英语专业语法书答案Lecture 4 Noun and Noun__ Phrase.docVIP

Lecture 4 Noun and Noun Phrase As has been pointed out, the noun phrase is a phrase with a noun as its head. It is the noun head that determines the way the noun phrase is organized. 4.1 Classification of nouns Nouns can be classified according to word formation, lexical meaning and grammatical form. I) Simple, compound and derivative nouns According to word formation, nouns can be divided into simple, compound and derivative nouns. A simple noun is a noun that contains only one free morpheme (eg: man, chair, land, faith). A compound noun is a noun that is composed of two or more morphemes (mostly free morphemes) (eg: armchair, farmland, seaside, roommate). A derivative noun is a noun that comes from a verb, an adjective or a simple noun with affix (eg: arrangement, greatness, patriotism). 2) Proper and common nouns According to lexical meaning, nouns fall into two major categories: proper nouns and common nouns. A proper noun is a name used for a particular person, place or thing, and spelt with a capital letter, (eg: Anderson, Britain, New York Times). A common noun is a noun common to a class of people, things or abstract ideas. Common nouns can be further classified into individual, co1lective, material, and abstract nouns (eg: boy, tiger, family, team, water, air, honesty, glory). 3) Count and noncount nouns According to grammatical form, nouns can be divided into two classes: count nouns and noncount nouns. A count noun (or countable noun) is a noun that has a plural and which can collocate with numbers and with such determiners as a(n), many, few, these, those, several, etc (eg: a car, two cars, many cars, several cars),. A noncount noun (or uncountable noun) is a noun that cannot go with the above-mentioned words (eg: bread, furniture, merchandise) . 4.2 Number forms of: nouns NUMBER is a grammatical category that indicates the change in the form of nouns and verbs, depending on whether one or more than one is talked about. Some English nouns have singul