Properties of Nouns

As promised, I'm back with some more information on Nouns. Number and gender are properties of nouns. This means that they are expressed in these two forms combined together. Let us see what these properties are:

·         Number: It means ‘how many?’

 There are two forms that belong to the NUMBER category: Singular and Plural.

o   Singular noun means the naming word that is ONE in number or single.

o   Plural nouns mean the naming words are MANY in number. Please remember, uncountable nouns do not have plurals... Why? Because they cannot be counted!!

Now USUALLY we can turn a noun to plural by adding either –s or –es to the singular form, for example, one CAT and many CATS; one BOX and many BOXES. However, there are certain exceptions to this rule.

I’ve managed to cover quite a few here, however, there may be more... and if you come across some additional rules, please let me know.

METHOD OF FORMING PLURALS	EXAMPLE
When the singular word ends in a vowel followed by ‘y’, plural is made by simply adding an –s in the end.	Day-days, key-keys, boy-boys, guy-guys
When the singular word ends in a vowel followed by ‘y’, plural is made by replacing the ‘y’ with –ies.	Story-stories, body-bodies, cherry-cherries, entry-entries
When the singular word ends in ‘f’ or ‘fe’, then it is generally replaced by –ves. However, please note that there are quite a few exceptions to this guideline.	Half-halves, scarf-scarves, thief-thieves... exceptions- roof-roofs, belief-beliefs
When there is a single vowel sound between two consonant sounds, the vowel sound is replaced by another vowel sound	man-men, mouse-mice, goose-geese, tooth-teeth
In compound words, the –s is added to the actual noun, rather than its quality or description	Son-in-law becomes sons-in-law. However, grand-parent becomes grand-parents

An interesting thing worth mentioning here is that there are certain nouns that have only one form- either singular (measles, diabetes) or plural (scissors, glasses) and cannot be converted from singular to plural or vice versa.

There is yet another category of words that is used in both singular and plural forms, but is written as singular (sheep, hair, deer, fruit, fish...)

Now that we have learnt how to express whether our noun is one in number or many, let’s learn the gender categories in which our nouns can be divided.

·         Gender: It refers to the gender category the noun belongs to.

There are four kinds of gender on which our nouns can be classified:

o   Masculine-the obvious nouns that belong to the ‘male’ category like boys

o   Feminine- the obvious nouns that belong to the ‘female’ category like lady

o   Neuter-non-living things, inanimate objects, emotions, feelings or abstract nouns do not require to take any gender like a chair

o   Common- both males and females fall in this general category like a teacher or a doctor