Lesson 2: Nouns – The naming words

Previous lesson:- Lesson 1:Parts of Speech – The building blocks of a sentence

Do you remember in our previous lesson we have talked about the eight boxes of Parts of Speech, the basic building blocks of a sentence. We have learned their names as 1) Nouns, 2) Pronouns, 3) Adjectives, 4) Verbs, 5) Adverbs, 6) Prepositions, 7) Conjunctions and 8) Interjections. 

In today’s lesson we will open the first box: Nouns.

There are various types of objects, both living and non-living, all around us. We need to give each of them a name to make it easier for us to identify the objects. These naming words are called Nouns.

In other words, Nouns are the names of

• People e.g. man, woman, Ali, John,
• Things e.g. box, house, car, bat, pen, pencil,
• Animals e.g. cow, dog, horse,
• Birds e.g. crow, sparrow, cuckoo,
• Events e.g. Christmas, birthday, anniversary,
• Geographical locations e.g. ocean, river, plateau, Thames, Antarctica, Pacific Ocean,

Let’s see the different types of naming words there in the Box of Nouns.

Types of Nouns: -

1. Proper nouns – The names of individuals
2. Common nouns – The class names
3. Collective nouns – The naming words for collection or group
4. Material nouns – Name the substances
5. Abstract nouns – Names of quality, action or state

Let’s identify a few nouns from these sentences.

• Australia is a continent.
• There flows a river in front of our house.
• The army was praised for its victory.

All the underlined words in the above sentences are nouns. 

So, how are we going to identify whether it is a noun or some other Parts of Speech. Very simple. 

Just remember a noun is the name of anything - living and non-living things found in nature, different kinds of feelings, emotions, etc.

Other things to learn

There are a few more things those came out from this box of nouns.
They are:-

1. Numbers – Defining singularity or plurality of a noun
2. Gender – Masculine, Feminine and Neuter
3. Cases of nouns

We will learn about these latter. 

Exercise 2 (Level: Easy): Identification of Nouns

Next lesson: Lesson 3: Proper Nouns - The names of Individuals