Un-: unpleasantness, unreality, unruliness

According to their morphological structure nouns may be classified as 1) simple, 2) derivative, 3) compound.

Simple nouns are structurally simple in the sense that they are devoid of affixes — prefixes and suffixes and have only a root-stem. In other words they cannot be further

segmented: book, pen, bird, shirt, 'lamp, house, system, work, etc.

The suffixes used in the noun-formation may be productive, i.e. most widely and regularly recurrent, and non-productive one that are characteristic of a limited number of words.

The most productive nounal suffix is -er (with its -or variant) which may theoretically be added to any verbal stem: doer, cleaner, gardener, singer, worker, conductor, inventor, distributor, etc.

Other productive suffixes of nouns are:

-ness: blackness, dullness, uselessness;

-ist: linguist, economist, typist;

-ism: nationalism, capitalism, dualism;

-ion/-ation/-ition: collection, creation, dictation, per­suasion, division/aspiration, consideration, recommenda-tion/acqisition. repetition, disposition.

The non-productive noun-forming suffixes are:

-ess: actress, heiress, waitress, lioness, tigress: -ian: mathematician, historian, librarian; -ure: picture, literature, nature, temperature;

-ant: assistant, attendant;

-ful: handful, spoonful;

-ie/-y: birdie, daddy, Jimmy;

-dom: boredom, freedom, kingdom:

-hood: childhood, brotherhood, motherhood:

-ship: friendship, relationship;

-ance/-ence: resistance, importance/decadence, de­pendence, difference;

-ment: agreement, announcement, statement;

-y/-ry: biology, geography, anatomy/chemistry, psy­chiatry;

-s: economics, linguistics, physics;

-ty/-ity: cruelty, difficulty/generosity, majority, visi­bility;

-th: length, strength, warmth.

Some prefixes rather typical of verbs or, more fre­quently of adjectives, especially negative ones, can still be found in nouns. They are as follows:

anti-: anticlimax, antimatter:

со-: coauthor; copilot, coeducation;

dis-: disagreement, disjuncture, disarmament:

ex-: ex-wife, ex-minister, ex-president;

il-: illegality, illiberality, illiteracy;

in-: indecency, incompatibility, indecorousness;

im-: impracticality, impregnability, impropriety;

ir-: irresponsibility, irresolution, irritability;

mis-: misunderstanding, misfortune, miscalculation, misuse;

поп-: non-smoker, non-event, non-story, non-cha­racter;

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

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 (собствен­ные — нарицательные), 2) concrete vs abstract nouns (конкретные — абстрактные}, 3) countable vs uncoun­table nouns (исчисляемые — неисчисляемые}, 4) ani­mate vs inanimate nouns (одушевленные — неодушевлен­ные}, 5) human (person) vs non-human (non-person) nouns (обозначающие человека — не обозначающие человека).