Nouns are described as words that refer to a person, place, thing, event, substance, quality, quantity, etc. The grammatical categories associated with nouns are number, gender and case. There are different types of nouns.
Abstract Noun
An abstract noun is a noun the refers to ideas, qualities, and conditions – things that cannot be seen or touched and things that have no physical reality.
- truth
- danger
- happiness
- time
- friendship
- sleep
Abstract nouns refer to abstract objects; that is, ideas or concepts. While this distinction is sometimes exclusive, some nouns have multiple senses, including both concrete and abstract ones; consider, for example, the noun art, which usually refers to a concept but which can refer to a specific artwork in certain contexts. In English, many abstract nouns are formed by adding noun-forming suffixes to adjectives or verbs.
- happiness
- circulation
- serenity
Concrete Noun
A concrete noun is a noun that refers to people and to things that exist physically and can be seen, touched, smelt, heard or tasted.
- dog
- building
- coffee
- tree
- rain
- boy
- Delhi
Concrete nouns are of four types: common, proper, collective and material.
Common Noun
A common noun is a noun that refers to people or things in general.
- boy
- country
- bridge
- city
- birth
- day
- happiness
Proper Noun
A proper noun is a name that identifies a particular person, place, or thing.
- Steven
- Africa
- Taj Mahal
- Monday
In written English, proper nouns begin with capital letters.
Collective Noun
A collective noun refers to groups of people or things.
- audience
- family
- government
- team
- jury
Material Noun
The material noun is a noun that can be measured or weighed but cannot be counted.
- gold
- water
- iron
- rice
Now, these things cannot be counted but are measured. Also, we make jewellery out of gold and pots from iron. Material nouns are considered singular hence, we use singular verbs (is, has) with them.
- Gold has become expensive over the past couple of years.
- The fish, I bought from the supermarket, is looking fresh.
- Water is the basic need of life.
A noun may belong to more than one category. For example, happiness is both a common noun and an abstract noun, while Mount Everest is both a concrete noun and a proper noun.
Count and Mass Nouns
Countable and Uncountable nouns vary from language to language. In some languages, there are no countable nouns. Besides, some nouns that are uncountable in English may be countable in other languages.
Nouns can be either countable or uncountable. Countable nouns (or count nouns) are those that refer to something that can be counted. A Count Noun has a plural form and can be preceded by a, an, the.
- A tiger is a fierce animal.
- The tiger is a fierce animal.
- An apple a day keeps the doctor away.
Uncountable nouns (or mass nouns) do not typically refer to things that can be counted and so they do not regularly have a plural form. It cannot be preceded by a, an, or one.
- luggage
- furniture
- fun
- advice
- milk
- laughter
- information
Uncountable nouns differ from count nouns in precisely that respect. They cannot take plurals or combine them with number words or the above type of quantifiers.
For example, it is not possible to refer to furniture as three furnitures. This is true even though the pieces of furniture present at a place could be counted. Thus the distinction between count and mass nouns should not be made in terms of what sorts of things the nouns refer to, but rather in terms of how the nouns present these entities.
Many nouns have both countable and uncountable uses.
- Coffee is countable in He ordered a coffee, but uncountable in Would you like some coffee?
- Work is uncountable in He has done much work today where work is countable in The works of Shakespeare are immortal.