Nouns. Semantic groups and grammatical categories. The category of determination. The problems of the article

Russia assisted 
Indiain Mounting Bokaro Steal Plant.
When the relation of nouns to other words are described we make wide use of prepositions: A 
window of the school, to the park,At the construction of the bridge. In all these cases with
the exception of verbs the noun is characterized with left-hand combinability / in
overwhelming majority/. So far as to the verbs are concerned they may both precede 
and follow them. 
The grammatical class of nouns is characterized by the categorical meaning of “thingness”, 
or substance. The typical syntactic functions of the noun are those of the subject, object and 
predicative/complement. 
Subclasses of English Nouns. 
Very important for current grammatical usage are semantic subdivisions of English nouns 
into proper and common, animate and inanimate, countable and uncountable, concrete and 
abstract. In particular, the use of the English articles is affected by the noun belonging to the 
subclass of proper names or that of common nouns; or, else, concrete or abstract nouns. Within 
the category of number the plural form is impossible with uncountable nouns (names of substances 
and abstract notions). In the case system, inanimate nouns (with some exceptions) are not allowed 
to have the possessive case form. Attributive Function of English Nouns
. 
In Modern English a 
noun may just stand before another noun and modify it, making up with it an attributive syntagma, 
e. g. 
stone wall
, 
speech sound
, etc. Different ideas have been put forward concerning this 
grammatical phenomenon. The view that the first element in such phrases as “stone wall” is a 

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noun was expressed by H. Sweet and most other scholars; the view that it is an adjective or at least 
approaches the adjective state — by O. Jespersen.
The third interpretation is that the first element is neither a noun nor an adjective, but a separate 
part of speech, viz. an attributive noun. The variety of opinions shows that the precise identification 
of the grammatical status of the element in question has run into considerable difficulties. First of 
all, it is difficult to apply here the criteria used to distinguish a noun from an adjective. The first 
element in the phrases like 
stone wall 
does not form degrees of comparison, but on the other hand, 
many English relative adjectives (e. 
g. golden
, 
linguistic
, 
Japanese
) do not have degrees of 
comparison either. Most practical English grammars have chosen the interpretation that the first 
element in such phrases as “stone wall” is a noun in a specific syntactic function. This view appears 
to be the most plausible