Morphological composition of nouns.

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§ 4. Morphological composition of nouns.

According to their morphological composition we distinguish simple, derivative andcompound nouns.

1.Simple nouns are nouns which have neither prefixes nor suffixes. They are indecomposable: chair; table, room, map, fish, work.

2.Derivative nouns are nouns which have derivative elements (prefixes or suffixes or both): reader, sailor, blackness, childhood, mis­conduct, inexperience.

Productive noun-forming suffixes are:

-er: reader, teacher, worker

-ist: communist, telegraphist, dramatist

-ess: heiress, hostess, actress

-ness: carelessness, madness, blackness

-ism: socialism, nationalism, imperialism

Unproductive suffixes are:          

-hood: childhood, manhood

-dom: freedom

-ship: friendship, relationship

-merit: development

-ance: importance

-ence: dependence

-ty: cruelty

-ity: generosity

3.Compound nouns are nouns built from two or more stems. Com­pound nouns often have one stress. The meaning of a compound often differs from the meanings of its elements.

The main types of compound nouns are as follows:

а) noun-stem + noun-stem: appletree, snowball;

b)adjective-stem + noun-stem: blackbird, bluebell;

c)verb-stem + noun-stem: pickpocket; the stem of a gerund or of a participle may be the first component of a compound noun: dining- room, reading-hall, dancing-girl.

The class of compound nouns also includes phrasal compounds: forget-me-not, commander-in-chief

§ 5. Classification of nouns.

Nouns fall under two classes: (A)proper nouns; (B)commonnouns.¹

A. Proper nouns are individual names given to people or things. As regards their meaning proper nouns may be personal names {Mary, Peter; Shakespeare), geographical names (Moscow, London, the Caucasus), the names of the months and of the days of the week (February, Monday), names of ships, hotels, clubs etc.

¹ The name proper is from Lai. proprius 'one's own'. Hence aproper name means one's own individual name, as distinct from a common name, that can be given to a class of individuals. The name common is from Lat. communis and means that which is shared by several things or individuals possessing some common characteristic.

A large number of nouns now proper were originally common nouns (Brown, Smith, Mason).

Proper nouns may change their meaning and become common nouns:

George went over to the table and tooka sandwich and a glass ofchampagne. (Aldington)

B.Common nouns are names that can be applied to any individual of a class of people or things (e.g. man, dog, book), collections of similar individuals or things regarded as a single unit (e. g. peasantry, family), materials ^Ґ(e. g. snow, iron, cotton) or abstract notions (e. g. kindness, development).

Thus there are different groups of common nouns:class nouns, collective nouns, nouns ofmaterial andabstract nouns.

Nouns may also be classified from another point of view: nouns denoting things (the word thing is used in a broad sense) that can be counted are calledcountable nouns; nouns denoting things that cannot be counted are calleduncountable nouns.

1. Class nouns denote people or things belonging to a class. They are countables and have two numbers: singular and plural. They are generally used with an article.¹

"Well, sir," said Mrs. Parker,"I wasn't in theshop above a great deal." (Mansfield)

He goes to the part of the town where theshops are. (Lessing)

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