Types of nouns
Proper nouns: Orange (a city in New South Wales), Banana (a small town in Queensland), The Big Banana (a tourist attraction), Perth, The Hunger Games, Norfolk Island, etc... and names of ships, planes, etc. such as the Qantas plane called Nalanji Dreaming [Note that each proper noun starts with a capital to show that it is the identifying name given to a particular person, place, thing.]Common nouns: all naming words other than proper nouns, with the sub-categories below. [Common nouns do not start with a capital. Note that many common nouns fall into more than one category. For example, the common noun orange is both a concrete noun and a countable noun.]
Concrete nouns: common nouns that name something ‘real’, tangible: orange, banana, cat, dress, glasses
Abstract nouns: common nouns that name ideas, concepts, abstractions: beauty, truth, happiness, success, finality, speed, acceptance, explosion
Countable nouns: common nouns naming items that can be counted: orange(s), player(s), dog(s), flower(s), chimney(s), day(s), teaspoon(s) [We can often add 's' or 'es' to these.]
Uncountable nouns: common nouns that can’t be counted because they are about quantity, volume: salt, flour, property, tea, knowledge, air [We can rarely add 's' to these.]
Collective nouns: nouns that can be treated as singular or plural depending on the context: team, family, committee, herd
Compound nouns: nouns formed by combining words to create a new concept: son-in-law, wire-cutter, sundown, build-up, teaspoons
Verbal nouns: present participles (-ing words) acting as nouns, e.g. planning (as in Planning is well under way) or living
(His living in Malaysia for a year has broadened his taste in food.) [Many people find the concept of verbal nouns, also called gerunds, difficult to grasp.]
Noun phrases/groups
Nouns are often surrounded by qualifying information. Examine this sentence:
A noisy fireworks display over the harbour welcomed in the new year.
The essence of that sentence is: A … display … welcomed in the new year. The simple subject, i.e. the head word without qualifying information around it, is display. The words in red simply add information about display:
- a (the indefinite article);
- noisy (an adverb qualifying fireworks);
- fireworks (an adjective qualifying display)
- over the harbour (an adjectival phrase qualifying display).
While 'display' is the simple subject, we can refer to everything up to 'harbour' as a noun phrase or noun group … and that noun group serves as the subject of the sentence (as opposed to the predicate, which is the verb and the object).
If the noun group is the subject, the head word is called the simple subject and the verb has to be the same number as that simple subject: e.g. ...A tiger (in the zoo) was … OR … Tigers (in the zoo) were.
Noun clauses
Any function fulfilled by a noun can also be fulfilled by a noun clause. Nouns can be the subject of a verb (The cat purred) , the object of a verb (He patted the cat), the object of a preposition (He gave pellets to the cat) or the complement of a sentence (His pet is a cat – i.e., pet = cat).
Noun clauses can also act as subjects, objects or complements. Here are three sentences showing how noun clauses function. In each case, the verb in the principal clause has been set in bold type and the noun clause (which has its own verb, of course, because it is a clause) has been set in red.
- Noun clause as subject: Who will be in the team will be decided tomorrow.
- Noun clause as object: The coach believes that this is the best possible team.
- Noun clause as complement: The question is which players will work together as a team.