Ranks of nouns by value. Lexical and grammatical category of nouns

A noun is a special part of speech that denotes an object and expresses a given meaning in such inflectional categories as case and number, and also with the help of a genus that is a constant category.

In this article, nouns are considered by value. We will describe each of them and give examples.

Noun stands for objects in the broadest sense of the word: names of things ( sledges, scissors, window, wall, table ), persons ( man, woman, boy, girl, child ), substances ( cream, sugar, flour ), living organisms and creatures Microbe, pike, woodpecker, cat ), phenomena, events, facts ( performance, fire, vacations, conversation, fear, sadness ), as well as procedural and non-procedural attributes, named as independent independent substances - properties, qualities, states, actions ( crush , Solution, running, blue, stupidity, kindness ).

Basic lexical and grammatical categories of nouns

The following main categories are distinguished, into which nouns are divided: 1) common and proper; 2) are real; 3) collective; 4) abstract and specific; 5) inanimate and animate. These categories of nouns intersect in value. Names own, for example, can include the names of both inanimate and animate objects. Real nouns, which denote the mass of a substance, can have a collective value ( sugar, grapes, cranberries ). Specific (as a lexical-grammatical category) combine the animate and inanimate, called the name of the objects. There are other examples. However, words that are included in one or another category of nouns in meaning, have common morphological, and sometimes word-formative characteristics, which unites them.

Common and proper nouns

This division occurs on the basis of the name of the subject as a representative of the class or as an individual. Own as a lexico-grammatical category of nouns (in other words, "proper names") are words that call individual objects that enter the homogeneous class, but do not themselves carry a special indication of this belonging.

Nominal - names that call an object by its inclusion in some class. This lexico-grammatical category of nouns denotes the name, respectively, as the bearer of features characteristic of the objects of this class.

There is a mobile and impermanent boundary between common and proper names: common nouns often become their own (nicknames and nicknames). Own are often used to designate homogeneous objects in general, and become thus nominal: quixot, dervish, donjuan.

Names own in the narrow sense

Among their proper names are allocated such categories of nouns by value, as their own in the narrow sense, and denominations. The first represent the astronomical and geographical names and names of animals and people. It is a slowly replenished, lexically limited circle consisting of titles that are assigned to one subject. Here, repetitions, coincidences (names of settlements, villages, rivers) are possible, they are also high-frequency with respect to the system of proper names of various individuals and animals.

Names

For names, different common names or combinations of words are used. The nominal noun does not lose its lexical meaning, but only changes the function. For example: the newspaper "Izvestia", the factory "Hammer and Sickle", the perfume "Lilac" . Names can also serve as names: steamer "Ukraine", hotel "Moscow".

Collective nouns

Collective nouns constitute a separate category (lexico-grammatical) among common names. To them belong words that call the aggregate of some homogeneous objects, and express this value with the help of various suffixes: -st (o) ( youth, students ); -ya ( aristocracy, pioneer ); From (a) ( poor ) and others. To the collective nouns, with a broad understanding, names that denote the totality of objects: furniture, trash, small fry, and tops may also be included. Express collective words such words lexically, and not word-forming. The distinguishing feature of these nouns is that they do not have a plural.

Real nouns

They name different substances: materials ( cement, gypsum ), food products ( sugar, flour, groats, fat ), types of fabrics ( cotton, velvet ), metals, fossils (jasper, emerald, steel, tin, coal, iron ), drugs , Chemical elements ( aspirin, pyramidone, uranium ), agricultural crops ( wheat, potatoes, oats ), as well as other divisible homogeneous masses.

Real nouns, unlike collective ones, do not, as a rule, have suffixes to denote a real value. It is expressed only lexically.

Usually, real nouns are used either only in the singular, or in the plural: cream, perfume, yeast; Tin, flour, tea, honey . The real noun, which is usually used in the singular, taking the plural form, is lexically separated from the corresponding form: groats (crushed or whole grain of plants), but groats (cereals).

Abstract (abstract) and specific nouns

Among the names are allocated such categories of nouns by value, as abstract and specific. Concrete - these are words that call facts, persons, things, phenomena of reality, which can be accounted for and presented separately: war, duel, engineer, ring, pencil.
This lexico-grammatical category of nouns, in other words, represents single objects and their plural forms.

With the exception of names that do not have a singular (pluralia tantum), all concrete nouns have the forms of the plural and singular. According to morphological features, specific nouns are not only opposed to abstract ones. They are also opposed by material and collective categories of nouns, pluralia tantum; And their meanings are also different.

Abstract (abstract) - words that denote abstract concepts, qualities, properties, states and actions: movement, running, dexterity, intimacy, kindness, captivity, good, laughter, glory . Most of them are substantives motivated by verbs and adjectives, formed with the help of the zero suffix ( substitution, removal, ill, bitterness ), suffix -ess ( cowardice, beauty ), (o) ( majority, insignificance, boastfulness, primacy ) , -chin (a) / -chin (a) ( piecework ), -isms ( humanism, realism ), -out (a) ( hoarseness, kindness, acid ) and others. The smaller part is composed of various unmotivated words: essence, sadness, comfort, grief, passion, sadness, torment, fear, disposition, mind, misfortune.

Usually there are no plural forms for abstract nouns.

Animate and inanimate nouns

Nouns are divided into two categories: animate and inanimate. Animate - the names of animals and people: an insect, a pike, a starling, a cat, a student, a teacher, a son, a person.

Inanimate - the names of all other phenomena and objects: book, table, wall, window, nature, institute, steppe, forest, kindness, depth, trip, movement, incident .

These words have a different role and significance. Ranks of nouns in importance have their own specific features. Animate is often word-forming and morphologically distinct from inanimate. These are the names of different persons, as well as female animals, which are often motivated by a word that refers to an animal or person with no gender or male: student-student, teacher-teacher, schoolboy-schoolgirl, grandson-granddaughter, Muscovite-Muscovite, lion A cat, a cat, etc.

As a rule, animate nouns have a morphological meaning of the feminine or masculine gender, and only a few are of an average, while the semantically belonging to this or that kind of noun is defined (except for the middle, which are called living beings, regardless of sex : the name of a non-adult person (child ), or Name of a creature, a person, an insect, a mammal, an animal ). Inanimate nouns are distributed over three morphological genera - middle, female and masculine.

Paradigms of inanimate and animate nouns

Paradigms of inanimate and animate are consistently different in the plural: the animate have in it a form of accusative, coinciding with the genitive. Example: there are no animals, no sisters and brothers (RP), saw animals, saw sisters and brothers (V.P). Nouns inanimate in the plural have the accusative case, which coincides with the nominative. Example: on the table are apples, pears and peaches (I.p.); Bought apples, pears and peaches (V.p.).

We have considered the noun as part of speech, the ranks of nouns. I hope this article has been useful to you. If the information is not enough, we recommend you familiarize yourself with the works that were written on this topic by Kochanova ON. The numbers of nouns are treated in detail in its articles.