nouns

Have you ever noticed that there are different words that form a sentence? These words are sorted as parts of speech. Of the considerable number of parts of speech, nouns are maybe the most essential. 

In this lesson, we will talk about what is a ‘noun’ and how to identify 'noun' in a sentence.

What is a noun?

Picture yourself sitting on a bench in a park and reading a book. What will you see around you?

Trees, Grass, Children, Ball, Bicycle, etc. All of these words are nouns.

A noun is a word that identifies a person, place, or thing. Here are some examples:

• Person: girl, boy, teacher, George, Sara
• Place: home, office, town, park, New York
• Thing: chair, apple, dog, cat, toy, spoon

Nouns are essential to write a good complete sentence. Going back to our imagination of sitting in a park, let’s make some sentences on what we might see there.

• Some children are playing football.
• One kid is riding his bicycle.
• A girl is jumping a skipping rope.  
• A boy is eating ice cream.

Can you identify the names of a person, place, or thing in the above sentence? 

• Some children are playing football.
• One kid is riding his bicycle.
• A girl is jumping a skipping rope.  
• A boy is eating ice cream.

The words 'children', 'kid', 'girl', 'boy' are person, and the words 'football', 'bicycle', 'skipping rope', 'ice cream' are things. These are all nouns. 

Some words are given below. Try to sort them into person, place, animal, or thing. 

Mt. Everest, teachers, bag, eraser, frog, school, boys, toy, Mark, dog, Paris, tiger, butterfly, towel, Sarah, park, book, cats, pencil, market

Do you get something like this? 

person	teachers, boys, Mark, Sarah
place	Mt. Everest, school, Paris, market, park
animal	frog, dog, cats, tiger, butterfly
thing	bag, towel, book, pencil, eraser, toy

Identify the noun in a sentence

Now that we know what a noun is, let us understand how to recognize a noun in a sentence.

A noun can be the person, place, animal, or thing 'doing' something, or it can be a person, animal, or thing having something done to it or 'receiving' the action. 

For example, in the sentence 'Some children are playing football', who is doing the action?

'children'. 

So, 'children' is the noun. 

Also, on what is the action being done or who is receiving the action? 

'football'

So, football is also the noun in this sentence. 

Thus, in the sentence 'Some children are playing football', there are two nouns - 'children', football'. 

Let's rewrite the above sentences highlighting the nouns. 

• Some children are playing football.
• One kid is riding his bicycle.
• A girl is jumping a skipping rope.  
• A boy is eating ice cream.

'children', 'kid', 'girl', 'boy' are all nouns that are 'doing' the action; 'football', 'bicycle', 'skipping rope', ice cream are all nouns that are 'receiving' the action. 

Let's look at another sentence - 'Brad tossed John the ball'. How many nouns are there in this sentence? 

Who is doing the action? Brad. 

Who is receiving the action done by Brad? First, 'ball', and then 'John' because 'John' receives the 'ball' tossed by 'Brad'. So there are two things that receive the action both 'ball' and 'John' - both are nouns. Therefore, this sentence has three nouns - 'Brad', 'John' 'ball'