages that use the Latin Alphabet , and this is one easy way to recognise them. This fails, however, in German , in which nouns of all types are capitalized. All other nouns are called ''common nouns''. For example, "girl", "planet", and "country" are common nouns. Sometimes the same word can function as both a common noun and a proper noun, where one such entity is special. For example: "There can be many '' Gods '', but there is only one '' God ''." The common meaning of the word or words constituting a proper noun may be unrelated to the object to which the proper noun refers. For example, someone might be named "Tiger Smith" despite being neither a Tiger nor a Smith . For this reason, proper nouns are usually not Translated between languages, although they may be Transliterated . For example, the German surname ''Knödel'' becomes ''Knodel'' or ''Knoedel'' in English (not the literal ''Dumpling''). However, the translation of placenames and the names of Monarch s, Pope s, and non-contemporary Author s is common and sometimes mandatory. For instance, the Portuguese word ''Lisboa'' becomes '' Lisbon '' in English ; the English ''London'' becomes ''Londres'' in French; and Aristotle was, in Greek , ''Aristotelēs''. Count nouns and mass nouns In everyday terms, '' Count Noun s'' (or ''countable nouns'') refer to discrete, countable objects. Count nouns can take a plural, can combine with Numerals or Quantifiers (e.g. "one", "two", "several", "every", "most"), and can take an indefinite article ("a" or "an"). Examples of count nouns are "chair", "nose", and "occasion". '' Mass Noun s'' (or ''non-countable nouns'') refer to objects that cannot be individually enumerated. Examples from English include "laughter", "cutlery", "helium", and "furniture". For example, it is not possible to refer to "a furniture" or "three furnitures". Some words function in the singular as a count noun and, without a change in the spelling, as a mass noun in the plural: she caught a ''fish'', we caught ''fish''; he shot a ''deer'', they shot some ''deer''; the ''craft'' was dilapidated, the pier was chockablock with ''craft''. Collective nouns See Also: Collective noun ''Collective nouns'' are subject-specific words used to define a grouping of people, animals, objects or concepts. For example, in the phrase " A Parliament Of Owls ", ''parliament'' is a collective noun. Concrete nouns and abstract nouns ''Concrete nouns'' refer to definite objects—objects in which you use at least one of your Sense s. For instance, "chair", "apple", or "Janet". ''Abstract nouns'' on the other hand refer to ideas or concepts, such as "justice" or "hate". While this distinction is sometimes useful, the boundary between the two of them is not always clear. In English, many abstract nouns are formed by adding noun-forming suffixes ("-ness", "-ity", "-tion") to adjectives or verbs. Examples are "happiness", "circulation" and "serenity". NOUNS AND PRONOUNS Noun phrases can be replaced by Pronoun s, such as "he", "me", "which", and "those", in order to avoid repetition or explicit identification, or for other reasons. For example, in the sentence "Janet thought that he was weird", the word "he" is a pronoun standing in place of the name of the person in question. SEE ALSO EXTERNAL LINKS |
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