Nouns Flashcards
What are nouns? (Generally)
Usually a person, place, thing or idea
What is a noun phrase?
A noun and all words describing it
What are exceptions to general nouns?
Nouns can be actions: destruction, assassination
Or descriptions: sincerity
What are the two most important roles of nouns?
Subject and Objext
In English, what are some properties of Subjects?
Subject controls agreement
Subject comes before verbs
Subjects have nominative case for pronouns (I like her/She likes me)
Explain the relationship between nouns and gender
In some languages, nouns are categorised by gender
-assignment may or may not have a semantic relationship with semantic properties of the word
Spanish: -o=masculine/-a=feminine
What are the two common distinctions of possession?
Alienable - things not attached to your body/can be lost (pen/gun)
Unalienable - things attached to you (body parts)
In some languages, family is classed as this
Give an example of a language that distinguish possession with morphemes
Jarawara
kaa taokana = ?’s gun (POSS gun
teme = ?’s foot (foot.M)
What is case? How does it affect word order
How subject/object is marked, usually with nom/acc morphemes
Word order can therefore vary as grammatical relations of the NP are indicated
What are the different types of definitives?
Definite (the) and indefinite (a/an)
What is the relationship between nouns and determiners?
Nouns come after determiners
Give examples of determiners
this, that, some, every, some, much, any, all
