NOUNS
A noun is the name of a person, place, thing, or idea.
Whatever exists, we assume, can be named, and that name is a noun.
Whatever exists, we assume, can be named, and that name is a noun.
Types of Nouns
PROPER NOUNS:
A proper noun, which names a specific person, place, or thing (Carlos, Queen Marguerite, Middle East, Jerusalem, Malaysia, Presbyterianism, God, Spanish, Buddhism, the Republican Party), is almost always capitalized. A proper noun used as an addressed person's name is called a noun of address. COMMON NOUNS: Name everything else, things that usually are not capitalized. School, hospital, air, etc. CONCRETE NOUNS: The things we can see, touch, taste, hear or smell. Car, dog, computer or elephant. ABSTRACT NOUNS: The things we can not see, touch, taste, hear or smell, such as warmth, justice, grief, and peace. Abstract nouns are sometimes troublesome for non-native writers because they can appear with determiners or without: "Peace settled over the countryside." COLLECTIVE NOUNS: Collective Nouns, Company Names, Family Names, Sports Teams. There are, further, so called collective nouns, which are singular when we think of them as groups and plural when we think of the individuals acting within the whole (which happens sometimes, but not often). audience ,band, class, committee, crowd, dozen, family, flock, group, heap, herd, jury, kind, lot, [the], number, public, staff, team. |
Number of Nouns
Number is that property of a noun or a pronoun that distinguishes one object from more than one.
Nouns have two numbers:
For example: Horse, river, and nation each denote one object and are singular in number. Plural number nouns denote more than one object. For example: Horses, rivers, and nations each denote more than a single object and are plural in number. |
Suffixes
If we add the suffix -er to a noun like "football" we will have "footballer", a person who plays football.
The most common suffixes are: -er, -ance, -ess, -ity, -tude, -osis, -ist, -ism, -or, -cy, -ation.
Learn theses suffixes because they will help us to identify nouns.
The most common suffixes are: -er, -ance, -ess, -ity, -tude, -osis, -ist, -ism, -or, -cy, -ation.
Learn theses suffixes because they will help us to identify nouns.
Articles
What are articles?
Articles are special modifiers that appear before nouns or noun phrases. Like other adjectives, they help clarify the meaning of the noun in your sentence. There are only two articles in the English language: the and a (and its variant an, used before a word that starts with a vowel sound). A noun may also appear without an article in front of it. If you are a native speaker, you will probably know which article to place in front of a noun without having to think about it. If, however, English is your second language, knowing which article to use where can be difficult. Learning and consciously applying a few basic principles can help you improve your article use significantly. With time and a lot of practice, using articles correctly will become second nature.
Where exactly do articles go?
Articles belong in front of all other modifiers preceding a noun:
There are other special modifiers called determiners or markers that may appear in front of a noun phrase. Do not use an article if you also intend to use any of the following markers directly before the noun: this, that, these, those, my, his, her, your, our, their,its, any, either, each, every, many, few, several, some, all.
A useful set of rules for using articlesYou can determine which article to place in front of almost any noun by answering the following three questions: Is the nouncountable or uncountable? Is it singular or plural? Is it definite or indefinite?
Here, the first sentence establishes for the reader the existence of the writer's former phobia. By the second sentence, the reader knows exactly which phobia the writer is talking about—the one about exams just referred to in the previous sentence. The first use of a noun can be definite if the reader can figure out from context or some other clue just which instance of an entity the writer is referring to.
Note that the prepositional phrase following point narrows down its meaning to something very specific, while the course material can refer only to the material in this particular professor's course. Both nouns are therefore definite.
Be carefully, because articles are not used when we are talking about plural, general nouns.
Articles are special modifiers that appear before nouns or noun phrases. Like other adjectives, they help clarify the meaning of the noun in your sentence. There are only two articles in the English language: the and a (and its variant an, used before a word that starts with a vowel sound). A noun may also appear without an article in front of it. If you are a native speaker, you will probably know which article to place in front of a noun without having to think about it. If, however, English is your second language, knowing which article to use where can be difficult. Learning and consciously applying a few basic principles can help you improve your article use significantly. With time and a lot of practice, using articles correctly will become second nature.
Where exactly do articles go?
Articles belong in front of all other modifiers preceding a noun:
- a large urban university
- the first female college principal
There are other special modifiers called determiners or markers that may appear in front of a noun phrase. Do not use an article if you also intend to use any of the following markers directly before the noun: this, that, these, those, my, his, her, your, our, their,its, any, either, each, every, many, few, several, some, all.
A useful set of rules for using articlesYou can determine which article to place in front of almost any noun by answering the following three questions: Is the nouncountable or uncountable? Is it singular or plural? Is it definite or indefinite?
- A noun is countable if you can have more than one instance of it. The word exam is countable because you can have, say, four exams scheduled at the end of the year. The word concentration, however, is uncountable, because it would not make sense to speak of having four concentrations, even though you will need a lot of concentration to study for all four exams. Many words have both countable and uncountable meanings, depending on the sentence.
- Knowing whether the particular use of a noun is singular or plural is quite straightforward. Just ask the question, Am I referring to more than one instance of something?
- When I started university, I had a phobia about exams. I conquered the phobia by writing lots of them.
Here, the first sentence establishes for the reader the existence of the writer's former phobia. By the second sentence, the reader knows exactly which phobia the writer is talking about—the one about exams just referred to in the previous sentence. The first use of a noun can be definite if the reader can figure out from context or some other clue just which instance of an entity the writer is referring to.
- The point of my professor's exams was to make sure we understood the course material.
Note that the prepositional phrase following point narrows down its meaning to something very specific, while the course material can refer only to the material in this particular professor's course. Both nouns are therefore definite.
Be carefully, because articles are not used when we are talking about plural, general nouns.
- Ex.: Planes fly fast (Correct).
- The planes fly fast (Incorrect).
Gender
Many common nouns, like "engineer" or "teacher," can refer to men or women. Once, many English nouns would change form depending on their gender -- for example, a man was called an "author" while a woman was called an "authoress" -- but this use of gender-specific nouns is very rare today. Those that are still used occasionally tend to refer to occupational categories, as in the following sentences.
- David Garrick was a very prominent eighteenth-century actor.
- Sarah Siddons was at the height of her career as an actress in the 1780s.
- The manager was trying to write a want ad, but he couldn't decide whether he was advertising for a "waiter" or a "waitress"