samely." In some other languages, like Czech, however there are adverbs corresponding to "Samely." Hence, in Czech, the translation of the last sentence would be fine; however, it would mean that John and Bill fought in the same way : not that they participated in the same fight . Geach proposed that we could explain this, if nouns denote logical predicate with
identity criteria . An identity criterion would allow us to conclude, for example, that "Person x at time 1 is the same person as person y at time 2." Different nouns can have different identity criteria. A well known example of this is due to Gupta:
National Airlines transported 2 million passengers in 1979. p> National Airlines transported (at least) 2 million persons in 1979. p> Given that, in general, all passengers are persons, the last sentence above ought to follow logically from the first one. But it doesn't. It is easy to imagine, for example, that on average, every person who travelled with National Airlines in 1979, travelled with them twice. In that case, one would say that the airline transported 2 million passengers but only 1 million persons . Thus, the way that we count passengers isn't necessarily the same as the way that we count persons . Put somewhat differently: At two different times, you may correspond to two distinct passengers , even though you are one and the same person. For a precise definition of identity criteria , see Gupta.
Recently, the linguist Mark Baker has proposed that Geach's definition of nouns in terms of identity criteria allows us to explain the characteristic properties of nouns. He argues that nouns can co-occur with (In-) definite articles and numerals, and are "prototypically referential " because they are all and only those parts of speech that provide identity criteria. Baker's proposals are quite new, and linguists are still evaluating them.
Classification of nouns in English
В
Proper nouns and common nouns
Proper nouns (also called proper names) are the names of unique entities. For example, "Janet", "Jupiter" and "Germany" are proper nouns. Proper nouns are usually capitalized in English and most other languages ​​that use the Latin alphabet, and this is one easy way to recognise them. However, in German nouns of all types are capitalized. The convention of capitalizing all nouns was previously used in English, but has long fallen into disuse.
All other nouns are called common nouns. For example, "Girl", "planet", and "country" are common nouns. p> Sometimes the same word can function as both a common noun and a proper noun, where one such entity is special. For example: "There can be many gods, but there is only one God. "This is somewhat magnified in Hebrew where EL means god (as in a god), God (as in the God), and El (the name of a particular Canaanite god).
The common meaning of the word or words constituting a proper noun may be unrelated to the object to which the proper noun refers. For example, someone might be named "Tiger Smith" despite being neither a tiger nor a smith. For this reason, proper nouns are usually not translated between languages, although they may be transliterated. For example, the German surname Knödel becomes Knodel or Knoedel in English (Not the literal Dumpling). However, the translation of placenames and the names of monarchs, popes, and non-contemporary authors is common and sometimes universal. For instance, the Portuguese word Lisboa becomes Lisbon in English; the English London becomes Londres in French; and the Greek Aristotelēs becomes Aristotle in English.
В
Count nouns and mass nouns
В
Count nouns (or countable nouns ) are common nouns that can take a plural, can combine with numerals or quantifiers (eg "one", "two", "several", "Every", "most"), and can take an indefinite article ("A" or "an"). Examples of count nouns are "Chair", "nose", and "occasion". p> Mass nouns (or non-countable nouns ) differ from count nouns in precisely that respect: they can't take plural or combine with number words or quantifiers. Examples from English include "Laughter", "cutlery", "helium", and "Furniture". For example, it is not possible to refer to "a furniture "or" three furnitures ". This is true, even though the furniture referred to could, in principle, be counted. Thus the distinction between mass and count nouns shouldn't be made in terms of what sorts of things the nouns refer to, but rather in terms of how the nouns present these entities. The separate page for mass noun contains further explanation of this point.
Some words function in the singular as a count noun and, without a change in the spelling, as a mass noun in the plural: she caught ...
