There are other nouns which form the plural by changing the last letter before adding "s". Since we are moving, we will need many boxes. He tripped over a box left carelessly in the hallway. I like to shout into the quarry and listen to the echoes that return. As they walked through the silent house, they were startled by an unexpected echo. Many people do not believe that truths are self-evident. Most nouns change their form to indicate number by adding "-s" or "-es", as illustrated in the following pairs of sentences: When Matthew was small he rarely told the truth if he thought he was going to be punished.
The manager was trying to write a want ad, but he couldn't decide whether he was advertising for a "waiter" or a "waitress"Noun Plurals Sarah Siddons was at the height of her career as an actress in the 1780s. David Garrick was a very prominent eighteenth-century actor. Those that are still used occasionally tend to refer to occupational categories, as in the following sentences.
Once, many English nouns would change form depending on their gender - for example, a man was called an "author" while a woman was called an "authoress" - but this use of gender-specific nouns is very rare today. Many common nouns, like "engineer" or "teacher," can refer to men or women. Philosophy is of little comfort to the starving.Ī noun can function in a sentence as a subject, a direct object, an indirect object, a subject complement, an object complement, an appositive, an adjective or an adverb.Noun Gender According to Plutarch, the library at Alexandria was destroyed in 48 B.C. The bus inspector looked at all the passengers' passes. The highlighted words in the following sentences are all nouns: Late last year our neighbours bought a goat. Nouns are usually the first words which small children learn. Written by Heather MacFadyen What is a noun?Ī noun is a word used to name a person, animal, place, thing, and abstract idea. In this sentence, the compound verb "were destroyed" describes an action which took place in the past. Karl Creelman bicycled around the world in 1899, but his diaries and his bicycle were destroyed. In this sentence, the verb "was" (the simple past tense tense of "is") identifies a particular person and the verb "remember" describes a mental action. My first teacher was Miss Crawford, but I remember the janitor Mr. Here the compound verb "will plant" describes an action that will take place in the future. In early October, Giselle will plant twenty tulip bulbs. The verb "bites" describes the action Dracula takes. In each of the following sentences, the verb or compound verb is highlighted: Dracula bites his victims on the neck. The verb or compound verb is the critical element of the predicate of a sentence. A verbor compound verb asserts something about the subject of the sentence and express actions, events, or states of being. The verb is perhaps the most important part of the sentence. When you have finished, you might want to test yourself by trying the exercise. The next few sections explain each of the parts of speech in detail. In this sentence, "cries" is a noun acting as the direct object of the verb "heard." The baby cries all night long and all day long.īut here "cries" is a verb that describes the actions of the subject of the sentence, the baby. Here "jail" is part of the compound verb "would jail." They heard high pitched cries in the middle of the night. Here "jail" is a noun, which is the object of the infinitive phrase "to build." The sheriff told us that if we did not leave town immediately he would jail us. In this example, "walk" is a noun, which is part of a prepositional phrase describing where the mail carrier stood. In this sentence, "walk" is a verb, and its subject is the pronoun "we." The mail carrier stood on the walk. Here "books" is a verb, and its subject is "Bridget." We walk down the street.
Deborah waits patiently while Bridget books the tickets. In this sentence, "books" is a noun, the subject of the sentence.
ANOTHER WORD FOR MANY YEARS OF EXPERIENCE SERIES
The next few examples show how a word's part of speech can change from one sentence to the next, and following them is a series of sections on the individual parts of speech, followed by an exercise. In fact, the same word can be a noun in one sentence and a verb or adjective in the next. Traditional grammar classifies words based on eight parts of speech: the verb, the noun, the pronoun, the adjective, the adverb, the preposition, the conjunction, and the interjection.Įach part of speech explains not what the word is, but how the word is used.