I believe the (long) tradition of defining nouns as "names for things" is at least partly based on the etymology of "noun." It basically *means* "name." The Latinate term "nominative" derives from the fact that it was not only the case used in Latin for subjects, but also the case used if someone asked you what the name of something was (If little Tertius pointed at a garbanzo bean and wanted to know what to call it, the answer would be 'cicero', not 'ciceri' or 'cicerum', etc.). The same situation applied to Greek, from which the Romans adapted their grammars. If I remember correctly (and that's not just a rhetorical tag!), Aristotle divided sentences into an 'onoma' and a 'rhema', which is frequently taken as 'subject' and 'predicate' but could also be loosely translated as 'name' and 'thing said about the name.' That does not, of course, mean that we should simply replicate the definition over and over. Getting into an argument over "name-hood" or the nature of reference has been a cottage industry among philosophers for over two millenia, so I doubt we're going to resolve that issue. Figuring out a better pedagogic approach to defining the grammatical category, though, may be doable. Bill Spruiell Dept. of English Central Michigan University 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/