Categorising nouns

Collective nouns
What are collective nouns? The term “collective noun” refers to nouns which identify a group of people, animals or objects. Examples: a crowd of people, a herd of cattle/elephants. A bunch of keys, bananas, grapes. A collection or group of people living in the same house and related is a family. A group of birds is a flock.

Collective nouns make writing more interesting. It avoids having to repeat expressions such as “a lot of’ or “a group of”. The army was marching in step to the nice beat of drums. An army is a group of soldiers. A swarm of bees flew past the playground sending learners scurrying for cover. Instead of saying a lot of cards we write a stack of cards. A lot of people watching a play is an audience. A lot of grapes on one stalk is a bunch.

If you were to make sentences of your own they would go like this: He ploughed his field using a span of four oxen. A troop of baboons destroyed his crops. Spectators enjoyed watching an exciting football match. He owned a fleet of cars before he died. The crowd applauded after their local leader gave a motivational speech.

Abstract nouns – An abstract noun is the name of something you cannot touch, see, taste, hear or smell. Most abstract nouns fall into the following categories: Qualities like wisdom, cowardice, beauty and many others. Feelings like jealousy, sadness, et cetera. Times also fall under abstract nouns like, morning, evening, Friday and others.

These qualities can be “good” or “bad” and can relate to people, animals and objects.

For example you can talk about the bravery of the young man, the foolishness of an individual. The fierceness of the tiger, the roughness of the tree trunk. Feelings: Again these can be “good” or “bad”. They usually relate to people but can be used for animals, especially when animals appear as characters in stories. For example: the happiness of the boy, the misery of the lost widow. The anger of the wounded lion or the sorrow of the black puppy.

Times: Abstract nouns of time can refer to periods of time, days, months and so on. We can also point out that some abstract nouns are also proper nouns. Examples of abstract nouns are “the summer”, “September”, “last month”, “this year”. Maybe in the middle of this you might try this exercise: Which type of noun are these listed here: queue, swarm, cart, September, window, poverty, mob, Saturday, Sally, afternoon, girl and foolishness.

You can use each of the following abstract nouns in sentences of your own: friendship, freedom, kindness, morning, fear, robbery, pleasure and evening. So far you have seen that a noun has a number of variations. Gone are the days when you simply recited that a noun is a name and stopped there. It is important that you know all the types from definition to functions or usage in sentences.

Compound nouns:  A compound word is a word made up of two or more existing words. For the purpose of this article, the definition is a noun made up of two other nouns, for example, matchbox, doorstep, spaceship, snowman, snowball, snowflake, watercolour, waterfall, waterhole, watermark, watermelon, waterway, watermill, waterline, waterbed, waterwheel and others. There is a complication in that some compound nouns are hyphenated like: table-cloth. Make sure you learn and understand this type.

More examples of compound nouns: teacup, shoelaces and flowerbed.

Note that the family of nouns consists of common nouns, proper nouns, collective nouns, abstract nouns and compound nouns. If I may repeat compound nouns are made up by joining two other nouns together. Write plurals of the following nouns. Example: wolf – wolves, lady – ladies, woman – women, foot – feet. Mosquito, scarf, donkey, wineglass, piano, penny, dictionary, shelf, fox, potato, bus, servant, cross, goose, hero, pastry, envelope, journey echo and others.

Categorising nouns: common nouns, proper nouns, collective nouns, abstract nouns, compound nouns. Put each of these nouns in the correct list: cup, Wednesday, path, Australia, Zambezi River, raindrop, bundle, staircase, grief, coat, generosity, hatred, July, gong, moonlight, horse, skill, crew, chorus, evening, team, postman, crew and basket.

From the noun, next in line are pronouns. We shall look at the use of personal pronouns which stand in place of nouns.

There are three categories we will examine; personal pronouns, possessive pronouns and relative pronouns. As learners you should be able to identify pronouns and understand their function in sentences, recognise the gender and number of pronouns. You should be able to substitute pronouns for common and proper nouns in your writing.

You should identify pronouns and understand their functions in sentences through noticing in speech and writing how they stand in place of nouns. You should be able to distinguish the 1st, 2nd and 3rd person forms of pronouns.

Examples: I, me, we, you, she, her, them. You should be able to investigate how pronouns are used to mark gender, for example, he, she, and so on. We will pick it up from here next time.

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