Nouns

Definition

Nouns are names. Nouns identify something. They are the basic class of words of every language. As soon as names are given to things, whether those things exist or not the names become nouns. A noun can be name of a thing, place, quality, activity, condition, feeling, state of mind or concept. The following examples show how they are usually used in sentences.

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Place

Accra is the capital of Ghana.
Travellers find Cape Coast one of the beautiful sections of the country.
Kintampo is noted for yam.

Things The waterfall is close to my house.

A car is matchless for travelling.
Maize gives us

Quality

They like my childish purity.
An item of prettiness is a pleasure without end.
He is noted for his integrity.

Activity

Weeding is their main work.They had their luck in industrialization.
Writing is an art of joy.

Concept or Condition

Christianity is one of the great religions of the world.
The newspaper carried a major article on democracy.

Nouns formed from other words have special endings. Examples:

Word                   Noun
move                    movement
intent                    intention
different               difference
kind                      kindness
secure                   security
land                      landing

Types of Nouns

Proper and Common Nouns

Proper nouns are names of a specific person, place or something. They always start with a capital letter. Examples:

personal names – Kofi, Esi
names of commercial products – Kasapreko, Pepsodent
religious periods, months, and days of the week – Ramadan, Good Friday
geographical names – Ghana, Canada
political parties and their members – Asempa Party
people or bodies with a unique public function – the Pope, the President
religions and religious concepts – Buddhism, Islam
address terms – Mother, Dad, Uncle
public buildings, institutions, laws, etc – University of Ghana, White House
languages, nationalities, and ethnic group – Ghanaian, Ewe
adjectives and common nouns derived from proper noun – Nkrumanise
name of water bodies – River Volta, River Pra

Therefore, Ama, Kwasi, Ghana, Accra, Cape Coast, River Tano, Parliaments House, Osu Castle, White House are all proper nouns. Days of the week, months of the year, words referring to people of a particular country (Ghanaian for people from Ghana), names of famous places and buildings are all proper nouns. Names of special occasions such as Christmas and Easter are also proper nouns.

Common nouns are the general names of objects, persons (doctor, teacher) or places. They are names that are common to or identify unspecified things. Examples are: table, door, teacher, cock, hometown, country, doctor, pastor, nurse, home, house etc.

Common Noun                      Proper noun
doctor                                      Dr Judas Iscariot
university                                University of Ghana
country                                    Nigeria
president                                 Nana Akufo Addo

Countable and Uncountable Nouns

Things that we think of as separate individual items are being counted in everyday life. This class of nouns is called count or countable nouns. Things that are considered as a mass but not as single individual items cannot be counted. This group of nouns is known as non-count or uncountable or mass nouns. They are names of objects that cannot be counted; too numerous or large in number to be counted; they are generally names of liquids, grains, languages, activities and sports, names of subjects, collective nouns signify things that could clearly not be counted. In English, such items are seen as a mass but not as individual items.

Generally, uncountable nouns refer to things that cannot be divided into separate units. However, nouns that refer to a group of similar items are also considered as non-count nouns. Examples:

Some nouns can be either countable or uncountable depending on how they are being considered at the time of communication. Glass (non-count) refers to the material; the material is being considered as a mass of item. However, glasses (count) refer to a container. Consider the sentences below:

Concrete and Abstract Nouns

Some nouns can be seen or touched such nouns are called concrete nouns, they generally have physical properties. They may or may not be countable. The count or non-count difference within the concrete nouns can be clearer if the following differences between concrete nouns are considered:

Count concrete nouns denote persons, objects, places
Non-count concrete nouns denote liquids, materials, substances, gases

This guide is very useful as the special cases of traffic and furniture have already been explained.

The other nouns called abstract nouns only exist in the form of thought, concept or feeling. Abstract nouns are those that can be talked about or described but they cannot be seen, touched, smelt, felt, or tasted; they have no physical characteristics. Examples: advice, music, intelligence, patience, information, wealth, happiness, religion (Christianity, Islam, etc.)

Some of the abstract nouns are derived from verbs or adjectives; such nouns are generally recognizable by their suffixes - (for example, -ation, -ion, -ness, -ity, -ance, -ence, -hood, -ing, -al)

Abstract nouns with the same form as the corresponding verb also exist. These include: hope, love, release, mention.

Concrete and abstract nouns can be either count or non-count as indicated in the previous section. It can also be both; however, difference in meaning is sometimes observed.

Non-count

Arrival of technology is a cause of unemployment.
Some people have good night vision.

Count

There were 20 arrivals at the airport yesterday.
We need people with visions to run the company.

Collective Nouns

Some nouns refer to a collection or a group of multiple things, people or animals. Such nouns belong to the class of collective nouns. Collective nouns signify the group as a unit rather than single individual items. That is why they are called collective nouns. Collective nouns are considered as singular nouns but some of them can be made plural. Examples: audience, crew, crowd, fleet, forest, herd, library, team

Some collective nouns usually come before of-phrase to indicate a member of a group:

They saw a group of people at the entrance.
Groups of animals appeared at the farm.

The collective nouns that involve of-phrase are commonly called of-collectives since they come before of + plural noun; the plural noun involved denotes sets of animals, objects, people and so on. A number of such collective nouns for instance group have general use whilst others have a specific use. Among the common collocation (combination) are:

Singular and Plural Nouns

A singular noun refers to a single item. The plural of a noun is usually made by adding a suffix to the singular: When we are talking about just one thing, a singular noun is used. A plural noun is used when we are talking about two or more people, places or things.

Regular plurals

The plurals are formed by a suffix (ending), s or es to the singular are called regular plurals. The usual spelling is -s, but when the singular ends in s, z, x, sh, or ch, the suffix (ending) –es is used.

When a noun ends in a consonant letter + y, the plural is made by changing the y to i and adding the suffix, es. However, the suffix is –s when the singular ends in a vowel letter+ y.

If the singular ends in -o, the suffix of the plural is sometimes -s and sometimes -es:

Irregular plurals

These are the plurals which are formed through other means other than the suffix, s. there are various forms:

However, some nouns that end in f are made plural simply by adding s.

Zero Plurals

The plural form of some nouns is the same as the singular form.

Compound nouns generally follow the regular rule by adding the regular –s to their last element:

Compounds ending in an adverb also generally follow the regular rule:

Though having the plural inflection at the end of these two words break the spelling rule by maintaining the y before the inflection:

A few compounds ending in –ful usually take the plural inflection on the last element but have a less common plural inflection on the first element:

Compounds ending in –in-law generally allow the plural on the last element:

Some compounds consisting of a noun and a postmodifying adjective also allow both alternatives:

Other compound nouns with a post-modifying adjective or prepositional phrase have the plural infection only on the first element:

Partitive

Exceptional classes of countable nouns are treated here. As their major class implies, they package a number of things together. Four of such classes are recognized here: collective nouns, quantifying nouns, species nouns, and unit nouns. Generally, they are marked by of-phrase.

Quantifying Nouns

Quantifying nouns determines quantities with phrases mostly involving of-phrase connected with a plural or an uncountable noun. Seven of such nouns are dealt with in this section:

Nouns ending in –ful

The suffix –ful may be applied to any noun that is a form of container in some way. These are nouns such as: spoon, pocket, mouth, hand, and bow. Therefore, spoonful indicates a quantity as much as a spoon can contain. Similarly, pocketful, mouthful, handful, fistful, bowlful denotes as much as the prefixed nouns could contain. Such nouns can also be used in a figurative manner:

There were a handful of passengers at the station.

Couple and Pair

These nouns refer to two people, things and so on considered as a unit. However, couple and pair are really different in the way they associate with nouns:

pair of arms, eyes, glasses, gloves, pants, pliers, scissors, shoes, socks
couple of days, babies, balloons, boys, examples, hours, kids

Couple of is used more loosely, to refer to insufficient number of things of same kind. Couple of is equivalent a few, it may therefore be considered as a plural quantifier. However, such use of couple of mainly occurs in conversation.

There is a couple of gloves in the room.
It is a couple of baskets of oranges in the kitchen.
We will have to wait another a couple of hours for the paint to dry.

Two people in sexual relationship or two people who are together for a particular purpose can also be referred to as a couple.

An elderly couple lives next door.
The doctor attends to hundreds of childless couples.

Pair of is associated with two things that are inseparable in relation to their function. Pair of is mostly associated with plural nouns.

I found a pair of shoes on the table.
We have ten pairs of

If people pair up, they form a group of two.

Unit nouns

Unit nouns separate mass nouns into individual units or pieces. They are countable nouns but they are followed by an of phrase containing an uncountable noun.

Species nouns

Species nouns express the quality of an item among others. Quality separation is expressed by a separative count noun like kind, sort or type followed by of-phrase.

Gender

Some nouns differentiate people and animals based on their sex. Masculine, feminine and neuter are the classes of nouns that deal with sexuality. Masculine, feminine and neuter denote male, female and sexless objects respectively. The divisions are connected with the natural difference between male, female and the sexless.

The distinction between masculine and feminine can be expressed in several ways:

Here are some examples in the neuter class: chair, star, plantain, idea, and kindness.

In the names of living beings, we sometimes find three separate words, one common to both sexes, one for the male, and one for the female:

Others have only one set of two separate words, one for the male and the other for the female:

Those marked with asterisk (*) may be used generally regardless of gender. Such nouns are used for both sexes. Those nouns are usually the masculine ones. The feminine used in few cases for both sexes especially for animals the male of which is less popular. Man may be used to refer to human being in general. For avoidance of confusion, human is used in such constructions.

Possessive Forms (Genitive Case) of Nouns

The possessive form of a noun is used to show ownership. To make the possessive form, put an apostrophe and s (’s) after the noun. However, for nouns that end in s, the s after the apostrophe can be omitted. When two nouns are linked with and, only the second one is made possessive. Examples are:

The genitive case is suitable for personal nouns whereas the of phrase favours inanimate and abstract nouns.

Derived Nouns

Affixation (prefixes and suffixes), conversion and compounding are applied to form these nouns from other words. A prefix usually forms a new noun out of another with a different meaning. Thus, prefix does not change the word class of the base word.

Noun Prefix

The following list presents common prefixes and their common meanings

The suffix usually changes the meaning and class of the base word to form a new word.