Part of speech - nouns

In this series of articles I will explain the parts of speech, starting with nouns.  There are EIGHT different parts of speech which one should practice using for both speech and writing, and these are: Noun, Pronoun, Adjective, Verb, Adverb, Preposition, Conjunction and (Optional) Interjection/Exclamation.

 

Nouns

There are four types of nouns, which we will go through in detail later, they are: COMMON, PROPER, (Optional) ABSTRACT, and (Optional) COLLECTIVE.

 

A NOUN is used for naming a Person, animal, place, or thing.

For example: Jennifer, Aircraft, Shop, ladder, window cleaner and bird.

The Gender (sex) of Nouns

Please note that (as we all know), Men, Boys, and male animals are masculine, whereas Women, girls, and female animals are feminine; and things, plants, animals whose sex we do know, and sometimes babies whose sex we do not know, are neuter (pronoun = it/they).  The exceptions being countries, ships, and sometimes cars and vehicles, are feminine.

Examples of Gender: Actor (Masculine) Actress (Feminine).  However a teacher can be either masculine or feminine, and a book is neither masculine nor feminine.

N.B. Many domestic animals and some large wild animals have different forms for the male and female.  Bull, cow, cock, hen, dog, bitch, lion, lioness, tiger, tigress.

Recognising nouns

To decide if a word is a NOUN, ask yourself “Does it tell me something’s name?”  If the answer is YES, then the word is a NOUN.

  • Is UNDER a NOUN?
  • Is TABLE a NOUN?

NOUNS usually have the following letters put in front of them (THE, A, AN) so try the following test:  PUT “THE” in front of the following words to see for yourself which words are NOUNS, and those that aren’t.

SAUCEPAN                       HEAT                        FINGER

HAPPY                               DAFFODIL            (type of Flower)          NEVER

ROCKET                             SKY                           SOMETIME                HAVE

Remember that names of particular people are NOUNS, and you CAN”T put “THE” in front of them.

For example:                     ALICE                       ALBERT                       JANE

Noun exercises

Exercise 1: How many nouns can you find in the sentences below?

  1. Boris, the cat, ran across the road.
  2. Mary was wearing a beautiful red dress.
  3. Tom had a dog, a hamster, (small furry animal), a white rabbit and a parrot.
  4. Susan has sold her old car to get a new bicycle.
  5. The poor old man had only a bed, a table and one chair.

Singular or plural nouns?

NOUNS can be either singular (referring to one single person or thing) or plural (meaning more than one)

SINGULAR:            BAT                        BOX                 BERRY                        LEAF

PLURAL:               BATS                      BOXES             BERRIES                    LEAVES

Remember that we form (make) the plural of most nouns by adding s to the singular.

But some nouns do NOT change at all in the plural form, and these are:

Aircraft, deer, series, and sheep

Exercise 2: Pick out the nouns in the following list of words.

Ugly, box, David, wonderful, dog, bottle, under, slowly, in, cup, when, and silly.

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