This document defines and discusses several grammatical terms related to nouns, determiners, and pronouns. It covers the definitions of nouns, number, gender, common vs. proper nouns, count vs. mass nouns, types of nouns, determiners including articles and quantifiers, definite and indefinite articles, generic vs. specific reference, and types of pronouns including personal, reflexive, reciprocal, possessive, relative, interrogative, demonstrative, and indefinite pronouns.

1. Nouns, Determiners and
Pronouns

2. Definitions of “Noun”
• Classic “A person, place, or thing”
• Sanskrit grammarians - does not have a time axis,
like frozen time
• Formal definition - takes nominal affixes: noun
derivational affix (e.g., government), can take
plural, can occur with possessive suffix
• Functional definition - can be preceded by an
article (the/a house), can appear in a frame
sentence ((The) _____ seem(s) nice.)

3. Number
• Types of plural: normal, internal change, zero plural,
foreign plurals (syllabi, curricula, indices, data)
• Nouns of quantity - three dozen, hundred, pound (in
British English), mile (in some dialects)
• Nouns resitant to singular/plural contrast
– Proper nouns
– Some words ending in -s (news, physics, mumps, billiards,
dominoes)
– Noncount (mass) nouns - cheese, instability
– Binary nouns - scissors, pants, trousers, glasses, binoculars, shorts
– Aggregate nouns - people, cattle, clergy, police, offspring, series,
barracks, committee (British English)

4. Gender
• Generally not a significant grammatical distinction in
English, except for with pronouns
• Animals - Familiar animals often have a gender distinction
and use male/female pronouns (e.g., horse/stallion/mare
(he, she), but spider (it)
• Gender with other nouns
– Gendered nouns (bachelor, usherette, king, princess…) - he, she
– Dual nouns (doctor, student, participant, customer) - he, she
– Plural nouns - “he or she”, “they”

5. Common/Proper Nouns
• Common Nouns do not refer to a specific person, place, event, or
thing
– E.g., shoe, house, day, car
• Proper Nouns refer to specific person, place, event, or thing
– E.g., Pat, the Queen, Chicago, Christmas, Lucille, General Motors
– Do not usually follow articles: on (*the) Christmas Day, in (*the)
Chicago, *the Shakespeare
– Do not usually take plurals
– Exceptions:
• Referring to a real or imagined unique proper noun: “the Christmas of 1942”,
“Are you the Howard Dean?”, “That’s not the Chicago I remember.”
• Certain place names: the Missippi River, the Great Lakes, the Rocky
Mountains, the Atlantic Ocean, the White House
• Certain institutions: the New York Times, the Lincoln Museum,

6. Count/Mass (Noncount) Nouns
• Count Nouns are nouns that can be counted and take a plural
– E.g., shoe, horse, boy, inconsistency, universe
– Occur with “many” - “How many ____?”, “There were many ___”
– Occur with “few” - “too few ____”, “We only have a few _____”
• Mass Nouns (Noncount Nouns) are nouns that cannot be counted
– E.g., sugar, water, rice, wheat, mud, milk, music, laziness
– Occur with “much” - “How much __”, “There is much ____”
– Occurs with “little” instead of “few”: “too little ____”, “We only have a
little ____”
– Occur with partitive constructions to indicate units - grain of sand/rice,
cup of water/milk, piece of music/leather, clump of mud, blade of grass,
slice of meat/pie, item of clothing
• Some nouns can be both
– E.g., pie, cake, brick, stone, love

7. Types of Nouns

8. Determiners
• Articles – Definite (the), indefinite (a/an)
• Demonstratives – this, these, that, those
• Possessives – my, our, your…
• Indefinites (Quantifiers) – some, any, no, every,
other, another, many, more, most, enough, few, less,
much, either, neither, several, all, both, each, half…
• Cardinal Numbers – one, two, three, four…
• Ordinal Numbers – first, second, third…

9. Definite and Indefinite Articles
• Definite Article – the
– Refers to something predictable
– E.g., from a the narrative context – Once upon a time there was a
king…Now the king had three daughters.
– E.g., from the cultural context – What do you think of the President?;
Do you watch the news on television?
– E.g., from the situational context – We went to a restaurant and liked
the menu (waiter, service, food, *teller, *nurse); We were in a house, in
the dining room, when we heard a knock at the door.
• Indefinite Articles – a/an, this (very informal)
– Refer to something unpredictable
– E.g., I met an interesting man; Once upon a time there was a king.; I
know this man and he says…

10. Generic vs. Specific Reference
• Specific refers to a specific person or thing
– E.g., Look at that elephant; Yesterday I met a man.
• Generic refers to any one of a group
– Generic pronouns – one, they, you, s/he
– Nouns can also have generic reference – A good man is
hard to find; The bald eagle is back for near extinction.
• Some sentences are ambiguous in terms of generic
or specific reference – E.g., My sister wants to
marry a rich man; The lion is dangerous.

11. Pronoun Types
• Central
– Personal – e.g., I, me, they, them
– Reflexive – e.g., myself, themselves
– Reciprocal – each other, one another
– Possessive – e.g., my/mine, their/theirs
• Relative – which, who, whose, whom, that
• Interrogative – who, whom, which, whose, what
• Demonstrative – this, these, that, those
• Indefinite – e.g., both, each, nobody, everything

12. Personal Pronouns

13. Indefinite Pronouns