Nouns are names of people (Victor,
Festus, Tola ), places (Lagos, London, Bratislava etc), things (wood, stove,
food, etc) institutions (marriage, university, Christianity etc) months and
days (August, September, Tuesday, Wednesday etc) and ideas (democracy, freedom,
calamity etc)
Nouns usually exhibit certain traits
when inflected. That is their forms (form of the word) change to reflect any of
the following;
(a) Plurals – most
nouns form their plurals with the addition of ‘s’ or - ‘es’,
sometimes – ‘ies’
Master – masters
Bus – buses
Baby – babies
(b) Gender – A noun
usually reflects the sex of the person or the object referred to. There are
three known genders in grammar, namely: masculine, feminine and neuter.
With the addition of certain
prefixes or suffixes, the gender can be changed from one sex to the other.
Examples:
Masculine
Feminine
Male
female
Man
woman
Masculine
feminine
Lion
lioness
Hero
heroine
Some plurals and gender however, do
not follow the rule of inflection. The plurals are formed by other means, while
the gender is by other words entirely.
Examples:
Singular
Plural
Man
Men
Child
Children
Sheep
Sheep
Masculine
Feminine
Boy
Girl
Pig
Sow
Bull
Cow
Ram
Sheep
Bachelor
Spinster
Types of noun
Noun can be classified broadly into
concrete and abstract. Concrete refers to
persons objects, places etc. that are visible or identifiable. On the other
hand, abstract refers to ideas or notions that
people relate with but are not regarded in visible terms. Examples of abstracts
are joy, pain, beauty, democracy, comfort etc.
Concrete nouns can be further
divided into proper noun, common noun, compound noun, collective noun,
countable and uncountable nouns.
Proper noun
This refers to names of particular
persons: Johnson, Anthony, Kate etc.
Places:
New York, China, Europe etc
Days:
Monday, Tuesday, Thursday etc
Months:
January, February, March, April etc
Newspapers: The
Punch, Guardian, Tribune etc.
These names are unique and usually
start with the capital letter at the beginning, no matter where they occur in a
sentence. The proper noun is also unique in that it refers to a distinct
entity. It will be a matter of co-incidence if two entities happen to bear the
same name.
Common noun
Names of people, objects place etc.
that are used generally. There is nothing unique about them. They even differ
from language to language unlike proper noun.
Examples: man, boy, girl, stick,
leaf, market, town etc.
Compound noun
This refers to a name that is
derived from a combination of two or more words. The words are linked by hyphen
(s) to become just a name, e.g. boy-friend, brother-in-law, passer-by etc
Some compound nouns do not take the
hyphen(s) in their combinations.
Examples: breakfast, spoonful,
maidservants, football, etc.
Collective noun
This is a single word that is used
to relate groups of people or things. The name refers to the groups as a single
entity. Occasionally it may be seen in the plural. Examples: crowd, bunch,
family, army, committee. Etc
Countable noun
These are nouns that can be counted.
That is, they have singular (one) and plural (more than one) forms.
Uncountable noun
These
are nouns that cannot be counted. Grains and liquids, sands, music, cream anger
and others cannot be counted. Uncountable nouns are regarded as singulars.
Gerund
The
gerund is a type of noun that has the form of a verb. The words have the – ing
ending but perform the functions of the noun.
Examples:
smoke – smoking
Smoking
is dangerous to your health!
Reading,
driving, dancing, swimming etc
Functions of the noun
The
noun functions variously as subject, object or complement in a sentence.
Examples:
noun as subject of a sentence.
Amos
made the call
Jennifer
is beautiful
Examples:
noun as object of the verb.
Curiosity
killed the cat
Who
killed Idris?
Examples:
noun as subject complements
Fred
is a tailor
Tonye
is a genius.
Examples:
noun as object complement
The
people elected Felix as the governor
Example:
noun as complement of a preposition
Joseph
bought the pen from Abigeal
*The
next in part of speech is the Pronoun