Talk:Noun/Archive 3

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

First paragraph

I would suggest that most people will not understand the first paragraph at all. While it may be technically correct, as the lead into the article it could do with being a little easier to understand. Lethal0r 09:45, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

I agree that it was a bit technical. It's difficult to balance correctness and readability here. Previously the definition only defined nouns for English, and that was attacked for lack of generality, hence the current, more cumbersome version. I've tried to simplify it somewhat by removing references to morphological stems, since I think they are somewhat beside the point here. I also made some other minor simplifications, like replacing the term "grammatical categories" with the somewhat more everyday "kinds of expressions." Neither (talk) 22:09, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

I have rewritten the intro. Here's what it looked like when I found it:

"In linguistics, a noun or noun substantive is a lexical category which is defined in terms of how its members combine with other kinds of expressions. Since different languages have different inventories of kinds of expressions, the definition of noun will differ from language to language. In English, nouns may be defined as those words which can co-occur with definite articles and attributive adjectives, and function as the head of a noun phrase. The noun can be replaced by a pronoun of first person, second person, or even third person. Also the noun is known for being one of the eight parts of speech.

...which struck me as classic "bad Wikipedia", no offense intended.

The new intro isn't intended to take sides on "traditional grammar" vs. "modern linguistics"; I just want the article to start with a definition that makes a lick of sense. That was hard to find; but here's one: [1] —Jorend (talk) 08:10, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Your version of the intro defined nounhood semantically rather than syntactically. Regarding the original intro: Other than the last sentence, which is clumsy, what is wrong with it? Ilkali (talk) 08:18, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

I disagree. My version defined nounhood grammatically, not semantically. Did you read it? Did you look at the reference?

I think there's a lot wrong with the intro as it stands. "Noun substantive" is obsolete jargon. The first two sentences read like an incomplete definition of "lexical category". They say nothing specifically about nouns. "A noun is a lexical category" is incorrect; a noun is a member of a lexical category. Noun phrases, not nouns, are replaced by pronouns; and the word "even" in that sentence seems like a joke. The last sentence is redundant if you know that "parts of speech" means basically the same thing as "lexical category". The whole is an incongruous mess.

I'm going to make another try based on that sil.org page; we'll find something we can agree on.—Jorend (talk) 08:36, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Two more things, both minor: the word "definite" before "article" seems superfluous; and I think "occur with" is better than "co-occur with" given that they mean the same thing and there are second-graders in the audience.—Jorend (talk) 08:44, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

"My version defined nounhood grammatically, not semantically. Did you read it?". I think part of assuming good faith is assuming that I've read the text I'm evaluating. Here it is: "a noun is a word that follows the grammatical rules for words that name concrete objects". You're defining nounhood by reference to denotations. That's clearly semantic.

Your new version seems pretty good, though. I agree that it's an improvement over what we had before. Ilkali (talk) 10:19, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

OK. I'm actually a little happier with this intro, too. I still have some questions about it, which I'll add here. —Jorend (talk) 15:22, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

• Is there a reason it says "definite article" instead of "article"? This seems incongruous with the examples, which contrast a fright and *an afraid.
• The text and the sidebar both (seem to) claim all English nouns can take the definite article, but it seems to me like a lot of proper nouns don't: *the Idaho; *the Edward. What gives?
• Nouns don't really serve as the subject or object of verbs: noun phrases do. For example, ball can't serve as the subject of a sentence. This guy uses the wording “the main or only word in the subject of a clause”, which I prefer; but I'm not sure how well that applies to languages other than English. What do you think?
• Does this intro really do a good job of telling the reader what a noun is? I feel like it's almost an adequate definition, but a pretty poor explanation. If you don't know what a noun is, and you come to Wikipedia, now you have five problems—because you probably doesn't know ‘lexical category’, ‘subject’, ‘object’, ‘verb’, or ‘preposition’ either. And clicking those links will not help, as lamented elsewhere on this talk page. What can be done about this?

(later) I made some changes along these lines but the last question stands. —Jorend (talk) 21:33, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

"Noun substantive"

This phrase was used in the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, where it meant what we mean by "noun". "Noun adjective" was used to mean "adjective". The terms are defined in the OED. DavidCh0 (talk) 10:11, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

This was apparently considered obsolete by 1900, so I don't think it deserves top billing. I removed it from the intro sentence of noun. It might be worth putting in someplace else though. —Jorend (talk) 07:10, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree about the first paragraph. However, my understanding as described above is not the same as the explanation under 'Substantive as a word for "noun"'. There may be multiple definitions, but the existing one is not sourced - perhaps this can be clarified by someone with a greater knowledge than I . DavidCh0 (talk) 12:23, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

An interesting discussion. May I (as an oldie) venture some variant thoughts on the text in question?—Starting with old Latin grammars, [some?] European languages use [an equivalent?] of the word 'substantive' as the basic term for 'noun'. Nouns in the dictionaries of such languages are marked with the abbreviation "s" instead of "n", which may be used for proper nouns instead . This corresponds to those grammars in which nouns and adjectives phase into each other [in a manner other than?] the English term 'predicate adjective' entails. In French and Spanish, for example, adjectives frequently act as nouns referring to people who have the characteristics of the adjective. (Is not a 'predicate adjective' merely one which qualifies its subject noun from a predicative location in a sentence?)

(Going on. . . ) In English, adjectives sometimes appear to deputise for nouns, as in

'The poor are present in most communities' (where a noun 'people' or 'classes' is omitted as an 'understood' term);

'The Socialist International' (where the noun 'organisation' or 'body' is omitted as an 'understood' term).

Similarly, the deontological utterance You must not keep a mistress may be seen to be shorthand for the 'understood' form IF you wish to please your wife (or priest, or god, etc) THEN you must not keep a mistress. English is able to leave a great deal unsaid.(:-)

It's my personal view that 'substantive' is indeed an obsolete term in English syntax (or grammar); and, further, that the syntactical characters of other modern languages (including Welsh) don't have much bearing on English, which has certainly come further and faster than any of them. The main problem with attempts to codify our language is that common usage will always have the last laugh over us pedants! Cheers Bjenks (talk) 15:06, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

A search for “noun substantive Welsh” finds mainly very old hits (from the 1800s). Perhaps Welsh dictionaries still make this distinction, but an English encyclopedia shouldn't list Welsh synonyms for English words unless there's some reason for it.

In any case, as a matter of grammar, while an adjective can occur in some places where a noun might also appear, I'm told that it isn't a noun even then; a predicate adjective isn't pluralized the way a noun would be (*All babies are cutes.), you can't use it in the genitive (*the poor's problems), etc. —68.53.128.229 (talk) 15:38, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

My point (perhaps badly expressed) is that the section in the article does not represent the usage as defined in the OED and is confusing. I know this usage is obsolete in English lexicography and obscure in linguistics, but if there is going to be a section on it it should be correct, clear, and sourced. I don't think it is anything to do with nouns used as adjectives or vice versa. DavidCh0 (talk) 13:28, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Definitions with semantic elements

I just found this in the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, chapter 1, section 4.4:

The general definitions we propose for the categories discussed above are as follows:

noun: a grammatically distinct category of lexemes of which the morphologically most elementary members characteristically denote types of physical objects (such as human beings, other biological organisms, and natural or artificial inanimate objects)

In context, the word general contrasts with language-particular. The full text of chapter 1 is online; see page 32 of that PDF.

This is a syntactic definition that bootstraps itself by reference to semantics. I still think this sort of definition is the way to go, and I might make another try at it soonish. —Jorend (talk) 20:00, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

n

This page is blasphemous if it does not even indicate the grammatical symbol for noun, n.

--APDEF (talk) 02:47, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Picture

There really shouldn't be any pictures of people on this article.

--Marshall T. Williams (talk) 13:30, 4 October 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by APDEF (talk • contribs)