Questions tagged [nouns]
A category of word which typically denotes an entity of some kind.
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Apparently agentive -r forms in Old Norse
I'm trying to understand forms like "Hræsvelgr" (Mythological creature; lit. corpse swallower) and "vínsvelgr" (Drunkard) in Old Norse.
The verb "svelga" is "to ...
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Was the word 'vehicle' first used as a concrete noun or as an abstract noun?
So I recently learned that the word 'vehicle' was first used in the 1650s and that got me thinking about the way in which it was first used, and whether this use would've been literal or metaphorical. ...
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Which non-Indoeuropean languages have noun-adjective agreement?
For example, agglutinative/fusional languages where case or possessive suffixes/endings must be attached both to a noun and all adjectives that modify it. Or any other kind of noun-adjective agreement....
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How do Pidgins express/teach/learn "abstract" nouns?
I tried asking a similar question on Reddit: The minimum required to teach abstract nouns to children without writing or illustrations?, but (a) people misunderstood my question (and/or were rude), ...
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What differences are between Ablative of Manner and Ablative of Means/Instrument? [closed]
Keller's Learn to Read Latin says on p42
Association/Instrument
In the sentence "The farmer came to the party with a poet", the phrase
"with a poet" indicates that the farmer was ...
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What is the argument position of a noun in vocative case in a sentence?
What is the argument position (e.g. subject, direct object, ...) of a noun in vocative case in a sentence, for example, in Latin?
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Multiple plurals per inflectional paradigm slot (Arabic)
Lexemes are generally associated with inflectional paradigms; let us take a nominal for the purpose of this discussion, and more specifically an Arabic nominal. Let's say that we are dealing with a ...
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Determining factor for the default inflection of a noun
In Arabic, a noun can have three different inflections depending on its role in a given sentence. For example, for the word "book", it can be kitabun, or kitaban, or kitabin. The default ...
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Denotation of common nouns
Do common nouns have any singular 'denotation' or do all of them denote entirely contextually? For example in 'a car' is 'car' denoting a type of object and the entire phrase describing an object of ...
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Do uncountabe (mass) nouns act as 'indefinite descriptions'?
I've always wondered what is the correct use of 'uncountable nouns', for example 'Water', we might see a use like this:
'There is water over here'
This is different to a 'class' or 'category' name ...
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Using 'is' after non-denoting phrases
Usually 'is' can be an identity statement 'John is my boss' or a predication like 'John is angry', how about using 'is' for something that refers to no particular idea or object?
For example 'a ...
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How to Do NACLO Problem with Frogs 🐸, Ducks 🦆, and Bats 🦇
The Problem
My Question
How do you solve this?
My Pitiful Progress
(w), in Witsuwit'en, is likely a compound word of (a) and (v)
(15) and (16) are very similar spelling-wise. It is probable that ...
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Using 'it' in sentences with indefinite noun phrases
I was looking at indefinite noun phrases like 'a man' or specifically sentences of this form:
'If I were to bring a chicken home, my dog would try to eat it.
Why is it that 'a chicken' does not refer, ...
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Accepted term for "noun of action"
Is there an accepted English term for a noun that
is formed from a verb, and
means the act or process of doing that verb?
For example, attraction, completion, confusion, establishment, encouragement ...
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Is there a name for "noun-verbing" adjectives?
Is there a name for adjectives that take the form of "noun-verbing", like "rabbit-hunting" or "self-driving"? Do this form only occurs in English?
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Does English have animate/inanimate distinction?
I know we have the "'S" genitive and the "X of Y" but I don't exactly understand the rules of using these even as a native English speaker and I'm unsure if English makes other ...
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What is (or was) the exative case?
Inspired by this finding I'd like to know what the exative case described by Taplin for south-australian languages is or was. It does not seem to be modern terminology any longer, and lists of ...
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How many marked cases are there for regular nouns in English?
How many cases are marked for regular nouns in English?
I see online the following:
The English language has just three cases: subjective, possessive and objective. Most nouns, many indefinite ...
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Materialization of nouns by adjectives
I am not even an amateur in linguistics, especially semantics. I want to use this idea in computational linguistics that I am also new there. The idea is how to deal with nouns that become more ...
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Grammatical feature for certain Danish time nouns with -s
Some Danish time nouns, e.g., torsdag (Thursday) and formiddag (forenoon) can have a special -s form, torsdags and formiddags, respectively. These words occur with the preposition "i", "...
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What is the function of a gender distinction in nouns?
In German and some other languages, I understand there are different forms of the definite article 'the' depending on the gender of the noun. Also personal pronouns have different forms depending on ...
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Why "a liter of water" but not "a 100ºC of water"?
Imagine a volume of water, 100 ml in size, with a temperature of 100ºC. Interestingly, you can refer to the water as "100ml of water" but you cannot call it "100ºC of water". That ...
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Are there languages without separate words for man and woman, just a generic term for both?
I am not talking about how in some languages, e.g. English, "man" is the more generic term, but languages where there is no separate word for "man" or "woman" at all. I ...
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What is the difference between plurality and gender?
I have just started creating my own conlang, and I was wondering if anybody could help me. I can't find anything that'll help me differentiate plurality and gender.
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Is there a name for the type of word that the word, “scarecrow,” is? (a transitive verb conjoined with its object)
The English word, “scarecrow,” spontaneously came to mind the other day, and I realized just how similar this word is to other words and phrases in other languages.
For example, there are many ...
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Since when did Indo-European languages start associating noun genders with male/female sexes?
Since what point in time did noun classes in Indo-European languages become associated with the sexes?
I read that greek/latin used words that translate to "kind" to describe the noun ...
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How did the romance languages' feminine/masculine genders develop?
How did French, Spanish, Italian, end up with gendered nouns?
The Wikipedia page Proto-Indo-European nominals says
Originally, there probably were only an animate (masculine/feminine) and an ...
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Where could I find a list weak nouns in modern English which were strong in old English?
So I have been doing a thing recently for which I need to find a list of all (or at least most) of weak (regular) modern English nouns (and verbs, if possible) which were strong (irregular) in old ...
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English words that can be only used as nouns
Is there a term for words that can be only used as nouns?
For example, I think "history" and "sofa" are such words, but "book" and "dog" are not.
I'm looking ...
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Does the universal use of noun and verb phrases reflect how humans cognitively see the world as objects and relationships?
The question is: why are noun and verb phrases the basic building blocks of all grammar?
Candidate answer: cognitively, we perceive the world as objects and relationships between objects. Thus, nouns ...
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Are these "phrases" or "clauses" before a noun a modifier adjective?
In these clauses or sentences "I love those "I love you" messages" or "I hate those "I love you" messages",
Is this "phrase" or "clause", &...
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Is the word "Language" in "Natural Language Processing" plural or singular, count or mass? [closed]
I want to translate the word language in the term NLP to the Arabic language. so
I wonder, In Natural Language Processing, if the word language is countable or uncountable? whether it is plural or ...
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The term for the state of a noun
In linguistics, a case is how a noun declines with respect to its grammatical function within a given phrase, clause, or sentence. Is there a linguistics term to refer to the “state” of a noun within ...
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Historical development from adjective to concrete noun to more abstract noun
I'd really appreciate any knowledge or advice on further reading about the following. Excuse my naivete- I am at the start of this investigation.
I'm studying an historical corpus and I have found a ...
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Why the words for pineapple sound so similar in Hebrew and in German?
A word for "pineapple" in Hebrew is "אננס" and in German is "Ananas". The pronunciation of "אננס" in Hebrew and "Ananas" in German are so similar that I wonder if it is merely a coincidence or there ...
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What do features ±F and ±N mean?
Could anybody please help me understand what the [±F] and [±N] features mean? What do they stand for, I have no idea .... (The article elucidates in terms of GB theory)
Given these observations, ...
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How could you summarise the noun phrase of a certain language?
What features of a noun phrase are appropriate to refer to when summarising a language and giving reference to that languages utilisation of noun phrases? If I were to ask you to tell me about the ...
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Is there a language without compound nouns?
The Wikipedia article on compounds claims:
All natural languages have compound nouns.
Is there a specific source to back this up? Or are there in fact languages that don't have compound nouns?
If ...
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How did these feminine mutations originate in Welsh?
It is known that the celtic languages have mutations, for instance:
Welsh:
*transcription depicts North Welsh dialects
• normal form: Cymru [ˈkəmrɨ̞] (Wales);
• soft mutation: Gymru [ˈɡəmrɨ̞] (ex.: ...
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Languages with masculine nouns for various female entities, or feminine nouns for male entities
This is not an area I'm familiar with, so if any of the following description/discussion is misguided, I apologise in advance:
In languages with gendered nouns, the nouns for woman and man are ...
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Where can you find a list of all nouns and verbs "forms" in each language? [closed]
The only languages for which I have found a book (not even a webpage) is for Hebrew and Arabic. Are there books or webpages that contain all the noun declensions and verb "conjugations" (or noun and ...
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Are nouns ever a closed class?
For pretty much any grammatical category, I can think of a language in which it's a closed class. Japanese has closed classes of verbs and (verb-like) adjectives, for example, while Swahili has a ...
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Does Swahili have relational nouns?
I've just come across the concept of relational nouns, and I'm curious if Swahili's position-indicating words count.
In Swahili, there's a possessive particle -a that joins nouns together. For ...
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Does each verb have a corresponding noun with the same meaning
I believe that each main verb has (at least) one corresponding noun with the same meaning that is formed from gerund and derivation. For examples, discovery is from discover; reading is from read; ...
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If you can use nouns as verbs for different languages
Along the same lines of If you can use Chinese nouns as verbs, or vice versa, I am wondering if you can treat nouns as verbs or verbs as nouns in languages such as these:
Inuktitut
Hebrew
Japanese
...
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Name for adjectives modifying the verb within a noun rather than the noun itself (as in "illegal immigrant")
I'm interested in the phenomenon where people object to "illegal" as though it is inaccurate because the person implied by "immigrant" cannot be illegal in merely being a person. While moral and legal ...
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Which came first in Greek: λήθη, or Λήθη the proper noun?
i.e. λήθη: a noun meaning oblivion or concealment, and Λήθη: a proper noun referring to a river in Greek myth.
My question is this: is this noun a reference to the mythological river, or was the name ...
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Is concrete noun member of abstract noun [closed]
I think normally concrete noun is member of abstract noun (membership in set theory), but it is not always true. For example, "Socrates" is a person, but it is not member of mankind (abstract noun). "...
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Terminology for chained, nested adjective anatomy
For the moment I am just considering adjectives and adverbs as the same sort of thing, basically modifiers for the noun or verb. I will probably only focus on nouns here for simplicity.
Some examples ...
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Why some verbs have -tion while others don't, when being nounified
Verbs like animate become a noun animation, and others like graduate become graduation. But then there are verbs that are just straight converted into nouns, like capture the verb and a capture the ...
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