Tag: William

Kinds of Nouns

Kinds of Nouns

There are four kinds of nouns:

  1. Proper Nouns
  2. Common Nouns
  3. Abstract Nouns
  4. Collective Nouns

 

Notice the difference between these two lists of nouns:

  1. Jack   Mary   London   India   The White House   Alice in Wonderland
  2. Boy     girl         city          country          building                            book

 

The nouns in list 1. are special names of persons, places and things. They begin with a capital letter. They are called Proper Nouns.

 

The nouns in list 2. are Common Nouns, as they are not special names. They can be used for any person, place or thing. ‘Boy’ can be any boy –Alec, Bob, George, John, William etc.  

A noun which names a particular person, place or thing is called a Proper Noun.

 Proper Nouns include the names of persons, cities, towns, villages, countries, parks, libraries, historical buildings, streets, schools, colleges, universities, hills, mountains, days of the week, months of the year, books, festivals, newspapers, etc.

A proper noun always begins with a capital letter.

 

A noun that gives a common name to persons, places, or things of the same kind is called a Common Noun.

The words city, country, school, river, mountain, book, boy, girl, woman, man, bird, animal, are all common nouns. England, France, India, China, Japan are the names of countries. The word country is a common noun. It is common to all the five named here. But the words England, France, India, China, and Japan are particular names. They are Proper Nouns.  

 

Now look at the following sentences:

  1. Honesty is the best policy.
  2. Laughter is the best medicine.
  3. Poverty is a great curse.   
  4. The soldiers were awarded for their bravery.

The words in bold italics name Quality (honesty, bravery), Action (laughter), and State (poverty). Such a name given to some state, quality, feeling, or action that we can only think of is called an Abstract Noun.

Abstract Nouns are formed:

  1. From Adjectives, as Kindness from kind, Bravery from brave.(Most abstract nouns are formed thus.)
  2. From Verbs, as Obedience from obey, Laughter from laugh, Growth from grow.
  3. From Common Nouns, as Childhood from child, Slavery from slave.

 

Now read the following sentences:

  1. Our team won the match.
  2. The army fought bravely.
  3. Our class consists of fifty students.
  4. A flock of sheep was grazing in the field.
  5. She gave me the bunch of keys.

The words team, army, class, flock and bunch are used for a collection of persons or things. Such a name given to a collection of things taken as a whole/ group is called a Collective Noun.

Crowd, mob, team, army, family, committee, flock, herd, swarm, fleet, jury etc are some Collective Nouns.

Basic Sentence Patterns

Basic Sentence Patterns

To learn a language (in our case English), at the preliminary stage, it helps if we know the Basic Sentence Patterns. And if we are able to make Basic Sentences, transformation becomes easy i.e. from Affirmative (Positive) to Negative and Interrogative (Question), Active to Passive or Simple to Compound and Complex (use of more than one finite verbs).

Note – A Finite Verb has a tense and has a subject with which it agrees in number and person; e.g. sleep is finite in the sentence Babies sleep most of the time and looks is finite in the sentence The old man looks ill. But go in the sentence She wants to go is non-finite as it has no variation of tense and does not have a subject.

Most of the English Subject-and-Predicate sentences are built on the following principles. The Sentence has a framework consisting of Subject, Verb and Whatever Completer(s) – Direct Object, Indirect Object, and Complement. They come in a fixed word order. Let’s study them with the help of examples:

  1. Subject + Verb(S + V) – Cats mew.
  2. Subject + Verb + Complement(S + V + C) – Cats are animals.
  3. Subject +Verb + Direct Object(S + V + O) – Cathy likes cats.
  4. Subject + Verb + Indirect Object + Direct Object(S + V +I +O) – Cathy gives them milk.
  5. Subject + Verb + Direct Object + Object Complement(S + V + O + O/C) – Milk makes them fat.

In the first sentence- Cats mew(S+V) – ‘mew’ is an intransitive verb i.e. it does not need/take a Direct Object to complete its meaning. Let us look at some more examples based on this pattern:

  1. Birds fly.
  2. The peacock danced.
  3. Stars twinkle.
  4. The sun shines.

The verbs used in these sentences are intransitive verbs as they do not take an object. But we can expand these sentences by adding an adverbial (Adv.) or prepositional phrase (PP) or a time element (TE).

  1. Birds fly in the sky. (PP)
  2. The peacock danced beautifully. (Adv.)
  3. Stars twinkle at night. (TE)
  4. The sun shines brightly. (Adv.)

Let us look at some more sentence patterns:

  • Subject + Verb (be- type and become- type) + Noun

Be-type verbs – am, is, are, was, were.

Some become- type verbs – look, remain, turn, and continue.

  1. I am a teacher.
  2. Thomas is a doctor.
  3. They are students.
  4. He was a gentleman.
  5. They were friends.
  6. Julia became an actress.
  • Subject + verb (be-type and become-type) + Adjective

Become-type verbs for this pattern – look, seem, appear, become, taste, turn, sound, smell.

  1. Sheena is honest.
  2. Models are pretty.
  3. William appeared handsome.
  4. The crowd turned nasty.
  • Subject + Verb (be-type) + Adverbial
  1. Ron is here.
  2. They are upstairs.
  3. Nobody is there.
  4. The students are in the class.
  • Subject + Verb (have-type) + Noun

Have-type Verbs – have, has, had, cost, resemble, etc.

  1. Mr. Gibson had a red car.
  2. She resembles her mother.
  3. They own a beautiful bungalow.
  4. Susan has a good sense of humour.
  • It + Verb (be-type) + Time/Atmosphere/ Weather/Distance etc.
  1. It is five O’clock.
  2. It is cold.
  3. It is raining.
  4. It is hundred Kms. from here.