Supposedly, my list access has been restored. Another test ... Let's get crazy ... Phil defines a noun as an entity; but what is an entity? Cognitive Grammar defines a noun as "a bounded region in some domain". By this is meant something which is "marked off" from other things -- that is, differentiated from other things. Also, a noun does not track the evolution of some situation through time, which is what verbs do (hence the frequent term "process" for verb). This is, of course, a very vague definition, as it has to be if it is to cover all nouns' meanings. There is also more to the Cog. Gr. definition, defining prototypical nouns, but I won't go into that unless someone asks me. We also need to consider WHY languages have nouns. And why do we make some verbs into nouns, like "flash" and "fight"? Why do we create gerunds and noun clauses? Some linguists believe that part-of-speech categories emerge out of discourse needs. We need nouns because we want to talk ABOUT things. We need nouns (and other nominals) as "hooks" to hang predicates on. We need nouns in order to direct our listener's or reader's conscious attention to something we want to talk about (in other words, to refer). We need nouns in order to have topics to which we can add ever more information in a text. As someone else pointed out, a noun names a category, not a single, actual thing. A conceptual category, at that. This is evidenced in English by the fact that we usually cannot use a noun (especially a count noun) alone to talk about something. I can't say "cat is sick". I have to point my listener to which cat I mean -- "My mother's tabby cat is sick." Even for generic or category reference, we have to use either "a" or a plural: "A cat is a selfish animal." "Cats are millstones." (A famous linguist had a cat named Millstone; my favorite cat name -- though I do love cats!) Mass nouns can be used alone in the generic sense because they already name an unindividuated type: "Sand is gritty." "Grammar is hard." Not all languages work this way, of course. In teaching nouns, I believe children as young as six can use the "the", "a", and "my" tests. Since young children's literature and lives have a lot to do with concrete things that are prototypically named by nouns, I have no trouble with starting out with a combination of the functional "the" test and a notional definition; but the notional definition has to be extended fairly rapidly to include abstract things. Again, you start with stuff that kids are familiar: a task, an idea, a joke, a problem. Dr. Johanna Rubba, Associate Professor, Linguistics Linguistics Minor Advisor English Department California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo E-mail: [log in to unmask] Tel.: 805.756.2184 Dept. Ofc. Tel.: 805.756.2596 Dept. Fax: 805.756.6374 URL: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba 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/