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A proper noun is a noun that identifies a single entity and is used to refer to that entity (Africa; Jupiter; Sarah; Walmart) as distinguished from a common noun, which is a noun that refers to a class of entities (continent, planet, person, corporation) and may be used when referring to instances of a specific class (a continent, another planet, these persons, our corporation).
Thus, Zealand, for example, is a proper noun, but New Zealand, though a proper name, is not a proper noun. [4] Unlike some common nouns, proper nouns do not typically show number contrast in English. Most proper nouns in English are singular and lack a plural form, though some may instead be plural and lack a singular form.
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]
Nouns are sometimes classified semantically (by their meanings) as proper and common nouns (Cyrus, China vs frog, milk) or as concrete and abstract nouns (book, laptop vs embarrassment, prejudice). [4] A grammatical distinction is often made between count (countable) nouns such as clock and city, and non-count (uncountable) nouns such as milk ...
The meaning of the noun used for a common name may have been lost or forgotten (whelk, elm, lion, shark, pig) but when the common name is extended to two or more words much more is conveyed about the organism's use, appearance or other special properties (sting ray, poison apple, giant stinking hogweed, hammerhead shark).
A proper name in linguistics – and in the specific sense employed at Wikipedia – is normally a kind of noun phrase. That is, it has a noun or perhaps another noun phrase as its core component (or head), and perhaps one or more modifiers. Most proper names have a proper noun as their head: Old Trafford; Bloody Mary.
The articles in English are the definite article the and the indefinite articles a and an.They are the two most common determiners.The definite article is the default determiner when the speaker believes that the listener knows the identity of a common noun's referent (because it is obvious, because it is common knowledge, or because it was mentioned in the same sentence or an earlier sentence).
The possessive form of an English noun, or more generally a noun phrase, is made by suffixing a morpheme which is represented orthographically as ' s (the letter s preceded by an apostrophe), and is pronounced in the same way as the regular English plural ending (e)s: namely, as / ɪ z / when following a sibilant sound (/ s /, / z /, / ʃ /, / ʒ /, / tʃ / or / dʒ /), as / s / when following ...