Talk:Noun

message: I read the example "talked to each other"
:Good: The boys talked to each other.
:Bad:  *The boy talked to each other.
:Good: The committee talked to each other.
English is not my mother tongue, and I think the example would be even more useful if it used simple present: Is it "The committee talks to each other." or "The committee talk to each other."?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by FrankyS (talk • contribs) 18:22, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Funnily enough I just tagged this as dubious (I hadn't read your comment). I'm a native BrE speaker and "the committee talked to each other" does not seem good English to me. 86.161.42.191 (talk) 22:05, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I concur, 'The committee members talked to each other' would work; committee is a singular term, not a plural term 9Even though is is a term for a group of people). Saying 'The French talked to each other' or 'The athletes talked to each other' would work, as those are plurals.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 167.30.48.42 (talk) 00:46, 26 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Collective noun example almost useful 

message: "
Rodin's The Thinker. Should we refer to this with a verb ("think", "ponder") or a noun ("thought", "thinker"), or an adjective ("pensive", "thoughtful")? In different contexts, any of these would do. This illustrates the problem with defining lexical categories in terms of what they refer to.
"
What is this supposed to mean? Thinker is clearly not a verb, not an adjective. I propose we get rid of the picture and especially the caption. Thanks. 205.228.104.143 (talk) 09:04, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Same goes for the other idiotic "identity criteria" picture. Just because we can add images to articles doesn't mean that we have to. Let's just get rid of this, yes? 205.228.104.143 (talk) 09:07, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I've been bold, both are gone. 114.146.108.100 (talk) 21:35, 10 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  The thinker - huh?! 

message: The term "prototypically referential" ideally needs explaining in the article. It's also not very clear whether the section entitled "Prototypically referential expressions" is talking about the same theory as is explained in the last paragraph of "Predicates with identity criteria". Should these two sections be merged? 81.157.197.45 (talk) 03:18, 21 December 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Moved the heading & 1-line down ! Still don't know what "Prototypically referential" means, though. I suspect it's just his name for the 'same' thing as "identity criteria"! --195.137.93.171 (talk) 06:25, 6 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Prototypically referential" 

message: We need to add more information about the capitalization of proper nouns. The proper nouns section should be moved to its own page if necessary. --86.169.102.32 (talk) 16:00, 8 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: [It did get split off after this comment.] Quercus solaris (talk) 22:17, 30 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proper noun capitalization 

message: I think that the articles linked to under the Classification section should be merged into this one. It would make this article much more comprehensive, which is important, given that the idea of a noun is universal to all human languages (communication and cognition, in general). The exception, I think, would be the mass/count noun articles; they should be merged into the quantization article, along with telicity. Then the quantization article can be linked to in the mass/count section of this article.
66.59.249.107 (talk) 22:06, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree that mass and count should be merged into one article about (un)countability and countification. As for the proper noun section, it was already split off from this article because of its size (which is needed to cover the topic adequately). So I don't think there is any action to be taken in this article, but for the mass and count articles, yes. Quercus solaris (talk) 22:17, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

text: Organization of Noun and Proper noun appears to be happy. I have taken down merge banners. --Kvng (talk) 15:01, 28 December 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: no you havent its still tereEthanate1 (talk) 06:19, 18 July 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Merg seems moot at this point. Banner has been removed.Planetary ChaosTalk 21:48, 19 October 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merger 

message: The sections titled "Predicates with identity criteria" and "Prototypically referential expressions" are quite meaningless. Is anyone who understands these theories able to write a more comprehensible explanation? If not, I think these sections should be removed or reduced to a "further reading" link - as they are they only serve to confuse and possibly scare off the reader (and there are far more essential and down-to-earth things we ought to be saying about nouns that the article as yet barely touches on - genders, cases, plurals and so on). Victor Yus (talk) 21:10, 12 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title: Confusing sections

message: I suggest that it be more prominently displayed that the traditional definition of a noun as a "name of a person, place, or thing" is inadequate. (One fault is that it is a disjunctive definition, which is not the best, but I won't dwell on that.) The Jackendorff book cited in the article gives these examples of nouns which don't fit: ""earthquakes and concerts and wars, values and weights and costs, famines and droughts, redness and fairness, days and millennia, functions and purposes, craftsmanship, perfection, enjoyment, and finesse". Examples given by  The syntax of natural language: An online introduction using the Trees program by Beatrice Santorini and Anthony Kroch "(unless the concept of thing is reduced to near-vacuity)": "explosion, glint, mind, moment, thunder, value". ISTM that there are better candidates, but I don't have reference, so I thought of these: "fit" (a perfect fit), miss (a near miss), separation, difference, excess, stealth, opportunity, smell, future, possibilities, folly, truth, and vacuity". I'm sure that some linguist must have done a better job.     TomS TDotO (talk) 08:54, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: The definition of noun as defined in the concise OED is: a word (other than a pronoun) or group of words used to name or identify any of a class of persons, places, or things (common noun) or a particular one of these (proper noun). Is this of any help? Denisarona (talk) 11:22, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
replies: text:   It helped me to laugh. "A group of words"  noun. "A group of words"  among other things, a compound, a phrase, a clause, or a sentence. Also, a noun isn't "used to name or identify" stuff.  A noun constitutes stuff or is stuff. Now I'm crying for anyone who relies on such alf-hassed (my freshly minted spoonerism) lexicography as a reference for linguistic typology. This article's definition is minimally better than OED's. I'm resisting the urge to edit this article's definition because I'm heavily invested in my original sense for what a "noun" entails, and right now I'm unwilling to fling my definition into the public domain. Sorry, folks. --Kent Dominic 18:30, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

text: What I am really interested in a linguist's examples of (in English - or other languages) nouns which do not (in their opinion) meet the criterion of naming/identifying/referencing. I'm sure that they have come up some really bullet-proof examples. And I think that it merits at least a brief mention of how the traditional definition fails in such cases.   TomS TDotO (talk) 12:44, 14 July 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: After surfing, I came up with Reference 3.4 Non-Referring Expressions Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Reference", by Marga Reimer mentions "sake" (as in "for the sake of"), "behalf", "dint". wikt:dint seems a particularly good example.   TomS TDotO (talk) 12:53, 15 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Definition of "noun" 

message: This tag was recently added:
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Could the editor who added the tag explain here  what the problem is? --Boson (talk) 22:57, 9 December 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: I removed the tag. It is something better discussed here first and the edit was by a single-edit IP editor. Bhny (talk) 00:36, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Recent tag 

message: It's hard to say whether "in the Art of Grammar" could have been an attempt at irony, but it's a barbarism at best, since both Art of Grammar and The Art of Grammar are widely used.--Jerzy•t 00:13, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Irony? 

message: nouns refer to physical entities that can, in principle at least[clarification needed], be observed by at least one of the senses (for instance, chair, apple, Janet or atom). Abstract nouns, on the other hand, refer to abstract objects; that is, ideas or concepts (such as justice or hatred). While this distinction is sometimes exclusive, some nouns have multiple senses, including both concrete and abstract ones: consider, for example, the noun art, which usually refers to a concept (e.g., Art is an important element of human culture.) but which can refer to a specific artwork in certain contexts (e.g., I put my daughter's art up on the fridge.)
It is time to further elaborate the above definitions. We have got five senses with different scope and range of perception. Accordingly, our perception of the concrete depends on our distance from what we call a concrete object. If it is too distant, hence out of the scope of our perceptional range, such an object may be called unknown, non-existent or abstract. Now normally, touch, smell, taste, hear and see differ in that respect, because once you are hooked up to one of the sensations, you need to move out of the source of that stimulus to get rid of its impact. As you do so, the strength of the stimuli decreases and finally diminishes. It is also our capability to focus on one source of stimuli and by doing so we get and become conscious of "loud and clear" input. But the brain seems to process signals that come from the environment only a part of which is in focus, the rest is out of focus and is a kind of holographic imprint that may or may not be processed unconsciously. Broken input may be complemented just as opposites are also sensed due to the search for contrast that enables resolution and focusing. Clearly, since you are normally in control of directing your sensors to certain directions, it is up to you to decide whether something is concrete or abstract or what extent, since the two qualities are not opposites but the two extremes of a range of your sensory input evaluation. This is illustrated by the wording of Chomsky's abstract concrete ladder example of vision, the most frequently used and referenced capacity of humans to verify sensation of reality.
There is a parallel twin concept general/generic and specific/individual with a similar touch of growing and decreasing vagueness when applied as properties to describe objects/nouns. They also create a problem for perception as you cannot have many objects in focus at a time, indeed, you try to limit the number of items in focus to one, because what you are after is a one-on-one connection with reality. That relationship is the basis of logic and algebra, etc. the rest of cognition.  
All the  above abstract nouns, i.e. the property of abstract come from abstraction by definition, following the tautological character of languages and word formation. In contrast with concrete nouns, i.e. objects that are deemed to exist as proven by perception, abstract nouns act like shells, both in time and in space.  They are nil and void, but usefully created to give way to ontological objects so that they can be accessed by perception. There is a back and forth conversion of abstract-concrete identification/description in the mind which is necessary for social action and harmonization of scales and measurements. And since we work on an analogue mind and analogue computer rather than a digital one  the various sets of frames of cognition are extended as analogies throughout our experience of life. Making the biggest difference between the mind of people in terms of the range of abstract objects (nouns) they believe in and accept as the true description of reality.
In short, what we miss badly with respect to such a dubious nomenclature as abstract-concrete (nouns) properties is the explanation of the emergence of such adjectives. I assume you need to identify the mental operations that lead to abstract (abstraction) with due explanation why we need them (for example to use the verb reference without space-time context, outside the one understood in the discourse). But that subject would be original research something despised by the editors of this conglomerate of logically disconnected entries.
08:12, 15 December 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: The voice of discontent

message: Seems to be just a particular example of noun classes.  I can see mentioning noun classes, but not why one obscure language should be the exemplar. 65.87.143.2 (talk) 22:53, 26 April 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pingelapese 

message: Noun is a kind of word,usually the name of a person,place,thing or qualities.Lingustically,noun is a member of a large,open part of a speech,whose member can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause,the object of a verb or the object of a preposition,(LolaKorner (talk) 09:32, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Noun 

message: The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:
* English-English dictionaries and thesaurus books.JPG
Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 00:54, 22 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion 

message: Other instances of nominalization need mention, e.g., 
*Re gerunds: I like swimming; Smoking is bad for one's health.
*Syntactic analysis of to-infinitive phrases that function as an object: I have to exercise more; Would you like to go? NOTE: Analysis of have to as a modal verb is egregiously lame IMHO.
*Syntactic analysis of a bare infinitive with an elided "to" particle in a verb catena wherein a verb functions as an object: Protein will help (to) strengthen your muscles; I couldn't help but (to) scoff at his silly antics
I'd add all of the above myself except that, uncited as it is, it's subject to objection as WP:OR. Kent Dominic·(talk) 15:40, 28 January 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Aren't those very English-specific? Wouldn't it be better to have that in English nouns? Seems like somwhat complex topics, and if we had that for a few languages, the subsection (whose main point really is to point towards the separate article on Nominalization) could end up quite heavy. //Replayful (talk | contribs) 16:41, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Good points. Kent Dominic·(talk) 19:57, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nominalization section needs expansion