Noun Phrases and Agreement

6.1 Classification of Nouns

Nouns not only represent entities like people, places, or things, but also denote abstract and
intangible concepts such as happiness, information, hope, and so forth. Such diversity of reference
renders it difficult to classify nouns solely according to their meanings. The following chart shows the
canonical classification of nouns taking into account semantic differences, but also considering their
formal and grammatical properties:

 Types of Nouns in English:

Common noun:
 countable : desk, book, difficulty, remark, etc.
 Uncountable: butter, gold, music, furniture, laziness, etc.

proper noun : Seoul, Kyung Hee, Stanford, Palo Alto, January, etc.

Pronoun :

 personal : he, himself, his, etc.

 relative : that, which, what, who, whom, etc.
 Interrogative: who, where, how, why, when, etc.
 indefinite : anybody, everybody, somebody, nobody, anywhere, etc.
 Combination Possibilities with Determiners:
Proper noun :
 Einstein
*the einstein
*an einstein
*some einstein
*einsteins
 Common noun
*countable= book, the book, a book, some book, books.
*Uncountable = music, the music, a music, some music, musics.
*neutral = cake, the cake, a cake, some cake, cakes.

6.2 Syntactic Structures

1 Projection of Countable Nouns

As noted before, common nouns can have a determiner as a specifier, unlike proper and pronouns.
In particular, count nouns cannot be used without a determiner when they are singular:

a. *Book is available in most countries.

b. *Student studies English for 4 hours a day.

 c. Rice is available in most countries.

d. Students study English for 4 hours a day.

We can see here that mass nouns, or plural count nouns, are fully grammatical as bare
nouns phrases.68 This has the consequence for our grammatical analysis that singular countable
nouns like student must select a determiner as specifier. As we have seen in Chapters 2 and 4, there
are various kinds of expressions which can serve as determiners including a, an, this, that, any, some,
his, how, which, some, no, much, few, ... as well as a possessive phrase:

a. His friend learned dancing.

b. John’s friend learned dancing.

c. The president’s bodyguard learned surveillance.

d. The King of Rock and Roll’s records led to dancing.

6.2.2 Projection of Pronouns

The core class of pronouns in English includes at least three main subgroups:

a. Personal pronouns: I, you, he, she, it, they, we

b. Reflexive pronouns: myself, yourself, himself, herself, itself

c. Reciprocal pronoun: each other

Personal pronouns refer to specific persons or things and take different forms to indicate person,
number, gender, and case. They participate in agreement relations with their antecedent, the phrase
which they are understood to be referring to (indicated by the underlined parts of the examples in
(15)).

a. After reading the pamphlet, Judy threw it/*them into the garbage can.

b. I got worried when the neighbors let their/*his dogs out.

Reflexive pronouns are special forms which typically are used to indicate a reflexive activity or
action, which can include mental activities.

a. After the party, I asked myself why I had faxed invitations to everyone in my office building.

b. Edward usually remembered to send a copy of his e-mail to himself.

As noted earlier, these personal or reflexive pronouns neither take a determiner nor combine with
an adjective except in very restricted constructions.
6.2.3 Projection of Proper Nouns

Since proper nouns usually refer to something or someone unique, they do not normally take a
plural form and cannot occur with a determiner:

a. John, Bill, Seoul, January, ...

b. *a John, *a Bill, *a Seoul, *a January, ...

However, proper nouns can be converted into countable nouns when they refer to a particular
individual or type of individual:

a. No John Smiths attended the meeting.

b. This John Smith lives in Seoul.

c. There are three Davids in my class.

d. It’s nothing like the America I remember.

e. My brother is an Einstein at maths.

In such cases, proper nouns are converted into common nouns, may select a specifier, and take
other nominal modifiers.

6.3 Agreement Types and Morpho-syntactic Features

6.3.1 Noun-Determiner Agreement

Common nouns in English participate in three types of agreement. First, they are involved in
determiner-noun agreement. All countable nouns are used either as singular or plural. When they
combine with a determiner, there must be an agreement relationship between the two:

a. this book/that book

b. *this books/*that books/these books/those books

c. *few dog/few dogs