English 101 - NOUN (series 1.A1)

     This is the second part of my English 101 series. After a brief discussion on the different parts of speech, this is about nouns, I would say the first and the heart of English sentence construction and word usage. Let's start with what is a word. A word is a group of letters that we utter. The letter m-o-t-h-e-r  is a word we use to refer to a certain person. When there is a group of words, we call it a sentence, phrase, or clause. 

Noun forms part of our everyday words, our speech. Some of my students who have had a weaker foundation in the lesson Parts of Speech confusingly referred to it as Figure of Speech (simile, metaphor, personification, etc). Noun, from the Latin word "nomen", literally means name. A noun is a word that names a person, a place, a thing, an animal, an event, an idea, or a concept. A noun can be divided into Concrete and Abstract.

Concrete nouns > names a material thing, people, place, anything that can be perceived through our senses, or does have a material existence.
Examples: planet, soldier, star, Earth.
The following cannot be perceived by the senses but have material existence: atom, proton, neutron, and cell.

Abstract nouns > names a concept, quality, emotion, condition, and attitude which have no material existence.
Examples:  joy, love, justice, freedom, power

Nouns have two kinds under these two divisions, namely, Common and Proper Nouns.

Common Nouns > names a "general" name of a person, a thing, a place, an animal, an event, a concept, or an idea.
Examples: boy, pencil, city, puppy, birthday, meetings, sports, knowledge, leadership

Proper Nouns > names a specific name of a person, a thing, a place, an animal, an event, a concept, or an idea.
Examples: Prince William, Mongol, Manila, Lassie, April, Olympic Games, Democrats

We also have the gender of nouns, in which we categorize each of them into hers, his, neutral, or common. The purpose is to identify the nouns to whom or which they should be used. The Genders of the noun are Masculine, Feminine, Common, and Neuter.

Masculine Gender Nouns > a noun used to refer to persons or animals of the male kind.
Examples: groom, prince, lad, rooster, king, duke, fiance, lion, uncle, nephew

Feminine Gender Nouns > a noun used to refer to persons or animals of the female kind.
Examples: bride, princess, lass, hen, queen, duchess, fiancee, lioness, aunt, niece

Common Gender Nouns > a noun used to refer to persons or animals whose gender has not been known or specifically stated.
Examples: citizen, visitor, people, student, child, singer, doctor, cat

Neuter Gender Nouns > a noun used to refer to objects.
Examples: car, house, ring, blouse, pants

Below are other nouns which are especially important in distinguishing the verb it agrees with. They will be discussed in my next blog post.

Collective Nouns > nouns used to refer to a whole group of people, places, things, or ideas.
Examples:

• Persons = family, committee, team, group, jury, crew, platoon, squad, troop, cast, battalion, bevy, colony, pride, class, coven, congregation, panel
• Animals = herd, club, gaggle, brood, litter, flock, pack, colony, caravan
• Things = bunch, bouquet, armada, fleet, deck, flotilla

Count Nouns > nouns that can be counted such as houses, books, clothes, shoes, etc.
Mass Nouns > nouns that cannot be counted individually, such as the words love, money, food, knowledge, and kindness.

We also have what we call the Number of nouns in which a vital role in sentence construction is very important, the Singular and Plural Nouns.
Singular nouns as the word implied, refer to a single person, place, thing, animal, or idea.
Plural nouns, however, implied more than one.
The list of these nouns with their corresponding plural forms will be provided in my next series as well as the different uses of nouns.

English 101 - Parts of Speech (series 1)

     My first day at school with each high school class started with a review of different parts of speech. It was mostly a disappointment that needed a question rephrasing, hints, and translation for them to remember or rather let them know what it is all about. Sometimes they interchanged it with figures of speech when they started answering metaphor, simile, etc. I can't blame them during their primary/intermediate days, most of them only spent 3 hours in school due to a lack of school rooms. I hope upon writing this, some of them will stumble upon it if not to give them the site's name.

Parts of Speech is a term used for the 8 categories into which words are classified according to their functions in a sentence. This term has been labeled by linguistics into word class or syntactic category. Parts of speech are divided into two, namely, Open classes and Closed classes. 

Open classes are the "content words" of a language, carrying the primary meaning of a sentence. They are easily expanded by adding new words which can be adaptable to new inventions, ideas, and cultural shifts, whereas,

Closed classes are the "function words" that provide grammatical structure and relationships within a sentence. They have a limited and relatively fixed set of word. They are fundamental to the grammatical structure of a language and their functions are well-defined. Adding new words would disrupt the established grammatical rules. 

Open classes are nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. Closed classes are pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjection.

1. Noun - a word that names a person, a place, a thing, an animal, an idea, or an event. (it is important to note that noun 'names a' not 'name of'. Noun actually give names, not the name of...  
2. Pronoun - a word that takes the place of a noun. The noun that the pronoun replaces or refers to is called the antecedent.
3. Verb - a word that expresses an action or a state of being.
4. Adjectives - words that describe a noun or pronoun.
5. Adverb - a word that describes a verb, an adjective, or another adverb.
6. Preposition - a word that expresses a relationship between a noun or pronoun and another word in the sentence.
7. Conjunction - a   word that connects an individual word or group of words.
8. Interjection - an exclamatory word or phrase that can stand by itself although it may also appear in a sentence.

 Examples:

1. Nouns: teacher, Emily, city, Manila, cellphone, Sony, dog, Snoopy, compassion, love, birthday.
2. Pronouns: I, me, you, he, she, it, who, which, all, any, few, several, everyone, somebody.
3. Verbs: get, take, hopes, appear, seem, is, was, are, were, have, will, can, may, must.
4. Adjectives: happy, new, tall, helpful, many, more, prettiest.
5. Adverbs: quite, very, so, too, slowly, always, gracefully.
6. Prepositions: in, on, about, over, behind, under, inside, outside.
7. Conjunctions: and, but, or, while, that, thus, so that, however.
8. Interjections: oh! wow! alas! aha! hooray!..

* The category of each word in the Part of Speech is based on how it was used alone or in a sentence.

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