Nouns (Upper Form)

Nouns
There are two types of nouns: Concrete and Abstract

Concrete Nouns

• These are nouns referring to physical objects and substances such things, animals and people.
• There are two types of concrete nouns: Common Nouns and Proper Nouns
• Proper nouns is the opening passage include:

          Richard Rhodes - name of person
          Hiroshima.         - name of a place
NOTE: Proper nouns always begin with a capital letter.

• A few examples of common nouns in the opening passage are: cloud, bomb, genius, atoms
• Common nouns may be collective nouns where a number of persons, things or animals are taken together and referred to as a whole. For example:

                Crowd, mob, nation, world, army, family => a group of people
                Herd, flock => a group of animals
                Fleet, packet => a group of things
NOTE: A common noun is a name given to every person or thing of the same class or kind.

Abstract Nouns

• These refer to qualities (kindness, strength, freedom); actions and events (explosion, research, combination); states (peace, hope, belief) and feelings (love, hate).
• Abstract nouns are formed from:

              (i) Adjectives
                  Examples: kind -> kindness
                                    honest -> honesty
             (ii) Verbs
                   Examples: grow -> growth
                                     move -> movement
            (iii) Common Nouns
                   Examples: child -> childhood
                                     friend -> friendship


Countable and Uncountable Nouns

• Countable nouns are things which CAN be counted, e.g. pen, book, boy, cat, durian.
• Uncountable nouns are things which CANNOT be counted, e.g. milk, sugar, gold, honesty. They usually denote substances and abstract things.
• Countable nouns may be singular or plural. A, an, the or a number is used before a countable noun to show whether it is singular or plural.

Examples:
SINGULAR COUNTABLES

• a doll
• the doll
• an apple
• the apple

PLURAL COUNTABLES

• two dolls
• the dolls
• three apples
• the apples

• Often, plural countables do not have articles before them.

          Examples: Roses are red.

                            Violets are blue.

• Only common nouns are preceded by articles. Articles should not appear before proper nouns.

          Examples: Sarina, Milo, Malaysia, Mount Kinabalu

• But we can say:

             a/the Malaysian                        (a race in general)

            the Central Market                    (important buildings)

            The President                            (top positions)

            the United States of America    (countries indicating a group)

            the Olympic Games                  (special events)

• Uncountable nouns cannot have a or an before them. They are followed by singular verbs.

          Example: Water is good for health.

• Words that show quantity (some, much, a little) may precede uncountable common nouns.

          Example: Some salt is added to the curry.

• Sometimes, these uncountable nouns are preceded by nouns such as ‘kilogramme’, ‘packet’, etc.

         Examples: a kilogramme of salt, a packet of curry powder

• Abstract nouns, such as joy, hope, happiness and love, cannot be measured.

EXERCISE

The picture below shows a tuition class going on. Write a paragraph of about 100 words about the picture using the nouns given.