Nouns

Nouns are words that refer to people, places, things, or ideas. They function as the main anchors of noun phrases and can serve as the subject of a sentence, the object, or the complement, among other roles.

Nouns are commonly categorized as common or proper; common nouns name general items (city, woman, idea) while proper nouns name specific items and are capitalized (Paris, Maria). They can be countable or uncountable: count nouns have plural forms (book, books), while mass or noncount nouns refer to substances or qualities (water, sand, courage) and typically do not take a plural. Nouns also may be concrete (perceived by the senses) or abstract (freedom, intelligence). Collective nouns (team, committee) name a group considered as a single unit. Some languages have noun classes or gender; English nouns are largely gender-neutral.

Morphology and syntax: In English, nouns form plurals by adding -s or -es or through irregular changes (child/children). Possessives are formed with 's or with of-phrases: the girl's book, the color of the sky. Nouns pair with determiners (the, a, this, my) and may be modified by adjectives or other modifiers. In sentence syntax, nouns can function as subjects, objects of verbs, objects of prepositions, or complements. Noun phrases can include determiners, adjectives, numerals, and relative clauses.

Nominalization is the process of turning verbs or adjectives into nouns, such as decision or happiness, and is common in both speech and formal writing. In linguistics, nouns are a fundamental part of speech with properties and classes that vary across languages.