According to old school-grammar, a noun is defined as a name of a person, a place or a thing, which refers primarily to prototypical nouns. The semantic classification of noun is vast and it can be generally categorized with respect to the following features:
A. Concreteness
1) Concrete nouns: entities exist in both space and time
e.g., rock, tree, horse, woman, house, knife, chair, hill, sun
2) Temporal nouns: entities exist only in time
e.g., Sunday, year, morning, minute, July, anniversary
3) Abstract nouns: entities can not be defined in terms of either time or space.
e.g., freedom, love, independence, size, policy, refusal
B. Animacy, Artifactness, Humanity
1) animate (human): woman, boy, speaker
2) animate (non-human): horse, bat, snake
3) inanimate (natural nouns): grass, tree, river
4) inanimate (artifacts): house, knife
C. Countability (individuation)
1) Count nouns (individuated entities): man, stone, drop, right, love, appearance, control
2) Mass nouns (groups/unindividuated entities): sand, water, air, right, love, appearance
Reference
Givón, Talmy. 1993. English Grammar: A function-based introduction (Vol. 1 & 2). John Benjamins Publishing.
