Eduard,  I absolutely agree.  A noun is a car, a doll, a pencil, a cloud, a 
chair.

But these are not names of things.  Do we need to give a theoretical 
definition to first graders?  If we do, we should find something better than 
A noun is the name of a person, place or thing.  The student has to learn 
this by rote because it doesn't mean anything.



First graders have perfectly good brains.  If they couldn't make 
generalizations and apply them, they would not know how to speak at all.  It 
is the teachers who think the stuff they had to memorize as children is 
simple.  It is amazing how much we believe when the people around us tell 
it, and when they give examples we make the connection, even though it 
defies logic.



A proper noun is the name of a person, place, or thing.  Ellen and Barbara 
and Bob are names.  When we get theoretical we can talk about naming words, 
and talk about proper nouns, but not common nouns.



Can we find a better way to talk about common nouns, one that will not leave 
the students confused when they try to apply it in new situations?



This definition leads to problems when the students are learning more 
sophisticated uses of language.  The same system that talks about persons, 
places, and things also talks about words called articles, which are only 
three, a, an, and the.

We need to be able to deal with a class of words that tell which car, or 
doll, or pencil we want the child to bring to us.  These words can be 
articles.  They can also be possessives, or demonstratives, or each, every, 
which, what, or any.  These are the referential determiners, and usually 
only one of these can be used before a noun.  There is another group of 
determiners, quantifying determiners, that can be used alone or with 
referential determiners to tell about the noun.



I am not advocating teaching this to first grade students.  It can be very 
important for international students who ask:  Sometimes you use a or an and 
sometimes you use the, and sometimes you don't use anything at all.  How can 
we tell which one to use when?



My argument is that if we don't want grammar to be confusing, we should not 
give confusing definitions.   A noun is the name of a person, place, or 
thing.  may be simple, but it does not provide clarity.  In fact, this 
definition is confusing.



Maybe we could say that a noun is a word that tells something about a 
person, place, or thing.  Then later we can talk about groups and words that 
help us find which one in the group.



Maybe we can just provide examples.

However, it's good to avoid giving lists of isolated words.  Paul's example 
of the use of the word chair as a verb is one example of the reason this 
system is confusing.



It would be useful to help the students learn to identify the nouns in 
sentences, and in the process they can discover a lot about nouns.



We also need to have teachers who have dealt with various relevant theories 
so they can help lead the students to understanding, instead of boring the 
students with rote recitations.



Whatever we do, let's not leave the students thinking grammar is the word 
that comes before drills, or that grammar doesn't make any sense because the 
definitions are irrelevant.



Jean



Jean Waldman, retired lecturer

University of Maryland

To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
     http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"

Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/