Jj is for Jottings 121.  A Noun is a Name.

A noun is a name.  But there’s a bit more to it than that.  A noun is one of several parts of speech, which also includes verbs, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, articles, prepositions, conjunctions and even interjections.  Although they are called parts of speech, they are really units of language, but we won’t try to go against the flow on that issue.  The difference between speech and language is explained here.  I can’t tell you how many times I have been requested to do a speech assessment, when language was really the issue.

Why is it important to know about basic parts of speech and to have good language and literacy skills?  For a start, there is a close relationship between literacy, language and prison.     

WHAT IS A NOUN?

A noun is the name of a person, animal, place, thing, feeling or idea.  That is what I have remembered from school, but funnily enough I haven’t seen quite as complete a definition since. (They usually leave out the feeling or idea.)

Anyway – that’s the easy part.  After that, different authorities have different ways of dividing nouns into categories, and they all cut across each other.  So I’ll just create what I think is most useful to the population at large.

 

TYPES OF NOUN.

These include proper/common nouns, abstract/concrete nouns, collective nouns and countable/uncountable nouns.

1. Proper and Common Nouns.

A proper noun always starts with a capital letter because it is the name of an individual thing.  For example, the names of countries and cities, people and animals, musical groups and theatre companies, sports clubs.  The words “city” and “country” aren’t proper nouns because they are general terms and could refer to any city or any country.  However “Sydney” and “Australia” refer to a particular city and country.  Other examples of proper nouns are John Smith, Fido (someone’s dog), Bee Gees, Shakespeare Theatre Company, Collingwood Football Club.

Common nouns are general names, and don’t require capital letters.  This covers all nouns which are not proper nouns.  Examples are tree, book, computer, dog.  All items denoted by a common noun have characteristics in common – hence the name.

2. Concrete and Abstract Nouns.

Concrete nouns are things you can touch eg. nail, flower, ladder, chocolate.

Abstract nouns refer to feelings, ideas, qualities or states of being.  We can see the result of the noun, but not the name itself. Examples are beauty, truth, religion, hunger, honesty, bravery, poverty, ugliness.

3. Collective Nouns.

These are names for groups of people, animals or things.  They don’t need capital letters.  Some examples are: family, audience, crowd, herd, company, gang, crew.  Even though they refer to a group, the noun itself is singular i.e. “The family is having dinner”, not “The family are having dinner” etc.  (But you would be correct in saying “Members of the family are having dinner.”)

4. Countable and Uncountable Nouns.

Nouns are countable if:

• They can be preceded by “a” or “an”. A car; an apple.
• They can be both singular and plural. A dog; dogs.
• You can count them (surprise!). One ant, two ants, thirty ants.

Nouns are uncountable if:

• They are preceded by “some” rather than “a”. Some water; some flour.
• They are not normally counted or pluralised. We don’t say “two butters” or “six” breads.  We need to bring in other forms of measurement, such as “six leaves of bread”; “two pounds/900 grams of butter.

Sometimes nouns can be either countable or uncountable, depending on the context.  “I want a kilo of sugar” (uncountable)/ “One or two sugars?” (countable).

 

A note on the use of “few” and “less”:

Since countable nouns refer to number, we use “few”.  Uncountable nouns refer to quantity, so we use “less”.  So we talk about “fewer dogs, fewer trains, fewer thoughts”, but “less water, less flour, less imagination”.  Poor old “few” is often overlooked.  I have never seen it used correctly in a supermarket: “6 items or less” should be “6 items or fewer”.

OTHER CHARACTERISTICS OF NOUNS.

Nouns also have number and gender.

1. Number.

   Nouns can be singular, meaning one; and plural, meaning more than one, eg. baby/babies.  Adding ‘s’ is the simplest form of making a noun plural, but there are all sorts of rules to pluralise different categories of noun-spellings, and you’ll be very pleased to know I am not going to discuss them here.

2. Gender.

In English there are four genders:

• Masculine eg. man, rooster, uncle, son.
• Feminine eg. woman, hen, tigress, daughter, aunt.
• These could be either gender eg. cousin, doctor, teacher, grandparent.
• These have no gender at all eg. car street, tree, book.

Many people are not very aware of gender in English, and it might even surprise them how many masculine and feminine words pairs exist.  In other languages, such as French and German, every noun has a gender, and so you have to learn each one so you can apply the correct article.  (We will be discussing articles in the next article!!)

POSSESSIVE NOUNS.

Sometimes we can change nouns to show that they own something.  They become possessive nouns.  This is dealt with extensively in this article on apostrophes and in this one on preventing apostrophe catastrophes.

 

Since nouns are almost certainly the biggest category of parts of speech and we use them all the time, it is helpful to know something about them.

 

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