An understanding of Nouns in English

I. Classification

1. Common nouns: man, table, banana

2. Proper nouns: Vietnam, Hong Kong, Tom

3. Abstract nouns: beauty, fear, happiness

4. Collective nouns: crowd, group, team.

 

II. Functions in a sentence

1. The subject of a verb

            E.g.:     Doctors work hard

2. The object of a verb

            E.g.:     He likes coffee.

3. The object of a preposition

            E.g.:     She is good at math.

4. Complement of the linking verbs

            E.g.:     I wish to become an actor in the future.

 

III. Gender

• Actually, the English language doesn’t have a clear distinguished point between different genders. In other words, there is NO GENDER in English.
• However, some words still have the feminine and masculine forms.

ÄDifferent forms for personal nouns:

  boy, girl                        husband, wife                widower, widow            

 prince, princess           king, queen                  bridegroom, bride          

nephew, niece               gentleman, lady           father, mother          

Actor, actress                hero, heroine                  host, hostess      

waiter, waitress          steward, stewardess

Ä Domestic animals and many of the larger wild animals have different forms:

bull, cow         cock, hen         duck, drake           gander, goose

 

IV. Countable Noun and Uncountable Nouns

1. Countable noun:  Things that we can count

            E.g.:     person, man, bottle, dollar, plate

a. Countable noun can be singular or plural:

            E.g.:     My dog is playing.

                        My dogs are hungry.

b. We can use the indefinite article a/an with singular countable noun:

            E.g.:     A dog is an animal.

2. Uncountable nouns: Substance or concept, etc. that we can’t divide into separate element, it means we can’t count them

a. Names of substances

* Food :           bread, salt, pepper, cheese, sugar, meat.

* Liquids         :           water, wine, milk, oil

* Metals           :           gold, silver, copper

* Weather        :           rain, snow, lightning

b. Abstract nouns

E.g.: advice, death, e.g.perience, hope, information, knowledge, mercy, relief

c. Illnesses      

E.g.: measles, mumps

• Measles is a very unpleasant disease
• BUT:  Alice has got a cold/ the flu

d. Subjects ending in  -ics

E.g.: mathematics, linguistics, gymnastics, economics, physics, statistics

e. Some other things

E.g.: camping, damage, furniture, luggage

NOTE

*** Uncountable nouns are always in singular, followed by singular verb.

                        Mathematics is my favourite subject at school.

*** Uncountable nouns are not used with a/ an.

                        I like to eat a bread ( but some bread or a loaf of bread)

*** Uncountable nouns are preceded by some, any, no, much, a little, a lot, lots of, etc or by nouns such as bit, slice, piece, kilo, jar, glass, etc. (BUT they are not used with these above words when we are talking about things in general):

• He has no experience in this work.
• She is very worried. She needs to get a piece of advice
• He has just eaten a slice of cake.
• Please buy me a kilo of sugar  

BUT:   We make cheese from milk.