Noun

    WHAT ARE NOUNS?  

Ø Nouns are naming words.

Ø They name people, places and objects.

Ø They can also name ideas, emotions, qualities and activities.

Ø Here are some examples of nouns:

Ø Peter, Elizabeth, driver, sister, friend.

Ø Bristol, Severn, Brazil, pen, dog, money.

Ø Love, beauty, industry, nature, greed, pain.

Types of noun

Ø All nouns can be divided into common  and proper nouns.

Ø Common nouns can then be divided into countable and uncountable nouns.

Ø Both countable and uncountable nouns can then be further divided into concrete and abstract nouns.

Ø We’ll look at each type in turn.

•           First, look again at those types and how they relate.

•        nouns

•       Proper nouns

Ø Proper nouns start with capital letters.

Ø They are the names of people, places, times, organisations etc.

Ø They refer to unique individuals.

Ø Most are not found in the dictionary.

Ø They often occur in pairs or groups.

Ø Here are some examples.

Common nouns

Ø All nouns which are not proper nouns are common nouns.

Ø A few examples: cup, art, paper, work, frog, bicycle, atom, family, mind.

Ø Common nouns are either countable or uncountable.

•       Countable nouns

Ø Use these tests for countable nouns:

Ø Countable (or just “count”) nouns can be made plural: a tree… two trees; a man… men; a pony… ponies.

Ø In the singular, they may have the determiner a or an: a sausage; an asterisk.

Ø We ask: How many words/pages/chairs?

Ø We say: A few minutes/friends/chips?

•       Uncountable nouns

Ø Use these tests for uncountable nouns:

Ø Uncountable (or non-count) nouns cannot be made plural. We cannot say: two funs, three advices or five furnitures.

Ø We never use  a or an with them.

Ø We ask: How much money/time/milk?        (Not How many?)

Ø We say: A little help/effort. (Not A few.)

•       Dual category nouns

•        Some nouns may be countable or uncountable, depending on how we use them.

•        We buy a box of chocolates (countable) or a bar of chocolate (uncountable).

•        We ask: How much time? but How many times? (where times = occasions).

•        We sit in front of a television (set) to watch television (broadcasting).

•       Field-specific nouns

•        Uncountable nouns are often turned into countable nouns by specialists in a particular field.They become part of the jargon of that specialism.

•        Grass is usually uncountable but botanists and gardeners talk about grasses.

•        Linguists sometimes talk about Englishes.

•        Financiers refer to moneys or even monies.

•        Teas may be used to mean types of tea.

•       Concrete nouns

•        Concrete nouns are the words that most people think of as nouns.

•        They are mostly the names of objects and animals (countable) and substances or materials (uncountable).

•        Cake, oxygen, iron, boy, dog, pen, glass, pomegranate, earthworm and door are all concrete nouns.

•       Abstract nouns

•       Abstract nouns name ideas, feelings and qualities.

•       Most, though not all, are uncountable.

•       Many are derived from adjectives and verbs and have characteristic endings such as –ity, -ness, -ence,  and -tion.

•       They are harder to recognise as nouns than the concrete variety.

•       Abstract noun or adjective

•       You won’t confuse abstract nouns with adjectives, as long as you apply a few tests.

•       Happy is an adjective.  It behaves like one: very happy; so happy; happier; as happy as

•       Happiness behaves like a noun: The happiness I feel; her happiness; great happiness.

•       The morphology of nouns

•        Nouns change their form for only two grammatical reasons:

•        Countable nouns have a plural form. This is usually formed by adding –s, of course, but there are some irregular forms.

•        The possessive form of a noun is created by adding –’s (Henry’s cat) or just an apostrophe (all our students’ results).

•       Irregular plurals

•        Some nouns retain plural endings from Old English:

•        Men, geese, mice, oxen, feet, teeth, knives.

•        Loan words from Latin, Greek, French and Italian sometimes keep their native ending:

•        Media, bacteria, formulae, larvae, criteria, phenomena, gateaux.

•        Graffiti, an Italian plural, is now an uncountable noun in English.

•       Noun phrases

•        When we see a noun as performing a role in a sentence, we think of it as a noun phrase.

•        A noun phrase may function as the subject or object of a clause.

•        A noun phrase may consist of a single word (a noun or pronoun) or a group of words.

•        The most important noun in a noun phrase is called the headword.

•       Examples of noun phrases (headword in brackets)

•       (She) always bought the same (newspaper).

•       A young (man) in a suit was admiring the (view) from the window.

•       Concentrated sulphuric (acid) must be handled carefully.

•       My old maths (teacher) was Austrian.

•       The syntax of noun phrases

•        The headword of a noun phrase may be pre-modified by determiners, adjectives or other nouns.

•        For example, a large, dinner (plate).

•        It may be post-modified by a prepositional phrase.

•        This is simply a noun phrase with a preposition at the beginning.

•        For example, a (painting) by Rembrandt.

•        Can you spot the modifiers in the last slide? (Left arrow key takes you back)

•       Clauses modifying nouns

•        We can use a clause (a group of words containing a verb) to post-modify a noun.

•        A clause which post-modifies a noun is called a relative clause or adjectival clause.

•        Here are some examples:

•        This is the (house) that Jack built.

•        (People) who live in glass houses should not throw stones.