Substantive is word class what names beings and everything around people. Due to this function and the amplitude of its occurrence, these terms can be divided into common and proper, the first designates the generality and the second presents individual elements. Can be distinguished by their appearance. primitive or derivative, being that the base word and this the one that originates from it. They can also be broken down by their settings. simple or compound, that is, that they have a word or several. Finally, they can have a content concrete, that is, an existence of its own, or a character abstract, relating to feelings, sensations, qualities and states.
It is important to note that because it is a variable word class, nouns are inflected according to gender (male and female), number (singular and plural) and degree (diminutive and augmentative).
Read more: Nominal agreement - process in which nominal classes have the same number and gender
What is a noun?
Noun is a grammatical class whose function is, roughly,
name beings in general. Although this concept is present in several places, its incompleteness must be emphasized, considering that the noun may also be responsible for name actions (hug, kick), postulatesphysicists (inertia), aspectsemotional and psychological (cowardice, schizophrenia, anxiety, love, hate) elementssociocultural (poverty, intelligence), among others.These characteristics are not the only ones that differentiate the noun from other grammatical classes, such as adjectives and pronouns. Therefore, his identification, in addition to depending on the criterion semantic mentioned (attributing words and meanings to the experiences we have lived), requires the observation of the criterion morphological, that is, the forms and processes of common constitution of substantive terms, and of syntactic, that is, related to the position and combination of these words within a prayer or phrase.
In this way, nouns can be defined as naming things; having their smaller units (stems — parts of words that carry the central idea — and affixes — elements that complement the stem) confronted with others in the same grammatical category; and, finally, exercise the functions of subject and direct object of prayers, including their informative nucleus.
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classification of nouns
Common nouns and proper nouns
O common noun is responsible for name the generality of beings of the same species, abstract elements, objects and phenomena of nature, that is, its function is to identify what is present in the life and imagination of those gifted with language, but without individualizing these constituents of human experience.
Examples
Zebra (animal of a certain class)
love (abstract feeling)
fork (object)
Rain (phenomenon of nature)
If the common noun designates a whole, thesubstantive own applyif to singular, as noted below:
Examples
Japan (specific country, there is no other);
João (despite being the name of many people, one has to think of someone in a contextualized way, that is, someone who is immersed in a given universe and, therefore, becomes particular);
Brasil Escola (only one site holds this title).
Observation:It is important to pay attention to the use of nouns, because, depending on the situation and intention of the speaker, that is, of the person who transmits information, a word taken as common can actually be its own, just as one itself can carry a common sense.
Marlene and I had a lot of fun at Viola de Prata.
Note that both viola and silver are usually common nouns, as the former names a type of musical instrument and the latter identifies a kind of ore, but in context, Viola de Prata is a certain nightclub, therefore, a unique place, which must be identified by the use of a proper noun.
It's not Vietnam, but it's war.
Although Vietnam is a specific country, in situation Previously, the term is not used to identify the nation, but to present the meaning of any war whose duration was extensive, that is, it is one more among many armed conflicts, appearing, in this way, as a noun ordinary.
Observation:You collective nouns, that is, the words that convey the idea of a group of beings or a meeting of entities are common nouns, since they do not individualize the elements, they just consider them as an indistinct mass.
Examples
Archipelago: nearby islands with common characteristics
School: grouping of fish
Vocabulary: words of the same language
Swarm: many bees in the same place
Herd: set of animals of the same species with similar behavior
Tableware: Various kitchen items such as cookware
Ream: 500 sheets of paper
See too: Different meanings of some collectives
Primitive nouns and derived nouns
You primitive nouns are composed of words that do not originated from others present in the same language.
Examples
War
City
Road
Orange
already the nounsderivatives, as the name announces, are words that proofêm of others, where the original term can be:
→ Substantive: witch, which originates witchcraft;
→ Adjective (grammatical class whose function is to characterize, evidence qualities or states of beings): famous, which creates celebrity;
→ Verb (expresses an action, a state or a phenomenon situated in time): marry, which generates marriage.
Note that the formation of derived nouns it depends on the placement of prefixes (morphemes that are placed before the stem, that is, parts of words that add information to the main idea, for example, hypertension — excess tension) and suffixes (morphemes that follow the stem, such as p.bigo — big foot) in primitive words, in order to create terms that help in the linguistic economy in certain syntactic constructions.
See this phenomenon below:
Maria said her mother had gone to the stationery store.
Maria said that her mother had gone to the place where paper is sold.
Simple nouns and compound nouns
You simple nouns are made up of only one rootl (part of the word that bears its main meaning).
Example
O monthary did not attend the elections.
→ Radical
→ Suffix (profession/function)
You nounscompounds, although they also present a unit of meaning, has more than one radical in its one structure. In view of this, formally, they can appear as one word.
Examples
hobby (joke)
whirlpool (water-based massage)
They can also appear with two or more terms, separated or not by a hyphen.
Examples
silkworm (specific insect)
hot dog (type of food)
Our Lady (mother of Jesus)
Also access: Hyphen - what has changed?
Concrete nouns and abstract nouns
You concrete nouns name self-existing beings, that is, independent figures that are part of a real or imaginary universe.
Examples
Werewolf (imaginary entity)
Pencil (object)
Andrea (person)
Goiânia (city)
National Congress (institution)
You abstract nouns designate qualities, actions, feelings, states, sensations. It appears, therefore, that the existence of these elements is conditioned to a concrete or imaginary being that evidences or experiences them. In addition, it presupposes the maintenance of their universal character, that is, their appearance in different places and situations.
Examples
Avarice, slowness (qualities)
Loneliness, hate (feelings)
Old age, youth, happiness (states)
Burning, comfort (feelings)
In addition to distinguishing nouns through semantic analysis, they can be differentiated fur morphological aspect, considering that there are formal regularities present in the words. In this way, certain suffixes, such as -dade, -ez, -eza, -ura, -ia, -dao, -icie, can give rise to abstract nouns derived from adjectives.
Examples
evil → evil
petty → petty
raw → raw
candid → candid
courteous → courtesy
filthy → filth
Also the presence of the suffixes -ção, -são, -ance, -ência, -ança, -ênça can indicate the verbal inheritance of abstract nouns.
Examples
detain → detain
confuse → confusion
ignore → ignorance
live → experience
govern → governance
believe → belief
It is important to note that the classification of a noun in concrete and abstract does not exempt the attention to the phrasal context in which it is inserted. Therefore, especially in literary texts, there is the possibility of inverting the category, thus establishing a figure of speech called metonymy (exchange of one term for another, as long as there is contiguity between them with regard to Meanings).
Example
When I look back on my wrinkle-free skin, I realize how immature it was.
For the previous period, it is easy to understand that the expression “skin without wrinkles” refers to the abstract noun “youth”.
Gender inflection of nouns
Gender inflection concerns the ability of the word to assume a face female, marked, among other ways, by the use of both the article (word that precedes the noun in order to specify it) definite “a” and of the indefinite article “an”; or present an aspect masculine, which can be marked in the same way, through the use of “o” and “one”.
Therefore, the same noun can transit between the male and female, characteristic that leads it to be classified as biform.
Examples
Man Woman
horse/mare
worker/worker
However, this is not the only configuration of nouns, as there are those that have just one way of to be writervery or spoken and, as a result, adopt only one gender, although they can embrace male and female beings. These words are taken as uniforms.
Examples
People
Victim
Cas
Semantic change due to gender change
There are some nouns that can take on one meaning or another, depending on the gender used.
Examples
The radio (sound broadcasting device), the radio (broadcaster, channel)
The guide (person or entity responsible for giving direction to someone), the guide (document)
Capital (related to the economy), capital (administrative headquarters somewhere)
The head (mentor), the head (body part)
Read too: Is there a difference between vocabulary and lexicon?
Noun number flexion
Number inflection is responsible for mark the quantity of beings, emotions, phenomena expressed by names, that is, whether it is just one element (singular) or two or more elements (plural). It is important to clarify that the singular words are the original ones, therefore, they are the plural ones that carry some differentiating element, such as the insertion of the endings “s” or “es”.
Note, below, some patterns of modification of terms due to number.
Word characteristics |
Plural modification |
Examples |
Ended in "r", "z", "n" |
Add “es”. |
Walnut - walnuts, sea - seas, abdomen - abdomen. |
Ended in "m" |
The letter “m” is replaced by “ns”. |
Origin - origins, forum - forums |
Paroxytones (penultimate stressed syllable) + final "ão" |
The letter “s” is inserted. |
Organ - organs, attic - attics |
Ended in "ao" |
The ending “ão” is replaced by “ães” or “ões”, or just insert the letter “s”. |
Song - songs, brother - brothers, bread - loaves |
Ended in “al”, “el”, “ol”, “ul” |
The letter “l” is replaced by “is”. |
Shrub - thickets, twine - twine, atoll - atolls, blue - blue |
Ended in "il" |
The letter “l” is replaced by the “s”. |
Rifle - rifles, kennel - kennels |
Proparoxytone (antepenultimate stressed syllable) or paroxytone + final "s" |
Invariant |
The atlas - the atlases, the sneakers - the sneakers |
Oxytone (last stressed syllable) + final "s" |
The letter “s” becomes the ending “es”. |
dutch - dutch |
Note 1:It stands out that some terms diminutives have their own mechanism of construction of their plurals, since, initially, the original word must be transformed into its plural and, later, withdraw the letter "s" and add the suffixes (parts that are located at the end of the words and carry information) "little" or “zitos”.
Examples
Cord – cords – little cords
Carnival – carnivals – carnivals
Note 2: When the compound nouns have, in their structures, only adjectives, numerals or nouns combined with each other, all terms belonging to these grammatical classes must be inflected.
Examples
Fridays (numeral + noun)
Masterpieces (noun + adjective)
Hammerhead sharks (noun + noun)
However, if there are two nouns and between them there is a preposition, only the first term must be inflected.
Examples
Peanuts
donkey ears
Besides this exception, if the second element presents the purpose of the first one, only this one carries the plural mark.
Examples
silver bananas
school ships
Finally, if two elements are equal or onomatopathic (figure of speech that consists in the similar reproduction of some sound or noise) constitute the noun, it is recommended that only the second be pluralized.
Examples
ping pong
tag
Degree inflection of nouns
Although most grammarians consider degree to be an inflection phenomenon, that is, just a variation of the word resulting from the insertion of a suffix, Mattoso Câmara, an important Brazilian linguist, states that, in fact, the word transformation resulting from the marking of the degree constitutes a mechanism of derivation, that is, the formation of a new term, and cites as an example the word “gate”, whose meaning is far from that of its base term “door”.
Disagreements aside, nouns can express a sense augmentative or diminutive in relation to the original word. Such a capacity can be interpreted, similarly, as an oven in which the flames get stronger or weaker, as the stove knob is moved, this knob being the degree.
To understand how the establishment of augmentative and diminutive degrees works, it is important to bear in mind that this action takes place through two processes, as shown below:
→ Analytical: the noun is modified by adjectives (words that express states, characteristics or qualities of things in general).
Examples
The big boy is watching TV.
The little boy threw a tantrum.
→ Synthetic: a suffix is added to the noun.
Examples
The boy should be ashamed of himself.
The little boy is so cute.
It is noticed that the last modality, in addition to conveying the idea of something bigger or smaller than the original, still carries a value aspect of those who enunciate, that is, in the first example, there is a certain disdain towards the boy, and in the second, an affectionate relationship between the speaker and the child is evident.
solved exercises
Question 1- (UFF-RJ) Tick the only sentence in which there is an error regarding the gender of the words.
a) The manager must testify as the sole witness to the crime.
b) The main character of the story is Seu Rodrigues.
c) He was appointed as the head of the movement.
d) The phone stunned the hostess.
e) The upper part of the trachea is the larynx.
Resolution
Alternative C, because, in the context, the noun “head” does not mean a part of the human body, but rather a person who is a mentor of something.
Question 2- (Fuvest – SP) Check the alternative where the plural form is correct.
a) junior: juniors
b) hawk: hawks
c) rifle: fuses
d) bad: bad
e) atlas: atlas
Resolution
Alternative E, since it is a paroxytone word ending in “s”, therefore, the singular and plural forms are the same.
By Diogo Berquó
grammar teacher
Carefully analyze the poem in question and then try to answer the questions regarding it:
Little town full of grace...
So small that it causes pity!
With their donkeys grazing in the square...
Your little one-tower church...
Mario Quintana. The Rua dos Cataventos. Porto Alegre, UFRG, 1992.
a- Transcribe the nouns expressed in the diminutive degree.
b- We know that in literary language, the linguistic resources used by the issuer are not random. In this way, record your impressions as to the degree of these nouns.
Faced with this other poem, pay attention to the necessary questions that apply to it:
What did I do for good or bad?
The paths I walked?
Which of the two, pink and dagger,
And the one of Princess It's from King?
Mario Quintana. Poetry. Porto Alegre/Rio de Janeiro, Globo, 1983
Considering the highlighted nouns:
a- Analyze them in terms of gender (male and female) seeking to highlight them.
b- According to your analysis, do all of them present inflection regarding this genre? Justify your answer.
c – Based on what you answered, point out the referred inflection of the nouns.