Un-: unpleasantness, unreality, unruliness.

Compound nouns may be of 2 types. Nouns of the first type are made up of two or more stems — nounal, adjectival, verbal, adverbial, prepositional — which are brought together in an arbitrary way and spelt either as one word or with a hyphen. Here are the subtypes of them:

a) nounal stem + nounal stem: manservant, bath­room, roommate;

b) nounal stem + prepositional stem + nounal stem: brother-in-law, grant-in-aid, man-of-war, commander-in-chief;

c) nounal stem + adverbial stem: looker-on, passer­by, hanger-on;

d) pronounal stem + nounal stem: he-goat, she-goat, he-bear, she-bear;

e) adjectival stem + nounal stem: blackbird, small­pox, tenderloin;

f) adjectival stem + adverbial stem: close-up, grown­up, low-down;

g) adjectival stem + verbal stem + adverbial stem: merry-go -round;

h) adverbial stem + nounal stem: by-stander, by­product, overcoat, overspill;

i) adverbial stem + adjectival stem: bygone, overall, overpowering;

j) adverbial stem + verbal stem: outlook, offshoot, overlap;

k) verbal stem + pronounal stem + adverbial stem: forget-me-not,

I) verbal stem + adverbial stem: sit-in, take-off, feedback, look-out;

m) participial stem + nounal stem: swimming-pool, dining-room, reading-hall.

Nouns of the second type called unstable compound ( нестойкое сложное слово ) consist of the two separate nouns and function in speech as a complex equivalent of one word: stone wall, life span, college courses, surface differences, etc. The first element of the unstable com­pound describes the second one and therefore is pro-sodically brought out by stress. Not infrequently unstable compounds are equivalent to and used on a par with the corresponding attributive word-combinations: language change — linguistic change, grammar rules — rules of grammar, grammatical rules, speech sounds — sounds of speech, language origin — origin of language.

Sometimes the first element of unstable compounds may be complex itself: phrase-structure rules, second-lan­guage learning and so on.

Classes of nouns

As far as their lexical meaning is concerned nouns -are traditionally divided into a number of lexical categories or classes each of which is formed by the op-positional pair: 1) proper vs common nouns ( собствен ­ ные — нарицательные ), 2) concrete vs abstract nouns ( конкретные — абстрактные }, 3) countable vs uncoun­table nouns ( исчисляемые — неисчисляемые }, 4) ani­mate vs inanimate nouns ( одушевленные — неодушевлен ­ ные }, 5) human (person) vs non-human (non-person) nouns ( обозначающие человека — не обозначающие человека ).

Proper vs common nouns

The division of nouns into proper and common is based on the type of nomination.

Proper nouns are special names given to human beings or things to single out and individualize them by means of capitalization. In accordance with the object of nomination proper nouns may be personal names (Mary, John, Dickens), geographical names (Moscow, the Thames, the Alps), the names of the months and of the days of the week (January, Sunday), names of hotels, ships, etc. (the Ritz, the Titanic).

Common nouns are the names which may refer to any person or thing (man, woman, doctor, bird, dog), a group of similar individuals or things (family, government, machinery, foliage), materials (cotton, iron, rubber), abst­ract notions (kindness, strenght, friendship, love).

Proper nouns may turn into common nouns. For example, such words as champagne (a sort of white wine), ulster, mackintosh (special types of a coat), Wellington (boots) trace back to and correlate with the existing proper names denoting either the places of origin (Cham­pagne, Ulster) or the inventor (Wellington, Mackintosh).

At the same time most of surnames like Mason, Smith, Bush originated from common nouns as well as some place names like the City (an area in central London which is the British centre for money matters) or the Globe (the theatre in London where Shakespeare's plays were first performed).

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