t;, 'that' change to 'these', 'those' in the plural, and the indefinite article 'a', 'an' is either omitted or changes to 'some'. In French and German, the definite articles have gender distinctions in the singular but not the plural. In Spanish and Portuguese, both definite and indefinite articles are inflected for gender and number, e.g. Portuguese o, a 'the' (singular, masc./fem.), os, as 'the' (plural, masc./fem.); um, uma 'a(n)' (singular, masc./fem.), uns, umas 'some' (plural, masc./fem.)

Nouns often come after an article like 'a' or 'the'. Nouns often come after an adjective like 'red' or 'pretty' or 'big'. Nouns are often used with a determiner like 'this' or 'those'. Try an exercise here where you need to find the nouns. Common and Proper Nouns There are different kinds of noun. First, we have proper nouns and common nouns. Hey everyone, I am sorry that I have not made a new post recently. One of the reasons that I have not posted is because I have. These grammar worksheets help kids learn to recognize and use nouns. A noun is a word for a person, place or thing. Our nouns worksheets also cover plural nouns, common and proper nouns, possessive nouns, collective nouns and abstract nouns. Grade 1 nouns worksheets. Identifying simple nouns as a person, place or thing; Identifying nouns in. Noun definition is - any member of a class of words that typically can be combined with determiners to serve as the subject of a verb, can be interpreted as singular or plural, can be replaced with a pronoun, and refer to an entity, quality, state, action, or concept. This week the Christmas Concert is taking place on Tuesday night. The students that are participating in the concert need to be at school by 6:15pm and they will need to.

In the Finnish sentence Yöt ovat pimeitä 'Nights are dark', each word referring to the plural noun yöt 'nights' ('night' = yö) is pluralized (night-PL is-PL dark-PL-partitive).

Exceptions

Sometimes, grammatical number will not represent the actual quantity. For example, in Ancient Greek neuter plurals took a singular verb. The plural form of a pronoun may also be applied to a single individual as a sign of importance, respect or generality, as in the pluralis majestatis, the T-V distinction, and the generic 'you', found in many languages, or, in English, when using the singular 'they' for gender-neutrality.

Collective nouns

A collective noun is a word that designates a group of objects or beings regarded as a whole, such as 'flock', 'team', or 'corporation'. Although many languages treat collective nouns as singular, in others they may be interpreted as plural. In British English, phrases such as the committee are meeting are common (the so-called agreement in sensu 'in meaning', that is, with the meaning of a noun, rather than with its form). The use of this type of construction varies with dialect and level of formality.

Types of number

Singular versus plural

In most languages with grammatical number, nouns, and sometimes other parts of speech, have two forms, the singular, for one instance of a concept, and the plural, for more than one instance. Usually, the singular is the unmarked form of a word, and the plural is obtained by inflecting the singular. This is the case in English: car/cars, box/boxes, man/men. There may be exceptional nouns whose plural is identical to the singular: one fish / two fish.

Collective versus singulative

Some languages differentiate between a basic form, the collective, which is indifferent in respect to number, and a more complicated derived form for single entities, the singulative, for example Japanese and some Brythonic languages. A rough example in English is 'snowflake', which may be considered a singulative form of 'snow' (although English has no productive process of forming singulative nouns, and no singulative modifiers). In other languages, singulatives can be productively formed from collective nouns; e.g. Standard Arabic حجر ḥajar 'stone' → حجرة ḥajarā '(individual) stone', بقر baqar 'cattle' → بقرة baqarā '(single) cow'

Dual number

The distinction between a 'singular' number (one) and a 'plural' number (more than one) found in English is not the only possible classification. Another one is 'singular' (one), 'dual' (two) and 'plural' (more than two). Dual number existed in Proto-Indo-European, persisted in many of the now extinct ancient Indo-European languages that descended from itSanskrit, Ancient Greek and Gothic for exampleand can still be found in a few modern Indo-European languages such as Icelandic and Slovene language. Many more modern Indo-European languages show residual traces of the dual, as in the English distinctions both versus all and better versus best.

Many Semitic languages also have dual number.

Trial number

The trial number is a grammatical number referring to 'three items', in contrast to 'singular' (one item), 'dual' (two items), and 'plural' (four or more items). Tolomako, Lihir and Tok Pisin (though only in its pronouns) have trial number.

There is a hierarchy between number categories: No language distinguishes a trial unless having a dual, and no language has dual without a plural (Greenberg 1972).

Some languages, such as Latvian, have a nullar form, used for nouns that refer to zero items. Other languages use either the singular or the plural form for zero. English, along with the other Germanic languages and most Romance languages, uses the plural. French normally uses the singular, instead.

Distributive plural

Distributive plural number, for many instances viewed as independent individuals (e.g. in Navajo).

In most languages, the singular is formally unmarked, whereas the plural is marked in some way. Other languages, most notably the Bantu languages, mark both the singular and the plural, for instance Swahili (see example above). The third logical possibility, rarely found in languages, is unmarked plural contrasting with marked singular.

Elements marking number may appear on nouns and pronouns in dependent-marking languages or on verbs and adjectives in head-marking languages.

English
(dependent-marking)Western Apache
(head-marking)Paul is teaching the cowboy.Paul idilohí yiłchígóaah.Paul is teaching the cowboys.Paul idilohí yiłchídagóaah.

In the English sentence above, the plural suffix -s is added to the noun cowboy. In the Western Apache, a head-marking language, equivalent, a plural prefix da- is added to the verb yiłchígóaah 'he is teaching him', resulting in yiłchídagóaah 'he is teaching them' while noun idilohí 'cowboy' is unmarked for number.

Number particles

Plurality is sometimes marked by a specialized number particle (or number word). This is frequent in Australian and Austronesian languages. An example from Tagalog is the word mga: compare bahay 'house' with mga bahay 'houses'. In Kapampangan, certain nouns optionally denote plurality by secondary stress: ing laláki 'man' and ing babái 'woman' become ding láláki 'men' and ding bábái 'women'.

Conclusion

We have investigated the noun, the main part of speech in English grammar. We chose the noun as the theme of our course work because we interested in it. We used different kind of references to investigate the noun. Nouns can be classified further as count nouns, which name anything that can be counted (four books, two continents, a few dishes, a dozen buildings); mass nouns (or non-count nouns), which name something that can't be counted (water, air, energy, blood); and collective nouns, which can take a singular form but are composed of more than one individual person or items (jury, team, class, committee, herd). We should note that some words can be either a count noun or a non-count noun depending on how they're being used in a sentence. Whether or not a noun is uncountable is determined by its meaning: an uncountable noun represents something which tends to be viewed as a whole or as a single entity, rather than as one of a number of items which can be counted as individual units. Singular verb forms are used with uncountable nouns. Uncountable nouns are substances, concepts etc that we cannot divide into separate elements. We cannot 'count' them. For example, we cannot count 'milk'. We can count 'bottles of milk' or 'litres of milk', but we cannot count 'milk' itself.We usually treat uncountable nouns as singular. We use a singular verb. Countable nouns are easy to recognize. They are things that we can count. For example: 'pen'. We can count pens. We can have one, two, three or more pens.We cannot say that it is finished investigation of this theme, because we are going to continue its investigation in our diploma work.

Bibliography

• Beard, R. (1992) Number. In W. Bright (ed.) International Encyclopedia of Linguistics.
• Corbett, G. (2000). Number. Cambridge University Press.
• Greenberg, Joseph H. (1972) Numeral classifiers and substantival number: Problems in the genesis of a linguistic type. Working Papers on Language Universals (Stanford University) 9. 1-39.
• Laycock, Henry. (2005) 'Mass nouns, Count nouns and Non-count nouns' Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Oxford: Elsevier.
• Laycock, Henry. (2006) Words without Objects. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Merrifield, William (1959). Classification of Kiowa nouns. International Journal of American Linguistics, 25, 269-271.
• Mithun, Marianne (1999). The languages of native North America (pp. 81-82, 444-445). Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-23228-7.
• Sprott, Robert (1992). Jemez syntax. (Doctoral dissertation, University of Chicago, USA).
• Sten, Holgar (1949) Le nombre grammatical. (Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Copenhague, 4.) Copenhagen: Munksgaard.
• Watkins, Laurel J.; & McKenzie, Parker. (1984). A grammar of Kiowa. Studies in the anthropology of North American Indians. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0-8032-4727-3.
• Weigel, William F. (1993). Morphosyn

Download this explanation in PDF here.
A noun names a person, a place, an animal, a thing, or an idea. Nouns can be plural or singular and can be the subject or object of a verb. For example:

• The books are on the table.
• Love is all you need.
• John is in the garden.
• London is lovely in the summer.

Sometimes, it's difficult to know if a word is a noun or another part of speech. For example, in English, the word 'love' can be a noun and it can be a verb. We need to look at how the word is used in the sentence to work out what part of speech it is. Here are some tips. Nouns are often the subject or object of a verb. Nouns often come after an article like 'a' or 'the'. Nouns often come after an adjective like 'red' or 'pretty' or 'big'. Nouns are often used with a determiner like 'this' or 'those'.
Try an exercise here where you need to find the nouns.
Common and Proper Nouns
There are different kinds of noun. First, we have proper nouns and common nouns.
Proper nouns are the names of people (Julie, Mr Johnson), places (Paris, Africa, California), organisations (Coca Cola, the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford University), works of art (the Mona Lisa), days of the week (Monday), months (June, October) and festivals (Christmas, Ramadan). In English, proper nouns usually have capital letters at the beginning of the word.
Common nouns are everything else. Words like 'book', 'table', 'mountain', 'love' and 'money' are all common nouns.
Try an exercise here where you need to choose 'common noun' or 'proper noun'.
Countable and Uncountable Nouns
Second, there are two types of common noun. These are countable nouns and uncountable nouns. It's really important to know if a noun is countable or uncountable, because it changes how we use it in a sentence.
Countable nouns are things which can be counted like 'table', 'apple' or 'boy'. They usually change their form when we make a plural (they often add an 's'), and can be used with either a singular or a plural verb: one book falls, two books fall.
On the other hand, uncountable nouns are usually things which can't easily be counted, like 'love', 'rice' or 'water'. Uncountable nouns do not make a plural or change their form, and they are always used with a singular verb. We can't say one rice, two rices.
However, sometimes there's not much logic to whether a noun is countable or uncountable. For example, 'work' is uncountable but 'job' is countable. 'Trip' is countable, but 'travel' is uncountable. 'Word' is countable, but 'vocabulary' is uncountable. Sometimes, a noun is even different in US English and UK English, like 'Lego' or 'accommodation' (both uncountable in the UK but countable in the US).
Here are some kinds of nouns that are often uncountable:

• Abstract nouns (nouns that talk about ideas): love, happiness, peace, democracy.
• Subjects from school or university: Maths, French, history.
• Materials: metal, wood, plastic.
• Liquids: water, coffee, milk.
• Gases: air, oxygen, carbon dioxide.
• Things that are made up of lots of small pieces: sand, rice, salt.

Here's a list of some uncountable nouns that we often use:

advice	Could you give me some advice?
dust	The old table was covered with dust.
electricity	Electricity runs through this wire.
equipment	Could you give me a list of the equipment we need for the trip?
evidence	What evidence is there against John?
fog	I could hardly see because of the thick fog.
fun	We had a lot of fun at the party.
furniture	I really need to buy some new furniture for my new flat.
happiness	How can we increase our happiness?
help	The teacher would like some help with moving the chairs.
homework	How much homework do you get?
information	Could you give me some information about things to do in London?
knowledge	He has such a lot of knowledge about history.
luck	I need a bit of luck!
luggage	Please put leave all your luggage at the hotel and we'll pick it up later.
money	How much money do you have in your purse?
news	The news is good! John has passed the exam!
pasta	I love pasta!
progress	We haven't made much progress on our project.
research	Julie is doing research in neuroscience.
snow	There's been a lot of snow this year.
spaghetti	Could we have spaghetti with meatballs?
spinach	She likes spinach with garlic.
traffic	Was there a lot of traffic in central London?
vocabulary	Vocabulary is very important in language learning.
work	Do you have any work to do this weekend?

Words that can be both countable and uncountable
Many, many words can be used in both an uncountable way and a countable way. This is especially true of uncountable food and drink, such as 'coffee' or 'yogurt'. When we're talking in general about coffee or yogurt, the words are uncountable. But, we can use them in a countable way when we mean 'one cup of' or 'one pot of':

• Uncountable: Coffee is my favourite drink.
• Countable: Could you buy two coffees and two teas, please?
• Uncountable: My children eat a lot of yogurt.
• Countable: I bought a pack of six yogurts.

Other words that act like this include: water, juice, salad, curry and cake.
Another way that we use uncountable nouns in a countable way is when we use the word to mean 'a kind of' or 'a type of':

• Uncountable: She loves cheese.
• Countable: That shop sells lots of cheeses (=different kinds of cheese).

Other words that can be used in this way include jam, wood, plastic, bread, metal, fabric. There are a few words that change their meaning depending on if they used in a countable way or an uncountable way. For example:

Hair	Countable = one hair Urg! There's a hair in my food!	Uncountable = all the hair on a person's head She has very beautiful hair.
Paper	Countable = a newspaper I bought all the papers this morning.	Uncountable = paper in general Could you give me some paper to write on?
Light	Countable = a single lamp or light bulb The Christmas tree was covered in lights.	Uncountable = light in general The room was full of light.
Experience	Countable = one event I travelled to Thailand and it was a really great experience.	Uncountable = when you've done something for a long time She has a lot of experience with children.

Try an exercise here where you need to decide if the words are countable nouns or uncountable nouns.
Nouns which are always plural
Some nouns are always used in a plural form and with a plural verb. You can't count them in the normal way. Sometimes you can use phrases like 'one pair of' or 'three pairs of' if you'd like to count them. Nouns like this are often clothes, or tools that have two parts. Here's a list of words that are always plural:

Trousers	My trousers are too long.
Tights	I need to wear tights with this dress.
Shorts	He bought some blue shorts.
Scissors	There are three pairs of scissors in the drawer.
Tweezers	Could you pass me those tweezers?
Binoculars	She gave me some binoculars.
Glasses (for seeing better)	I've lost my glasses!
Sunglasses	My sunglasses are in my bag.
Clothes	She put her clothes in the suitcase.
Belongings	Whose belongings are these?
Congratulations	Many congratulations!

Possessive Nouns

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What Are Nouns