Turning again to the American Heritage Dictionary, we learn that a noun is "The part of speech that is used to name a person, place, thing, quality, or action and can function as the subject or object of a verb, the object of a preposition, or an appositive."
This definition seems complete at first glance; everything fits under one of the categories "person, place, thing, quality, or action", and nothing falls outside of them. This is good. The problem is that nothing does fall outside of those categories, and the same dictionary classifies "nothing" as a noun! The whole point of a word like "nothing" is to name "no thing", to name no person, place, quality or action.
One final riddle for the dictionary people. Nothing says nothing like "no-thing". But if a word says nothing at all, how can it even be a word?
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Tell me your thoughts on why 'nothing' and 'nulla' seem to be as tied to quantity as they are to being. That is, what about 'quantity' is more tied to being as such than the other accidents? Is it an accident par excellence? Nihil even seems to imply 'not even oneness can be implied' as much as it implies 'not even being can be implied'.
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