Spanish Grammar Essentials: Phrases, Nouns, Gender, Number and Noun Functions

Syntactic Phrases and Constituents

A syntactic phrase is a sequence formed by one or more words with a nucleus and optional complements. Phrases may be nominal (noun), verbal (verb), adjectival (adjective), adverbial (adverb) or prepositional (introduced by a preposition).

Structure of the Noun Phrase (SN)

The noun phrase contains a nucleus and possible complements:

• Determiner (Det.): articles, demonstrative, possessive, indefinite, numeral, interrogative and exclamatory adjectives.
• Nucleus: noun, pronoun or nominalized words.
• Complements: adjectives, prepositional phrases or subordinate clauses.

The Noun

A noun is the word that designates people, animals, objects or concepts. Morphologically, a noun is characterized by a lexical root, a morpheme and inflection for gender and number.

1. Gender

Gender is the grammatical feature that opposes masculine and feminine. It is a stable characteristic of nouns and helps establish agreement with other categories. Gender is marked in two ways:

• Morphological: through endings or specific formants, such as the suffixes -isa, -esa, -ina, -iz used to form the feminine, or through the change of article.
• Lexical: through different words for each gender, such as hombre / mujer.

2. Number

Number is the grammatical feature that opposes singular and plural. It reflects whether the noun refers to one or more than one entity and is expressed through morphology. The singular is unmarked, while the plural is marked, usually with -s or -es.

Plural Formation

• Nouns ending in an unstressed vowel form the plural by adding -s.
• Nouns ending in a stressed vowel (-á, -é, -ó) or in -í, -ú form the plural with -es.
• Nouns ending in a consonant form the plural with -es.
• Nouns ending in -s preceded by a consonant or in -z have two possibilities: if the word is monosyllabic or ends in an accent, it adds -es; if it is polysyllabic and stressed on the penultimate syllable or is proparoxytone (esdrújula), it remains unchanged in the plural. The plural is distinguished through the determiners or accompanying adjectives.

Function of the Noun

The noun serves as the nucleus of a noun phrase. It can fulfill the following functions: subject, direct object, indirect object, complement of verbal and non-verbal functions, apposition and complement of other nouns. Nouns also interact with other categories: with adjectives as attribute and predicative complement, and with adverbs in circumstantial complements.

Noun Meaning and Classification

Nouns are grouped into the following subcategories according to their meaning:

• Common nouns: designate objects of the same kind with shared characteristics. They may be:
  • Concrete: refer to real objects that exist and can be perceived by the senses.
  • Collective: designate a group of individuals or objects in singular form.
• Proper nouns: designate specific beings or individuals and identify them uniquely.
• Abstract nouns: refer to qualities, actions, feelings or concepts that are perceived by the intellect and cannot be seen or touched. Many abstract nouns are related to adjectives expressing quality, and to verbs expressing actions.

Quantity Nouns

Some nouns indicate an imprecise or precise quantity of objects. Apart from the regular plural, some form it by adding -s when ending in an unstressed vowel, while others add -es when ending in a consonant.