All about Noun (Parts of Speech) in English

 

Parts of Speech|Noun |Types of Noun| Singular and Plural noun|

There are 8 parts of speech in English.

They are :

1. Noun 
2. Pronoun 
3. Adjective 
4. Verb 
5. Adverb 
6. Preposition 
7. Conjunction 
8. Interjection

Determiners can also be included in parts of speech.

Now let's discuss the part of the speech 'Noun' in some detail.

 

Noun 

The noun means 'name of anything'. It can name a person, animal, place, thing,  quality, feeling, Idea, and so on.

E.g. 

A person: Ram, Mohan, John, teacher, mother, God, etc.

A place: Russia, America, school, village, etc.

A thing: bell, door, purse, pencil, coin, etc.

An abstract idea:  honesty affection poverty, etc.

Types of nouns : 

1. Common noun
2. Proper noun

1.  Common noun : 

 A common name given to the same type of person or object is a common noun.

E.g. boy, girl,  dog,  tree,  City, river, mountain, table, school, etc.

2.  Proper noun:

A proper noun is a special name given to a particular person, animal, or place.

E.g.

Raju, Sunita, Tommy, Mumbai, Godavari, Himalaya, etc.

 Common nouns include concrete nouns, abstract nouns, and collective nouns.

Concrete nouns : 

Concrete nouns stand for the things that we can touch or see.

E. g.

Box, book, building, hut, tree, plant, etc.

Abstract nouns : 

Abstract nouns stand for ideas, qualities, feelings, etc. that we cannot touch or see means, the things that do not exist in nature but are, are called abstract nouns.

In other words, we can say that no actual things dance before our eyes when we mention these nouns but we can understand their concept. Such words are called abstract nouns.

E.g. 

Bravery, poverty,  childhood,  laughter, thoughts, truth, death, etc

Collective nouns : 

The collective noun is a name given to the group of some persons, animals, or things.

 E.g.

Team - a group of players

 flock - a group of birds 

Bunch - a group of keys.

So team, flock, and a bunch are collective nouns.

There is one more kind of noun that is a material noun.

Material noun : 

The name given to some material is called a material noun.

E.g. 

Air, water, milk, sugar, wheat, etc.

There are two other types of nouns.

They are :

1. Countable and 
2. Uncountable nouns.

1. Countable nouns :

Nouns that can be counted in 123 are called countable nouns.

E.g.

Table, chair, pain, box, etc.

Here, we can count 1 table 2 tables 3 tables 4 chairs 4 boxes, etc . so they are countable nouns.

2. Uncountable nouns : 

Nouns that cannot be counted in numbers are called uncountable nouns.

E.g.

Milk, water,  sugar, glass, etc.

Here, we cannot count 1 sugar, 2 sugars, 1 wheat, 2 wheat, etc so they are uncountable nouns.

{ Important Note: Material nouns are always singular and so they also take only singular verbs.}

Singular and Plural

Read the following sentence:

We have one mouth, one face, one nose, one tongue .

We have two hands, two feet thirty-two teeth and 20 fingers.

The words 'mouth' and 'face' refer to only one thing. Hence they are singular. 

A singular noun stands for one person, place, animal, bird or thing.

The words 'hands', 'feet' and 'teeth' refer to more than one thing. Hence they are plural. 

A plural noun stands for more than one person, place, animal, bird or thing.

Plurals are formed in the following ways:

(1) Add 's' to the singular noun.

e.g. tale - tales; rat-rats; room - rooms.

(2) Add 'es' to the singular noun when it ends in o, s,ss, x, ch and sh.

e.g. mango-mangoes; box-boxes; church-churches; brush - brushes;

But there are some words which do not follow the rule.

These exceptions are:

 kilo - kilos; photo - photos; piano - pianos.

(3) Change the final 'y' of the singular noun into 'i' and add 'es'. 

e.g. lady - ladies; baby - babies.

(4) Add 's' if the final 'y' of a singular noun comes after a vowel.

e.g. boy-boys; key-keys; ray - rays.

(5) Change the final 'f' or 'fe' of the singular noun into 'v' and add 'es'.

e.g. calf-calves; knife-knives; leaf-leaves. 

Some exceptions are: gulf-gulfs; cliff-cliffs; safe-safes; handkerchief-handkerchiefs.

Plurals are also formed in some uncommon ways -

By changing the inside vowel or vowels of the singular noun.

e.g. man - men, woman - women, mouse - mice, foot - feet, tooth - teeth

Collective nouns take an 's' in the plural

e.g. team-teams; herd-herds; bouquet - bouquets.

Some singular nouns remain the same in the plural form.

 e.g. aircraft, cod, deer, equipment, furniture, sheep, spacecraft, trout, series and dozen, gross, pair, score, hundred, thousand, million (when used after numerals)

EXERCISE

Q.1 

Classify the following nouns into

• common
• proper
• collective
• abstract
• and
• material

house, school, city, oil, movement, life, water, river, Ganga, Madhu, crowd, team, Ajay, laptop, Alps, heart, rope, Mr. Pande, bravery, pride, happiness

Q.2 

Classify the following into concrete and abstract nouns

the complaint, cat, doll, ball, eagerness, brick, document, similarity, cruelty, privacy, leaf, childhood, water, partnership, pilgrimage, vacancy

Q. 3 

Classify the following into countable and uncountables

man, jug, sea, ink,  leaf, milk, sugar, book, water bottle, bravery, puppy paper, ice, Kolkatta, scientist, elephant, bread, glass, furniture