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Common nouns may be divided into count nouns and non-count nouns. English nouns typically have both count and non-count senses, though for a given noun one sense typically dominates. For example, apple is usually countable ( two apples ), but it also has a non-count sense (e.g., this pie is full of apple ).
A proper noun (sometimes called a proper name, though the two terms normally have different meanings) is a noun that represents a unique entity (India, Pegasus, Jupiter, Confucius, Pequod) – as distinguished from common nouns (or appellative nouns), which describe a class of entities (country, animal, planet, person, ship). [11]
Common feminine suffixes used in English names are -a, of Latin or Romance origin (cf. Robert and Roberta); and -e, of French origin (cf. Justin and Justine). Although gender inflection may be used to construct nouns and names for people of different sexes in languages that have grammatical gender, this alone does not constitute grammatical gender.
Like common nouns that are derived or associated with proper names (a few are mentioned above), adjectives, verbs, and adverbs derived from proper names are not themselves proper names, but they are normally still capitalized in English (though not in many other languages): Dickensian and Balkan (adjectives), Balkanize (verb), Trumpishly (adverb).
In principle, animals are triple-gender nouns, being able to take masculine, feminine and neuter pronouns. However, animals viewed as less important to humans, also known as ‘lower animals’, are generally referred to using it; higher (domestic) animals may more often be referred to using he and she, when their sex is known. [14]
Many common suffixes form nouns from other nouns or from other types of words, such as -age (shrinkage), -hood (sisterhood), and so on, [3] though many nouns are base forms containing no such suffix (cat, grass, France). Nouns are also created by converting verbs and adjectives, as with the words talk and reading (a boring talk, the assigned ...
The English pronouns form a relatively small category of words in Modern English whose primary semantic function is that of a pro-form for a noun phrase. [1] Traditional grammars consider them to be a distinct part of speech, while most modern grammars see them as a subcategory of noun, contrasting with common and proper nouns.
The classifiers used here are 位 (pinyin wèi), used (among other things) with nouns for humans; 棵 kē, used with nouns for trees; 只/隻 (zhī), used with nouns for certain animals, including birds; and 条/條 (tiáo), used with nouns for certain long flexible objects.