Grammatical form and meaning

CHAPTER II. SUBJECT AND OBJECT
2.1.What are the grammatical forms of a word?
In an analytic language such as English, subject–verb–object order is relatively inflexible because it identifies which part of the sentence is the subject and which one is the object. ("The dog bit Andy" and "Andy bit the dog" mean two completely different things, while, in case of "Bit Andy the dog", it may be difficult to determine whether it's a complete sentence or a fragment, with "Andy the dog" the object and an omitted/implied subject.) The situation is more complex in languages that have no word order imposed by their grammar; Russian, Finnish, Ukrainian, and Hungarian have both the VO and OV constructs in their common word order uses.
In some languages, some word orders are considered more "natural" than others. In some, the order is the matter of emphasis. For example, Russian allows the use of subject–verb–object in any order and "shuffles" parts to bring up a slightly different contextual meaning each time. E.g. "любит она его" (loves she him) may be used to point out "she acts this way because she LOVES him", or "его она любит" (him she loves) is used in the context "if you pay attention, you'll see that HE is the one she truly loves", or "его любит она" (him loves she) may appear along the lines "I agree that cat is a disaster, but since my wife adores it and I adore her...". Regardless of order, it is clear that "его" is the object because it is in the accusative case. In Polish, SVO order is basic in an affirmative sentence, and a different order is used to either emphasize some part of it or to adapt it to a broader context logic. For example, "Roweru ci nie kupię" (I won't buy you a bicycle), "Od piątej czekam" (I've been waiting since five).^[8]
In Turkish, it is normal to use SOV, but SVO may be used sometimes to emphasize the verb. For example, "John terketti Mary'yi" (Lit. John/left/Mary: John left Mary) is the answer to the question "What did John do with Mary?" instead of the regular [SOV] sentence "John Mary'yi terketti" (Lit. John/Mary/left).
In German, Dutch, and Kashmiri, SVO with V2 word order in main clauses coexists with SOV in subordinate clauses, as given in Example 1 below; and a change in syntax, such as by bringing an adpositional phrase to the front of the sentence for emphasis, may also dictate the use of VSO, as in Example 2. In Kashmiri, the word order in embedded clauses is conditioned by the category of the subordinating conjunction, as in Example 3.

1. 
   "Er weiß, dass ich jeden Sonntag das Auto wasche."/"Hij weet dat ik elke zondag de auto was." (German & Dutch respectively: "He knows that I wash the car each Sunday", lit. "He knows that I each Sunday the car wash".) Cf. the simple sentence "Ich wasche das Auto jeden Sonntag."/ "Ik was de auto elke zondag.", "I wash the car each Sunday."
   
2. 
   "Jeden Sonntag wasche ich das Auto."/"Elke zondag was ik de auto." (German & Dutch respectively: "Each Sunday I wash the car.", lit. "Each Sunday wash I the car."). "Ich wasche das Auto jeden Sonntag"/"Ik was de auto elke zondag" translates perfectly into English "I wash the car each Sunday", but as a result of changing the syntax, inversion SV->VS takes place.
   
3. 
   "mye ees phyikyir yithi.ni tsi temyis ciThy dyikh" (Kashmiri: "I was afraid you might give him the letter", lit. "to.me was worry lest you to.him letter will.give"). If the embedded clause is introduced by the transparent conjunction zyi the SOV order changes to SVO. "mye ees phyikyir (zyi) tsi maa dyikh temyis ciThy".^[9]
   

English developed from such a reordering language and still bears traces of this word order, for example in locative inversion ("In the garden sat a cat.") and some clauses beginning with negative expressions: "only" ("Only then do we find X."), "not only" ("Not only did he storm away but also slammed the door."), "under no circumstances" ("under no circumstances are the students allowed to use a mobile phone"), "never" ("Never have I done that."), "on no account" and the like. In such cases, do-support is sometimes required, depending on the construction.
Among natural languages with a word order preference, SOV is the most common type (followed by subject–verb–object; the two types account for more than 75% of natural languages with a preferred order).^[3]
Languages that have SOV structure include all Indo-Iranian languages (Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Marathi, Nepali, Pāli, Pashto, Persian, Punjabi, Sindhi, Sinhalese, Urdu,Turkish, Zazaki), Ainu, Akkadian, Amharic, Armenian, Assyrian, Aymara, Basque, Burmese, Burushaski, Cherokee, Dakota, Dogon languages, Elamite, Ancient Greek, Hajong, Hittite, Hopi, Ijoid languages, Itelmen, Japanese, Korean, Kurdish, Classical Latin, Lakota, Manchu, Mande languages, Meeteilon, Mongolian, Navajo, Newari, Nivkh, Nobiin, Omaha, Quechua, Senufo languages, Seri, Sicilian, Sunuwar, Somali and virtually all other Cushitic languages, Sumerian, Tibetan and nearly all other Tibeto-Burman languages, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, Telugu and all other Dravidian languages, Tigrinya, Turkic languages, almost all Uto-Aztecan languages, Yukaghir, Zazaki and virtually all Caucasian languages.
Standard Mandarin is generally SVO but common constructions with verbal complements require SOV or OSV. Some Romance languages are SVO, but when the object is an enclitic pronoun, word order allows for SOV (see the examples below). German and Dutch are considered SVO in conventional typology and SOV in generative grammar. They can be considered SOV but with V2 word order as an overriding rule for the finite verb in main clauses, which results in SVO in some cases and SOV in others. For example, in German, a basic sentence such as "Ich sage etwas über Karl" ("I say something about Karl") is in SVO word order. Non-finite verbs are placed at the end, however, since V2 only applies to the finite verb: "Ich will etwas über Karl sagen" ("I want to say something about Karl"). In a subordinate clause, the finite verb is not affected by V2, and also appears at the end of the sentence, resulting in full SOV order: "Ich sage, dass Karl einen Gürtel gekauft hat." (Word-for-word: "I say that Karl a belt bought has.")
A rare example of SOV word order in English is "I (subject) thee (object) wed (verb)" in the wedding vow "With this ring, I thee wed."^[4]
SOV languages have a strong tendency to use postpositions rather than prepositions, to place auxiliary verbs after the action verb, to place genitive noun phrases before the possessed noun, to place a name before a title or honorific ("James Uncle" and "Johnson Doctor" rather than "Uncle James" and "Doctor Johnson") and to have subordinators appear at the end of subordinate clauses. They have a weaker but significant tendency to place demonstrative adjectives before the nouns they modify. Relative clauses preceding the nouns to which they refer usually signals SOV word order, but the reverse does not hold: SOV languages feature prenominal and postnominal relative clauses roughly equally. SOV languages also seem to exhibit a tendency towards using a time–manner–place ordering of adpositional phrases.
In linguistic typology, one can usefully distinguish two types of SOV languages in terms of their type of marking:

1. 
   dependent-marking has case markers to distinguish the subject and the object, which allows it to use the variant OSV word order without ambiguity. This type usually places adjectives and numerals before the nouns they modify, and is exclusively suffixing without prefixes. SOV languages of this first type include Japanese and Tamil.
   
2. 
   head-marking distinguishes subject and object by affixes on the verb rather than markers on the nouns. It also differs from the dependent-marking SOV language in using prefixes as well as suffixes, usually for tense and possession. Adjectives in this type are much more verb-like than in dependent-marking SOV languages, and hence they usually follow the nouns. In most SOV languages with a significant level of head-marking or verb-like adjectives, numerals and related quantifiers (like "all", "every") also follow the nouns they modify. Languages of this type include Navajo and Seri.
   

In practice, of course, the distinction between these two types is far from sharp. Many SOV languages are substantially double-marking and tend to exhibit properties intermediate between the two idealised types above.
Many languages that have shifted to SVO word order from earlier SOV retain (at least to an extent) the properties: for example, the Finnish language (high usage of postpositions etc.)
A proper noun is a noun that identifies a single entity and is used to refer to that entity, such as Africa, Jupiter, Sarah, or Amazon, as distinguished from a common noun, which is a noun that refers to a class of entities (continent, planet, person, corporation) and may be used when referring to instances of a specific class (a continent, another planet, these persons, our corporation).^[1][2][3][4] Some proper nouns occur in plural form (optionally or exclusively), and then they refer to groups of entities considered as unique (the Hendersons, the Everglades, the Azores, the Pleiades). Proper nouns can also occur in secondary applications, for example modifying nouns (the Mozart experience; his Azores adventure), or in the role of common nouns (he's no Pavarotti; a few would-be Napoleons). The detailed definition of the term is problematic and, to an extent, governed by convention.^[5][6]
A distinction is normally made in current linguistics between proper nouns and proper names. By this strict distinction, because the term noun is used for a class of single words (tree, beauty), only single-word proper names are proper nouns: Peter and Africa are both proper names and proper nouns; but Peter the Great and South Africa, while they are proper names, are not proper nouns (though they could be said to function as proper noun phrases). The term common name is not much used to contrast with proper name, but some linguists have used the term for that purpose. Sometimes proper names are called simply names, but that term is often used more broadly. Words derived from proper names are sometimes called proper adjectives (or proper adverbs, and so on), but not in mainstream linguistic theory. Not every noun or a noun phrase that refers to a unique entity is a proper name. Chastity, for instance, is a common noun, even if chastity is considered a unique abstract entity.
Few proper names have only one possible referent: there are many places named New Haven; Jupiter may refer to a planet, a god, a ship, a city in Florida, or a symphony; at least one person has been named Mata Hari, but so have a horse, a song, and three films; there are towns and people named Toyota, as well as the company. In English, proper names in their primary application cannot normally be modified by articles or another determiner, although some may be taken to include the article the, as in the Netherlands, the Roaring Forties, or the Rolling Stones. A proper name may appear to have a descriptive meaning, even though it does not (the Rolling Stones are not stones and do not roll; a woman named Rose is not a flower). If it had once been, it may no longer be so, for example, a location previously referred to as "the new town" may now have the proper name Newtown, though it is no longer new and is now a city rather than a town.
In English and many other languages, proper names and words derived from them are associated with capitalization; but the details are complex, and vary from language to language (French lundi, Canada, canadien; English Monday, Canada, Canadian). The study of proper names is sometimes called onomastics or onomatology, while a rigorous analysis of the semantics of proper names is a matter for philosophy of language.^{[citation needed]}
Proper nouns are normally invariant for number: most are singular, but a few, referring for instance to mountain ranges or groups of islands, are plural (e.g. Hebrides). Typically, English proper nouns are not preceded by an article (such as the or a) or other determiner (such as that or those).
Occasionally, what would otherwise be regarded as a proper noun is used as a common noun, in which case a plural form and a determiner are possible. Examples are in cases of ellipsis (for instance, the three Kennedys = the three members of the Kennedy family) and metaphor (for instance, the new Gandhi, likening a person to Mahatma Gandhi).
Current linguistics makes a distinction between proper nouns and proper names^[a] but this distinction is not universally observed^[12] and sometimes it is observed but not rigorously.^[b] When the distinction is made, proper nouns are limited to single words only (possibly with the), while proper names include all proper nouns (in their primary applications) as well as noun phrases such as the United Kingdom, North Carolina, Royal Air Force, and the White House.^[c] Proper names can have a common noun or a proper noun as their head; the United Kingdom, for example, is a proper name with the common noun kingdom as its head, and North Carolina is headed by the proper noun Carolina. Especially as titles of works, but also as nicknames and the like, some proper names contain no noun and are not formed as noun phrases (the film Being There; Hi De Ho as a nickname for Cab Calloway and as the title of a film about him).
Proper names are also referred to (by linguists) as naming expressions.^[14] Sometimes they are called simply names; ^[14] but that term is also used more broadly (as in "chair is the name for something we sit on"); the latter type of name is called a common name to distinguish it from a proper name.^[15]
Common nouns are frequently used as components of proper names. Some examples are agency, boulevard, city, day, and edition. In such cases the common noun may determine the kind of entity, and a modifier determines the unique entity itself. For example:

• 
  The 16th robotic probe to land on the planet was assigned to study the north pole, and the 17th probe the south pole.
  

(common-noun senses throughout)

• 
  When Probe 17 overflew the South Pole, it passed directly over the place where Captain Scott's expedition ended.
  

(in this sentence, Probe 17 is the proper name of a vessel, and South Pole is a proper name referring to Earth's south pole)

• 
  Sanjay lives on the beach road.
  

(the road that runs along the beach)

• 
  Sanjay lives on Beach Road.
  

(as a proper name, Beach Road may have nothing to do with the beach; it may be any distance from the waterfront)
My university has a school of medicine.
(no indication of the name of the university or its medical school)
The John A. Burns School of Medicine is located at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
In the following sentences, proper noun examples are compared with common nouns. Notice that the proper nouns are specific and unique, while the common nouns are much more general in nature.

1. 
   Common noun: I want to be a writer.
   

Proper noun: Agatha Christie wrote many books.

2. 
   Common noun: I’d like to adopt a cat.
   

Proper noun: Cleopatra is the cutest kitten ever.

3. 
   Common noun: Would you like a cookie?
   

Proper noun: I’m craving Oreos.

4. 
   Common noun: Let’s go to the city.
   

Proper noun: Let’s go to San Francisco.

5. 
   Common noun: My teacher starts work before sunup.
   

Proper noun: Mr. Bell seems to understand what students need.

6. 
   Common noun: I think that’s a planet, not a star.
   

Proper noun: I can see Jupiter tonight.

7. 
   Common noun: He’s always hanging out with his girlfriend.
   

Proper noun: He never goes anywhere without Sarah.

8. 
   Common noun: There are a lot of important documents in the archives.
   

Proper noun: There are many important documents at The Library of Congress.
It’s easy to use proper nouns, once you know what they are. Simply place them in your sentences as you would common nouns, ensuring that you capitalize them. Here are some examples to help you get started.

• 
  Brett had hoped for an easy teacher for his algebra class, but he got Ms. Boggs, whose unreasonable demands and short temper made the semester unbearable.
  

→ Teacher is a common noun. Ms. Boggs is a proper noun.

• 
  Gloria had a craving, and not just any cookie would do. She went to the store and bought a box of Oreos.