Nouns : The Naming Words
In English Grammar — Made Easy we touched upon parts of speech. In this article we will discuss Nouns in detail.
History and Etymology for noun
Middle English nowne, from Anglo-French nom, from Latin nomen. English Noun means name.
A noun is a word that names a person, a place, an animal, a thing, or an idea. In a sentence, nouns can play the role of subject, direct object, indirect object, subject complement, object complement, appositive, or adjective.
Nouns can be plural or singular and can be the subject or object of a verb.
For example:
The gifts are on the table.
Love is all you need.
Abbie is in the class.
Shimla is lovely in the winters
Nouns can be categorised in three types :
- Proper Nouns
- Common Nouns which again can be categorised in two types
1. Collective Nouns
2. Material Nouns - Abstract Nouns
Now let us quickly recapitulate what each type of noun means:
Proper Nouns
Proper nouns are names of particular persons, places or objects.
Examples: Kolkata, Anna, Tommy, Ms Mary, Ganges
In English, proper nouns usually have capital letters at the beginning of the word.
For Example :
months — June, October
festivals — Christmas, Ramadan
organisations — Coca Cola, the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford University
places — Paris, Africa, California
people — Julie, Mr Johnson, Bruno
works of art — the Mona Lisa
days of the week- Monday, Wednesday
Geographical areas i.e. rivers, mountains — Amazon, Mt. Kilimanjaro
Common Nouns
Common Nouns are the general names of similar groups of persons animals or things.
Examples: city, man, woman, person, teacher, mountain, cat
Common nouns are common naming words. We don’t use capital letters to write them.
Words like ‘book’, ‘table’, ‘mountain’, ‘love’ and ‘money’ are all common nouns.
Collective Nouns
Collective Nouns are names of groups of persons animal or things forming a unit.
Examples: mob, nation, people, team, flock, bunch
Material Nouns
Material Nouns are names of materials or substances used for making things remember that while most common nouns are countable; material nouns are uncountable.
Example: water, iron, steel, flesh, sugar, wood, gold, rice, cotton
Abstract Nouns
Abstract Nouns are the names of qualities, ideas, emotions, actions, feelings and conditions.
Examples: pride, love, ability, honesty, wisdom
Now, to clarify let me take you to some real life scenario..
Suppose, I have a goat —it is a common noun.
If I name it Billy — it will be a proper noun for you.
When my goat enters into a flock of goats — it will be a collective noun.
If I cut the goat- mutton will be a material noun.
When I cook mutton and find delicacy in the taste it will be an abstract noun.
The italicised words are nouns of different kinds.
Nouns which are always used plural
Some nouns are always used in a plural form and with a plural helping verb. You can’t count them in the normal way. Sometimes you can use phrases like ‘one pair of’ or ‘three pairs of’ if you’d like to count them. Nouns like this are often clothes, or tools that have two parts.
Here’s a list of words that are always plural:
Compound Nouns
Compound nouns are nouns made up of two or more words. Many of them are connected by a hyphen.
For example:
classroom, bathtub, boarding pass, mother-in-law,
dry-cleaning, toothpaste, haircut, output
Sometimes, it’s difficult to know if a word is a noun or another part of speech.
For example:
in English, the word ‘love’ can be a noun and it can be a verb.
We need to look at how the word is used in the sentence to work out what part of speech it is??
Here are some tips:
Nouns are often the subject or object of a verb.
Nouns often come after an article like ‘a’ or ‘the’.
Nouns often come after an adjective like ‘red’ or ‘pretty’ or ‘big’.
Nouns are often used with a determiner like ‘this’ or ‘those’.
Gerunds are nouns that are identical to the present participle (-ing form) of a verb, as in “I enjoy swimming more than running.”
An Attributive Noun is a noun that modifies another noun that immediately follows it, such as business in business meeting. These nouns look like adjective but they are not..
Stay Tuned to learn more about details of Gerunds and Attributive Nouns in next chapters..
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