About Nouns
Nouns are used as subjects of sentences and as the objects of verbs and prepositions.
Common and Proper Nouns
Generally there are two types of nouns – common nouns and proper nouns.
Common nouns refer to any place, person or thing, for example, girl, apartment, city.
Proper nouns refer to particular places, persons and things, for example, Mark, New York, the White House.
Singular and Plural Nouns
Nouns can also be categorized as singular nouns and plural nouns. Sometimes certain nouns are used exclusively as either singular or plural nouns. That means they do not have a corresponding word to their own singular or plural form.
Singular nouns are used for single occurrence, single person, single item, and etc.
Plural nouns are used for more than more occurrences, persons, items, and etc.
A quick comparison table of some tricky nouns in their singular and plural forms:
Alumnus Alumni
Bacterium Bacteria
Criterion Criteria
Formula Formulae
Medium Media
Phenomenon Phenomena
There are some singular nouns often mistaken as plural nouns because they end with �s�.
Citrus, Economics, Glasses, Means, Measles, News, Physics, Scissors, Series, Species, Statistics
Countable and Uncountable Nouns
Another way to group nouns is separating them into countable nouns and non-countable nouns. Countable nouns usually have both singular and plural forms. Uncountable nouns are used just as singular.
Countable nouns can be counted in the number of 1, 2, 3…. Examples are desk, pen, person.
Uncountable nouns can not be counted in any numbers. Rather, they are considered an entire item. Some most commonly used uncountable nouns are water, health, and money.
Other examples of uncountable nouns include:
Advice, Anger, Baggage, Beauty, Gasoline, Information, Luggage, Smog, Wheat
Sometimes a noun is used as an uncountable noun when it is referred to the entire idea or substance, but it can be used as a countable noun when used in a context involving:
Countable pieces or containers for things.
Uncountable: I prefer tea to coke.
Countable: Two teas (two cups of tea) for us, please.
Different brands, makes, or types.
Uncountable: I love cheese.
Countable: There are so many cheeses to choose from.
A specific example.
Uncountable: She has shiny hair.
Countable: I found a hair today in my sandwich. It grossed me out.
Uncountable: He is great at sport.
Countable: Skiing is a popular sport in Austria.
Collective Nouns
Certain nouns are used to just describe a collection of people, items, or events in their entirety. Even though they are referring to more than one thing in the collection, they are singular. However, when they are used to represent a number of collections, then they are plural.
Examples include:
Audience, Business, Choir, Committee, Company, Crowd, Family, Flock, Government, Group, Majority, Nation, Pack, Team, The Public, Unit
Thank you for a patient reading!!!! More topics to follow!! Keep visiting CLAT Gurukul.
Note:
Questions on Grammar constitute an important part of English section which carries a weightage of 40 marks in CLAT. Questions in the form of English usage come from Grammar, the other two areas under English being Reading Comprehension and Vocabulary. Being Grammatically correct is the most important thing in English.You can’t learn grammar in a day or within a forthnight. For this, you need constant reading and referring to some good standard grammar books. We will also be guiding you time to time with our write-ups on Grammar every week.
The above topic has been contributed by The Knowledge Tree ( Patna’s premier coaching institute for CLAT and other law entrance exams like AILET, SET,LSAT etc) with the help of Manhattan Review.