Nouns can also get points across for example:
- Baseball, window, lamp
- Agent, sale, cash
- Hole, pocket, coin
Nouns are a class of words that name a person, place, action, quality -- basically anything for which we need to invent a name.
Nouns will always answer the questions who or what.
There is a little caveat to that though. For example look at the following sentence:
He went on tour with the band.
"He" answers the question of who and "tour" answers the question of what (and then "band" answers the question of with who). However "he" is a pronoun, or a word that takes the place of another noun. We will get into that later.
There are also proper nouns.
Larry went on tour with The Beatles.
In this case, both "Larry" and "The Beatles" are proper nouns, which are always capitalized.
Concrete nouns are nouns that can be sensed.
- We see a person.
- We taste a food.
- We hear music.
- We smell smoke.
Abstract nouns name qualities not directly sensed.
Examples:
- freedom
- success
- pride
- happiness
You have probably realized the importance of nouns at this point -- they are the building blocks of language and the key to understanding what you read. Shall we try a little exercise?
The following paragraph is by naturalist Gerald Durrell in "Golden bats and pink pigeons" (taken from the book "How grammar works"). As you read, see if you can list all the nouns. Hint: there are 28.
"Any naturalist at certain moments has experienced a thrill at the beauty and complexity of life, and a feeling of depression that one lifetime is an unfairly short span in such a paradise of wonders as the world is. You get this feeling when, for the first time, you see the beauty, variety, and lushness of a tropical rain forest, with its maze of a thousand different trees, each bedecked with garlands of orchids enmeshed in a web of creepers. There are so many species that you cannot believe that number of different forms have evolved."
Next week, I'll give you the answers to this exercise, and we will continue talking about nouns.