Chapter 1 - Nouns: Characterization and Classification

Summary

Introduction

This chapter will largely be concerned with the most distinctive semantic, morphological and syntactic properties of nouns. Section 1.1 gives a brief characterization of the category of nouns and noun phrases by describing some of their more conspicuous properties. This will help users to identify nouns and noun phrases in Dutch on the basis of their form, function and position in the sentence. Section 1.2 presents a semantic classification of nouns and will describe the way in which the semantic differences are formally expressed.

Like verbs and adjectives, nouns form an open class and, as such, cannot be exhaustively listed. New nominal elements are introduced into the language through derivation, compounding, loaning etc. Sections 1.3 and 1.4 contain a concise discussion of derivation and compounding, which, due to the complexity of these morphological processes, will remain relatively incomplete. The process of nominalization, however, will be discussed more extensively in Sections 2.2.3 and 2.2.4. For a comprehensive overview of Dutch morphology, the reader is referred to Booij (2002), De Haas & Trommelen (1993) and Haeseryn et al. (1997).

Characterization

This section will give a brief and general characterization of Dutch nouns and noun phrases by means of some of their more conspicuous properties. This list of properties is not exhaustive and the discussion is necessarily sketchy and incomplete. Nevertheless, the information provided will help the reader to identify Dutch noun phrases and to gain some basic insight into their structure and their syntactic behavior. Section 1.1.1 will start by discussing some of the nominal features (number, person and gender), and illustrate their relevance on the basis of the personal and possessive pronouns. This is followed in Section 1.1.2 by a discussion of the internal organization of the noun phrase, and the semantic contribution of its various subparts. Section 1.1.3 concludes by giving a brief overview of the syntactic uses and the semantic functions of the noun phrase in the clause.

Nominal features (number, gender and person)

This section briefly discusses the nominal features number, person and gender. These features play an important role in the description of agreement relations: number and person are relevant for subject-verb agreement; number and gender are relevant for agreement between the noun and its determiner and/or attributive adjectival °modifier(s).