What are Nouns?
It is not easy to define a noun.
The simple definition is: "a person, place or thing". Here
are some examples:
- Person: man, woman, teacher, John, Mary
- Place: home, office, town, countryside, America
- Thing: table, car, banana, money, music, love, dog,
monkey
The problem with this definition is that it does not explain why
"love" is a noun but can also be a verb.
Another (more complicated) way of recognizing a noun is by
its:
- Ending
- Position
- Function
1) Noun Ending
There are certain word endings that show that a word is a noun,
for example:
- -ity > nationality
- -ment > appointment
- -ness > happiness
- -ation > relation
- -hood > childhood
But this is not is not true for the word endings of all nouns. For
example, the noun "spoonful" ends in -ful, but the adjective "careful" also
ends in -ful.
2) Position in Sentence
We can often recognise a noun by its position in the sentence.
Nouns often come after a determiner. (A "determiner" is a word
like a, an, the, this, my, such.)
- a relief
- an afternoon
- the doctor
- this word
- my house
- such stupidity
Nouns often come after one or more adjectives.
- a great relief
- a peaceful afternoon
- the tall, Indian doctor
- this difficult word
- my brown and white house
- such crass stupidity
3) Function in a Sentence
Nouns have certain functions (jobs) in a sentence, for
example:
- subject of verb > Doctors work hard.
- object of verb > He likes coffee.
- subject and object of verb > Teachers teach
students.
But the subject or object of a sentence is not always a noun. It
could be a pronoun or a phrase. In the sentence "My doctor works hard", the
noun is "doctor" but the subject is "My doctor". |
