Content created: 2021-05-09
File last modified:
Grammar Terms
noun,
declension,
pronoun,
person,
number,
gender,
singular,
plural,
dual,
case
Noun
A noun is, in general, a word used to name a person, animal, place, thing, idea, or abstraction. Words like “house,” “Gerald,” “militarism,” “Connecticut,” and “hypochondria” are nouns. Nouns include “proper names” such as Rosalind and Romania as well as “common nouns” such as “spoon” and “bureaucracy.”
Obs.: English is unusual in distinguishing “mass nouns” (things which cannot be directly counted), such as food, work, or homeostasis, from “count nouns” (things which can be counted), such as dog, toenail, or hamburger. Only count nouns distinguish singular and plural. However many nouns can function both ways with a difference in meaning: “chocolate” ≠ “a chocolate.”
“We had lamb [for supper].” ≠ “We had a lamb [as a pet].”
Declension
A declension is noun category with a distinctive set of case endings in a language with several such categories.
If there is more than one set, the categories are usually numbered. For example, in Latin 1st declension nouns end with -a in the nominative case singular, whereas 2nd declension nouns end with -us.
Typically nouns and pronouns exhibit declension. Often articles and adjectives reflect the case of the nouns to which they refer. English nouns are not classed into declensions.
Obs.: In many ways, declension is to nouns what conjugation is to verbs.
Pronoun
A pronoun is used in a sentence to take the place of a noun. Words like “she,” “it,” and “myself” are pronouns.
Several kinds of pronouns are often distinguished, including the following:
- Interrogative pronouns (who, what)
- “What are you doing?”
- “Who’s at the door?”
- “What the hell do you think you are doing?!”
- Personal pronouns (I/me, we/us, he/him, she/her, you, it, them and formerly thou/thee and ye)
- Intensive pronouns (myself, ourselves, himself, herself, yourself, yourselves, itself, themselves and formerly thyself)
- “She herself could not go.”
- “I myself loath asparagus, but other people like it.”
- Reflexive pronouns (the same forms as the intensive pronouns)
- “He blamed himself, then he killed himself.”
- “I scratched myself on the rose bush.”
Obs.: In English reflexive and intensive pronouns are identical in form.
In principle, reflexive pronouns are used when the direct object or equivalent is the same as the subject:
- “The doctor operated on himself.”
- “The garden won’t weed itself.”
Obs.: In many European languages the reflexive is also used where English uses a passive: “The books were sold on Fridays.” comes out in Spanish as “Los libros se vendían los viernes.”
(In Esperanto a distinctive suffix does this job: La libroj vend-iĝ-is vendrede.)
Person
Person, both in verbs and in pronouns, is the quality of being the speaker (first person), the person (or people) spoken to (second person), or the thing or person(or people) spoken about (third person).
Obs.: Pronouns inevitably reflect person. In most European languages verb forms also change to show the person of the speaker. In English the person is reflected in the form of the verb only for the present tense third-person singular.
- “They (3rd person) never liked me (1st person).”
- “I (1st person) never liked them (3rd person) very much either.”
- “You (2nd person) should have seen her (3rd person).”
- “He (3rd person) washes his car (3rd person)regularly.”
- “He (3rd person) grew hoarse shouting, ‘hear ye, hear ye (2nd person).’”
Number
Number is the quality of being singular, plural, or in a few languages dual. In English, nouns and pronouns are always singular or plural. An occasional need for a dual is satisfied by adding the word “both.” English verbs are identified as singular only in the third-person and present tense and otherwise do not vary. (The verb be/was/been is slightly irregular.) However nouns always and pronouns nearly always are marked for number.
- “It (singular) is a rare voter (singular) who makes good choices (plural); most voters (plural) are fools (plural).”
- “This (singular) is for you both (singular; would be dual in some languages).”
- “You-all (plural) come back!”
- “I (singular) am not a fool(singular), and you (singular) are not a fool (singular), but they (plural) are fools (plural). He (singular) is the biggest fool (singular) of all.”
- “She (singular) wasn’t in class last week, and we (plural) weren’t either.”
- “Her sisters (plural) ate more than she (singular) ate, but he (singular) ate most of all.”
Obs.: Some languages (including Japanese and Chinese) do not mark number in nouns.
Singular
See number.
Plural
See number.
Dual
See number.
Gender
“Natural” gender is the quality of being biologically male/masculine, female/feminine, or neither/neuter (“He’s the tallest boy in the class.” “If it’d been a snake, it would have bitten you.”).
Obs.: Terms for most animals are neuter in English, although the pronoun “he” is not unusual as the default pronoun when anthropomorphizing them.
Obs.: In a few instances, English uses gender metaphorically (“She’s a beautiful ship.”)
Obs.: In English we have separate words for the two sexes of a small number of animals (cow vs bull, hen vs rooster/cock) or for the castrated animal (steer).
Obs.: In English, natural gender is directly reflected only in pronouns.
“Grammatical” gender is category to which a noun or pronoun belongs for purposes of “agreement” within a sentence. In principle grammatical gender is unrelated to natural gender. In languages with grammatical gender, every noun belongs to one gender category.
English lacks grammatical gender. In most European languages grammatical genders are masculine and feminine, and sometimes neuter or common (= masculine + feminine). In some languages there are far more grammatical genders. (Swahili has seven.)
For example, in French chemise (“shirt”) and photo (“photograph”) are feminine; livre (“book”) and musée (museum) are masculine.
In German, Gesundheit (“health”) is feminine; Becher (“cup”) is masculine. Mädchen (girl) and Trinkglas (“tumbler”) are neuter.
Obs.: Grammatical gender can conflict with natural gender, often requiring a specifying adjective. For example, in Italian a fly is called a mosca, which is a feminine noun. But to specify a the biological sex of a fly one must say mosca maschia “male fly,” with the adjective maschi-o/-a inflected to agree with the feminine noun. Since the feminine noun designates all flies, even specifying a female fly requires a qualifying adjective: mosca femmina.
Obs.: The grammatical gender of nouns can affect the anthropomorphization of them. The Western world probably represents philosophy as a goddess because the Greek filosophia (φιλοσοφία) “wisdom” is feminine in grammatical gender.
Case
Case is the form assumed by a noun or pronoun to reflect its role in a sentence. English nouns do not change form to show case, but personal pronouns do. (The he/him and who/whom distinctions are differences of case.)
European languages commonly modify (“inflect”) nouns or pronouns and any associated adjectives to show their case, but the number of such case categories varies widely.
Obs.: Often case relations are shown by prepositions combined with nouns.
For example, “He gave it (direct object, accusative case) to me (indirect object, dative case) for her (benefactive object, benefactive case if there is one) at school (locative object, locative case if there is one).”
Commonest cases in European languages are:
- Nominative/Subjective case, showing the actor or “subject” of a sentence.
- “The preacher sneezed violently into the microphone.”
- “Someone shouted ‘Hallelujah!’”
- “He wiped his nose.”
In English the nominative case pronouns are I, we, you, he, she, it, they, and formerly ye and thou.
- Accusative case, showing the recipient (“object,” “recipient,” or “patient”) of the action.
- “She licked the spoon.”
- “The thief stole my laptop.”
- “He punished them.”
In English nouns are not marked for case but personal pronouns are. The accusative pronouns are me, us, you, him, her, it, them, and formerly thee.
- Genitive case (“of”) , showing the possessor of something.
- “China’s population”
- “Mary’s literary efforts”
- “The king of Denmark’s crown”
- “His ears”
- “Its ugly cushions”
- “Their loud parties”
In English the genitive case pronouns are actually adjectives: my/mine, our/ours, you/yours, his, her/hers, its their/theirs.
- Dative case (“to”) , showing the person or thing to which action is directed.
- “My mother gave it to me.”
- “Don’t show it to her.”
- Benefactive case (“for”) , showing the person or thing for which action is undertaken.
- “My mother made it for me.”
- Instrumental case (“with”) , showing the means by which something is done.
- “He cut the bread with a knife.”
- “They invaded with tanks.”
- Locative (“at” “in”) , showing location.
- “In Rome”
- “At the Jakarta airport”
- Vocative case, a distinctive case used in directly addressing another person by name.
- Prepositional case, a Slavic form used only to follow selected prepositions.
- Ablative case, a Latin case of very broad application combining locative, instrumental, benefactive, and prepositional qualities.
Return to top.