What is a noun and where is it used? Proper nouns: examples. Nouns - proper and common nouns

Noun - This is the most essential part of speech; in grammar it is considered frequently occurring.

All schoolchildren need to know about it in order to correctly complete tasks both in the Unified State Exam and in the State Examination. In particular, in the 11th grade exam there is a task in which you need to choose the correct form of a noun. This collection will also help you make a morphological analysis of any noun.

DEFINITION: noun is a part of speech that stands forITEM and answers questions WHO? or WHAT?

Proper and common noun

• OWN nouns mean - first names, last names, patronymics, names of animals, geographical names, names of books, newspapers, magazines ( Moscow, Volga, Maria, Kashtanka, Alexey Maksimovich).
• DENOMINAL nouns - the name of objects and phenomena ( student, textbook, country, forest, dog).

Animated and inanimate

• ANIMATE nouns answer the question WHO? and call people and animals ( teacher, schoolboy, sister, cat, bird).
• INANIMATE nouns answer the question WHAT? and call inanimate objects ( cloud, forest, water, notebook, bus).

Number of nouns

• THE ONLY THING number - denotes one item ( letter, child). Some nouns are used only in the singular ( milk, kindness, Kaluga, singing, youth, France).
• PLURAL number - denotes several items ( letters, children). Some nouns are used only in the plural ( glasses, sleigh, name day, scissors, gates, Alps).

Gender of noun

GENUS- a constant attribute of a noun. Nouns do not change by gender.

• MALE- he is mine ( horse, car).
• FEMALE- She is mine ( rye, earth).
• AVERAGE- it's mine ( village, ring).

RULE: to determine the gender of a noun, you need to put this noun in the initial form: with balls - ball (m. r.), on the ground - earth (f. r.), by the sea - sea (m. r.).

• COMMON GENDER- he, mine, this/she, my, this ( crybaby, orphan).

Spelling "Soft sign (b)after the hissing ones at the endnouns"

• It is written- in the feminine gender ( mouse, rye, oven, lie, power).
• Not written- in the masculine gender ( garage, reeds, comrade, borscht).

A soft sign after a sibilant at the end of a noun indicates that the noun is feminine..

Declension of a noun

DECLINATION OF NOUNS- this is a change of words according to cases. Case is determined by questions.

Cases and questions:

To make it easier to remember case questions, you can substitute auxiliary words.

• Nominative case (is) who? What?
• Genitive case (no) whom? what?
• Dative case (I give, glad) to whom? what?
• Accusative case (I see) whom? What?
• Instrumental case (satisfied, admiring) who? how?
• Prepositional case (think, talk) about whom? about what?

RULE: To determine the case of a noun, you need to find the word with which this noun is connected in meaning and pose a case question from it.
EXAMPLE: The old man was catching fish with a seine. (A.S. Pushkin)

Caught (with what?) with a seine (T. p.); caught (who?) fish (V.p.).

INITIAL FORM OF THE NOUN- nominative singular form ( always determined in morphological analysis).

Three declensions of nouns

In Russian, nouns that have the same endings in the same cases are divided into three groups - DECLINATIONS.

• TO 1st declension names include feminine nouns And male with endings -A, -I in the nominative singular (ruler, earth, mom, dad, uncle).
• Co. 2nd declension names include masculine nouns ending in zero And neuter with endings -O, -E in the nominative singular ( lesson, day, mirror, field).
• TO 3rd declension relate feminine nouns ending in zero in the nominative singular case and ending with a soft sign (blizzard, carrot, thing, daughter).

RULE: to determine the declension of a noun in the plural, you need to put this noun in the initial form, determine its gender and highlight the ending.

SPELLING “The letters E and I in the case endings of nouns”

To correctly write the unstressed case ending of a noun, you need:
1. Determine case.
2. Determine the declination.
3. Remember the ending of the nouns of this declension in the required case: letter (to whom?) to grandmother (1st letter, D. p., singular, -e); ride (what?) on a bicycle (2nd class, pp., singular, -e).
4. Check the unstressed case ending with the stressed ending of a noun of the same declension: thinking about the Motherland (land); trees in frost (in silver); I saw in an ice hole (in the steppe).

SPELLING “The letters O and E after sibilants and C in the endings of nouns”

After hissing And C at the endings of nouns in the instrumental case, a vowel is written under stress ABOUT, and without stress - a vowel E: The doctor is the task, the chick is the bird.

Morphological analysis

1. Part of speech. What does it mean, what question does it answer.
2. Initial form (nominative singular).
3. Immutable characteristics: animate or inanimate; proper or common noun; gender (masculine, feminine, neuter); declination (1,2,3).
4. Changeable: case, number.
4. Role in the sentence.

Each person uses several hundred nouns in his speech every day. However, not everyone will be able to answer the question of which category this or that word belongs to: proper names or common nouns, and whether there is a difference between them. Meanwhile, not only written literacy depends on this simple knowledge, but also the ability to correctly understand what is read, because often, only by reading a word, you can understand whether it is a name or just the name of a thing.

What is this

Before you figure out which nouns are called proper nouns and which are common nouns, it’s worth remembering what they are.

Nouns are words that answer the questions “What?”, “Who?” and denoting the name of things or persons (“table”, “person”), they change according to declensions, genders, numbers and cases. In addition, words related to this part of speech are proper/common nouns.

Concept about and own

Apart from rare exceptions, all nouns belong to the category of either proper or common nouns.

Common nouns include the summarized names of homogeneous things or phenomena that may differ from each other in some ways, but will still be called one word. For example, the noun “toy” is a common noun, although it generalizes the names of different objects: cars, dolls, bears and other things from this group. In Russian, as in most other languages, common nouns are always written with a small letter.

Ethnonyms

As mentioned above, nouns can be proper and common nouns. So far, linguists have not yet come to a consensus on the issue of the connection between these two categories. There are two common views on this issue: according to one, there is a clear dividing line between common and proper nouns; according to another, the dividing line between these categories is not absolute due to the frequent transition of nouns from one category to another. Therefore, there are so-called “intermediate” words that do not relate to either proper or common nouns, although they have characteristics of both categories. Such nouns include ethnonyms - words meaning the names of peoples, nationalities, tribes and other similar concepts.

Common nouns: examples and types

The vocabulary of the Russian language contains the most common nouns. All of them are usually divided into four types.

1. Specific - denote objects or phenomena that can be counted (people, birds and animals, flowers). For example: “adult”, “child”, “thrush”, “shark”, “ash”, “violet”. Specific common nouns almost always have a plural and singular form and are combined with quantitative numerals: “an adult - two adults”, “one violet - five violets”.

2. Abstract - denote concepts, feelings, objects that cannot be counted: “love”, “health”, “intelligence”. Most often, this type of common noun is used only in the singular. If, for one reason or another, a noun of this type acquires a plural form (“fear - fears”), it loses its abstract meaning.

3. Real - denote substances that are homogeneous in composition and do not have separate objects: chemical elements (mercury), food (pasta), medicines (citramon) and other similar concepts. Real nouns cannot be counted, but they can be measured (a kilogram of pasta). Words of this type of common noun have only one form of number: either plural or singular: “oxygen” is singular, “cream” is plural.

4. Collective nouns mean a collection of similar objects or persons, as a single, indivisible whole: “brotherhood”, “humanity”. Nouns of this type cannot be counted and are used only in the singular form. However, with them you can use the words “a little”, “several”, “few” and similar ones: a lot of children, a lot of infantry and others.

Proper nouns: examples and types

Depending on the lexical meaning, the following types of proper nouns are distinguished:

1. Anthroponyms - first names, surnames, pseudonyms, nicknames and nicknames of people: Vasilyeva Anastasia,
2. Theonyms - names and titles of deities: Zeus, Buddha.
3. Zoonyms - nicknames and nicknames of animals: the dog Barbos, the cat Marie.
4. All types of toponyms - geographical names, cities (Volgograd), reservoirs (Baikal), streets (Pushkin) and so on.
5. Aeronautonim - the name of various space and aircraft: the Vostok spacecraft, the Mir interorbital station.
6. Names of works of art, literature, cinema, television programs: “Mona Lisa”, “Crime and Punishment”, “Vertical”, “Jumble”.
7. Names of organizations, websites, brands: “Oxford”, “Vkontakte”, “Milavitsa”.
8. Names of holidays and other social events: Christmas, Independence Day.
9. Names of unique natural phenomena: Hurricane Isabel.
10. Names of unique buildings and objects: Rodina cinema, Olimpiysky sports complex.

Transition of proper into common nouns and vice versa

Since language is not something abstract and is constantly influenced by both external and internal factors, words often change their category: proper nouns become common nouns, and common nouns become proper nouns. Examples of this occur quite often. So the natural phenomenon “frost” - from a common noun turned into a proper noun, the surname Moroz. The process of turning common nouns into proper ones is called onymization.

At the same time, the name of the famous German physicist who was the first to discover X-ray radiation, in the colloquial speech of the Russian language has long turned into the name of the study of something using the “X-ray” radiation he discovered. This process is called appeal, and such words are called eponyms.

How to distinguish

In addition to semantic differences, there are also grammatical ones that allow one to clearly distinguish between proper and common nouns. The Russian language is quite practical in this regard. The category of common nouns, unlike proper nouns, as a rule, has both plural and singular forms: “artist - artists.”

At the same time, another category is almost always used only in the singular: Picasso is the artist’s surname, singular. However, there are exceptions when proper nouns can be used in the plural. Examples of this are names originally used in the plural: the village of Bolshiye Kabany. In this case, these proper nouns are often deprived of the singular: Carpathian mountains.
Sometimes proper names can be used in the plural if they denote different persons or phenomena, but with identical names. For example: There are three Xenias in our class.

How do you spell

If with the writing of common nouns everything is quite simple: they are all written with a small letter, and otherwise you should adhere to the usual rules of the Russian language, then the other category has some nuances that you need to know in order to correctly write proper nouns. Examples of incorrect spelling can often be found not only in the notebooks of careless schoolchildren, but also in the documents of adults and respectable people.

To avoid such mistakes, you should learn a few simple rules:

1. All proper names, without exception, are written with capital letters, especially when it comes to the nicknames of legendary heroes: Richard the Lionheart. If a given name, surname or place name consists of two or more nouns, regardless of whether they are written separately or hyphenated, each of these words must begin with a capital letter. An interesting example is the nickname of the main villain of the Harry Potter epic - the Dark Lord. Afraid to call him by name, the heroes called the evil wizard “He Who Must Not Be Named.” In this case, all 4 words are written in capital letters, since this is the character's nickname.

2. If the name or title contains articles, particles and other auxiliary particles of speech, they are written with a small letter: Albrecht von Graefe, Leonardo da Vinci, but Leonardo DiCaprio. In the second example, the particle “di” is written with a capital letter, since in the original language it is written together with the surname Leonardo DiCaprio. This principle applies to many proper names of foreign origin. In eastern names, the particles “bey”, “zul”, “zade”, “pasha”, and the like indicating social status, regardless of whether they appear in the middle of the word or are written at the end with a small letter. The same principle applies to writing proper names with particles in other languages. German “von”, “zu”, “auf”; Spanish "de" Dutch “van”, “ter”; French “deux”, “du”, “de la”.

3. The particles “San-”, “Saint-”, “Saint-”, “Ben-” located at the beginning of a surname of foreign origin are written with a capital letter and a hyphen (Saint-Gemain); after O, there is always an apostrophe and the next letter is capital (O’Henry). The part “Mc-” should be written as a hyphen, but it is often written together because the spelling is closer to the original: McKinley, but McLain.

Once you understand this rather simple topic (what a noun is, types of nouns and examples), you can once and for all rid yourself of stupid, but rather unpleasant spelling errors and the need to constantly look in the dictionary to check yourself.

A noun is a very important and numerous part of speech. It is no coincidence that schoolchildren begin to study morphology with a noun.

There is an assumption that nouns were the first words of the human language when it was still in its infancy.

A noun is a part of speech that designates an object. In linguistics, the term “object” refers to the widest range of phenomena.

This may be the actual object, a being, a phenomenon of nature or social life, a state, an abstract concept, etc.

Nouns are an extremely diverse and numerous part of speech. But recognizing a noun is quite simple, since all words related to this part of speech answer the questions “Who?” or “What?”

To demonstrate how diverse nouns can be in our language, here are some examples:

Words denoting the actual subject, thing, object ( table, cabinet, computer, wall, toy ).

Creature. This group includes:

- words that name a person ( man, woman, youth, old man );

- animals ( cat, bear );

- professions ( scientist, tractor driver, doctor );

- fictional creatures ( alien, centaur ).


Phenomena of nature and social life ( snowfall, frost, revolution ).

Names of substances and substances ( water, metal, jam ).

Names of abstract features, actions, states expressed in objective form ( beauty, construction, thirst );

Names of abstract concepts ( word, volume, form ).

Nouns have a number of grammatical categories.

Genus. In Russian, nouns are masculine ( knife, elk, boy ), female ( sister, village, station ) and average ( building, sun, child ) kind.

You can determine the gender of a noun by the gender of the word with which it is combined. For example:

My table. Bright felt-tip pen. (Masculine)

My book. A bright picture. (Feminine gender).

My village. A bright event. (Neuter gender).

In order to determine the gender of a noun, you need to put the word in the singular, since this category is not determined in the plural ( my tables - my books - my villages ).


A special group of nouns of the general gender is distinguished ( crybaby, orphan, sleepyhead ). The form of the word that is combined with such nouns in speech depends on the gender of the person they represent. For example: little crybaby (girl) – little crybaby (boy) .

Number. Nouns change according to number. For example:

singular, plural

car, cars

birch, birch trees

tree, trees

In the Russian language there are nouns that are used only in the singular ( milk, chalk, potatoes ) or only in the plural ( ink, railings, watches, trousers ).

Case. Nouns change by case. There are six cases in Russian: nominative (Who? What?), genitive (Whom? What?), dative (Whom? What?, accusative (Whom? What?), instrumental (Whom? What?) and prepositional (About whom ? About what?).

Changing a noun by cases and numbers is called declension. There are three types of noun declension. To determine declension, you need to put the word in the singular form of the nominative case.

To the first declension include masculine, feminine and common nouns ending in -a (-я). For example: soil, song, grandfather, uncle, bully .

To the second declension relate:

- masculine nouns with zero ending ( horse, slope, sanatorium ), ending in –o ( little house );

- neuter, ending in -o (-e) ( field, village, building ).

To the third declension include feminine nouns with a zero ending ( daughter, night, steppe ).

Diversified nouns differ in that in different forms they have case endings inherent in different declensions. This group includes 12 words: time, stirrup, burden. udder, crown, flame, tribe, seed, name, banner, child, path .


Nouns of the same declension have the same standard endings in the same case form. To write correctly, you must be able to correctly determine the declension of nouns.

And answering the question "who what". One of the main lexical categories; in sentences, the noun usually acts as the subject or object.

A noun names objects in the broad sense of the word; these are the names of things (table, wall, window, scissors, sleigh), persons (child, girl, youth, woman, man), substances (cereals, flour, sugar, cream), living beings and organisms (cat, dog, crow , woodpecker, snake, perch, pike; bacteria, virus, microbe), facts, events, phenomena (fire, performance, conversation, vacation, sadness, fear), as well as qualities, properties, actions, states (kindness, stupidity, blue , running, decision, hustle).

Common noun

Common nouns serve as a general name for a class of single items: article, house, computer etc.

Transition N. and. into proper names is accompanied by the loss of a linguistic concept by the name (for example, “Desna” from “desna” - “right”). N. and. There are concrete (table), abstract or abstract (love), real or material (sugar), and collective (students).

Proper name

Proper nouns serve as the name of a specific object, distinguished from a class of homogeneous ones: Ivan, America, Everest.

Grammar

A noun has a number of attributes (nominal classes), the number of which varies in different languages. Such attributes may be:

• Gender (masculine, feminine, neuter, there are also common nouns)
• Case (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, instrumental, prepositional)
• Number (singular, plural)
• Animation

The set of these characteristics defines the paradigm of inflection called declension.

All nouns have one of 3 declension: Nouns of the 1st declension - masculine and feminine nouns with a singular nominative case ending -a, -ya, for example, dad, mom, family. Nouns of the 2nd declension - masculine and neuter nouns with endings in the nominative singular: zero ending for the masculine gender and zero or -о, -е for the neuter gender, for example, window, dove, table. Nouns of the 3rd declension are feminine nouns that have a zero ending in the nominative singular form, for example, mouse, shawl, lie.

There are also nouns that are differently indeclinable, for example, nouns ending in -ia, such as army, nation, police; they do not obey the general rules of any of the declensions.

Coordination

with a transitive verb with the particle -not-

In the phrase “particle -not- + transitive verb + noun” the noun is always in the Genitive case.

see also

Literature

• A. Potebnya, “From notes on Russian grammar” (I)
• K. Brugmann, “Grundriss der vergl. Gram." (II, 429-462)
• Paul, “Prinzipien der Sprachgeschichte” ( , pp. 331-333).

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See what “Nouns” are in other dictionaries:

§ 078. CONSOLIDATED NOUNS- § 78. Written together: Complex nouns formed with connecting vowels, as well as all formations with aero, air, auto, moto, bicycle, cinema, photo, stereo, meteo, electro, hydro, agro, zoo, bio, micro, macro,... ...

ABSTRACT, oh, oh; ten, tna. Based on abstraction (in 1 value), abstract. Abstract concept. Abstract thinking. Ozhegov's explanatory dictionary. S.I. Ozhegov, N.Yu. Shvedova. 1949 1992 … Ozhegov's Explanatory Dictionary

REAL, oh, oh; vein, vein. Ozhegov's explanatory dictionary. S.I. Ozhegov, N.Yu. Shvedova. 1949 1992 … Ozhegov's Explanatory Dictionary

SPECIFIC, oh, oh; ten, tna. Really existing, completely accurate and materially defined, in contrast to the abstract, abstract. Specific concept. K. example. K. subject. To speak specifically (adv.). Ozhegov's explanatory dictionary. S.I. Ozhegov,... ... Ozhegov's Explanatory Dictionary

DISTRACTED, oh, oh; yong Ozhegov's explanatory dictionary. S.I. Ozhegov, N.Yu. Shvedova. 1949 1992 … Ozhegov's Explanatory Dictionary

§ 079. HYPHENED NOUNS- § 79. Written with a hyphen: Compound nouns that have the meaning of one word and consist of two independently used nouns, connected without the help of connecting vowels o and e, for example: a) firebird, battle woman, diesel... ... Russian spelling rules

See proper nouns (noun in the article) ... Dictionary of linguistic terms

See onomastics. Literature and language. Modern illustrated encyclopedia. M.: Rosman. Edited by prof. Gorkina A.P. 2006 ... Literary encyclopedia

The names of monarchs and nobility are one or more official (metric, titular, throne) and unofficial names or nicknames by which a person of a royal, princely or noble family could be known. Contents 1 Types of names 1.1 ... ... Wikipedia

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• Russian semantic dictionary. Volume 3. Nouns with abstract meaning. Being. Matter, space, time. Connections, relationships, dependencies. Spiritual world. The state of nature and man. Society , . The third volume of the "Russian Semantic Dictionary" contains a description of abstract nouns (words and meanings), grouped into hierarchically organized lexical-semantic...

Noun- a part of speech that denotes an object and answers the questions who? What? ( person, animal, youth, museum, Moscow, kindness, running, blue ) and has the categories of gender, number and case.

Initial form noun - nominative singular. Syntactic function me: in a sentence a noun can be any member of the proposal: both main - subject or predicate, and secondary - addition, definition or circumstance. But in the vast majority of cases, we find a noun in a sentence as a subject or object.

1. Common and proper nouns

Common nouns- nouns that are generalized names of homogeneous objects and phenomena ( sea, river, constellation, city, mountain, feeling etc.). These names are conceptual in nature, since they serve as the name not of a single specific object, but of all objects and phenomena of the same type. Common nouns are written with a lowercase (small) letter.

Names own- nouns denoting individual names of individual living beings, objects or phenomena and distinguishing it from a number of homogeneous ones (Yenisei, Strelets, Pamir, Ryazan, Marina Tsvetaeva, etc.). Proper names include surnames, first names and patronymics, pseudonyms and nicknames of people, names of animals; geographical, astronomical names; names of works of literature and art, newspapers, magazines; historical events, holidays, businesses, shops, cafes, etc.

Proper names can consist of several words ( Western Siberia, Andromeda Nebula ). In addition, they are invariant in number and have either a singular or plural form ( Sakhalin, Altai, Carpathians, Athens ).

The same words can be both common nouns and proper names: “ Maksim" (machine gun) - Maksim(Name), arrow(item) - Arrow(nickname). Proper names are written with a capital letter.

2. Animate and inanimate nouns

Animated nouns denote living beings (people, animals) and answer the question Who? For example: doctor, athlete, bear, crane.

Inanimate nouns denote the names of inanimate objects, phenomena, abstract concepts and answer the question What? For example: bicycle, textbook, evening, joy.

The division of nouns into animate and inanimate in language does not always coincide with the division of objects into living and inanimate in nature. For example, nouns people, team, detachment, crew denote a group of living beings (people), but in language they are inanimate, and vice versa: nouns deceased, dead man , denoting inanimate objects, are animate in the language.

U animate of nouns, the accusative plural form coincides with the genitive form. The rule also applies to singular masculine nouns.

U inanimate of nouns, the accusative plural form coincides with the nominative form. The rule also applies to singular masculine nouns.

3. Concrete and abstract nouns

Specific nouns denote real objects ( house, table, lamp ).

Abstract(abstract) nouns denote non-objective concepts - qualities, properties, actions or processes ( speed, agility, drawing ). As a rule, they do not have a plural.

4. Collective and singular nouns

Collective nouns denote a collection of homogeneous objects as a whole ( foliage, students ). They have a plural form.

Single nouns denote objects isolated from the totality ( straw, speck of dust, mote ).

5. Gender of nouns

Nouns belong to one of three genders only in the singular: male(lobby, tulle, rail, shampoo); female(veil, callus); average(meeting, jam, rugby, chassis). Nouns do not change by gender.

For unchangeable words of foreign language origin, gender is determined as follows:

• if a word denotes an inanimate object, it is neuter (popsicle, subway, interview); exceptions - coffee (masculine), avenue, kohlrabi (feminine);
• if a word denotes a female person, it is feminine (madam, lady, miss);
• if a word denotes males or animals, it is masculine (attaché, dandy, pony, cockatoo);
• if the word is a geographical name, its gender is determined by the gender of the common noun with which this name can be replaced: Colorado is feminine if it is a river, and masculine if it is a state; Sukhumi is masculine, as it is a city.

The gender of compound words is determined by the gender of the main word: MGU (Moscow State University) is masculine, since the main word university is masculine.

Common nouns are nouns with the ending -а (-я), denoting the qualities of people (bully, crybaby, slob, orphan). They are classified as masculine if they refer to males, or feminine if they refer to females. For example, Misha is an orphan; Lena is a known bully.

Some masculine nouns should not be confused with common nouns, which name persons by profession, position (doctor, lawyer, director, professor, dentist, etc.) and can also name both male and female persons. The verb with such a subject noun changes gender depending on the meaning, but the adjective with such a noun is used only in the masculine gender. Wed: The operation was performed by the famous doctor Ivanov; The operation was performed by the famous doctor Ivanova.

6. Number of nouns

Number- inflectional category of nouns. It is expressed by contrasting the singular and plural forms formed by the corresponding endings. These endings also carry meanings of a certain case and gender.

All nouns are divided into three categories: 1) those that can have both singular and plural forms; 2) those that have only a singular form; 3) those that have only a plural form.