VERB TENSES (Part Nine)

Nouns, pronouns and articles. Nombres, pronombres y artículos en inglés
1. Nouns

Nouns are naming words.  A noun can refer to a person, place, animal, thing, event, substance or quality.

For example:      Woman/Uncle (person)

                              Park/Paris (place)

                              Cat/Bird (animal)

                              Book/Sky (thing)

                              Wedding/Party (event)

                              Water/Rock (substance)

                              Strength/Trust (quality)

We classify these nouns into concrete, abstract, proper and common:

concrete, as in real, touchable objects = Scissors/Potato/House
abstract, referring to ideas = Cost/Belief/Tradition
refer to events or actions = Meeting/Robbery/Shopping
refer to jobs = Waitress/Painter/Musician
proper names of things = Monday/England/Rachel* (*Proper nouns always have a CAPITAL letter.)
common nouns are all those that don’t fall under another category.
1.1 The plural form

To make a noun plural, look at what it ends with and follow these simple rules:

For most nouns, you simply add ‘s’ to form the plural = Dog/Dogs, House/Houses, etc.
For nouns already ending in ‘s’, add ‘es’ = Cross/Crosses, Boss/Bosses, etc.
For most nouns that end in ‘y’, remove the ‘y’ and add ‘ies’ = Party/Parties, Country/Countries.
For nouns that end in a vowel + ‘y’, keep the ‘y’ and add ‘s’ = Key/Keys, Toy/Toys.
For nouns that end in ‘f’ or ‘fe’, remove the ‘f’ and add ‘ves’ = Knife/Knives, Hoof/Hooves.
There are some nouns that are irregular, so you have to learn their plurals independently. These include: Tooth/Teeth, Mouse/Mice, Foot/Feet, Sheep/Sheep, Woman/Women,Man/Men, Person/People, Child/Children, etc.
1.2 Countable and uncountable nouns.

We divide nouns into things we can count individually, and things we cannot count.

For example: One apple, two apples. We know there are two as we can hold one in each hand and count them.  But liquids like water are things we cannot count.  We can’t hold water in our hands and make it into two individual things, so we call it an uncountable noun.


2. Pronouns

Pronouns are used to replace or refer to a noun in order to not to have to repeat the noun over and over.

For example:

                I have a pet bird. My pet bird likes carrots. I like my pet bird.

               I have a pet bird, he likes to eat carrots. I like him.

In this sentence ‘he’ and ‘him’ are the pronouns, referring back to the bird.

Here are some other examples, the pronouns are in bold:

               Sally went to a funeral last weekend. It was so sad.

               Are there any more plates? There’s one over there on the table you could use.

               I’ll meet you at the café, it’s just next to the department store.

               We really enjoyed the party last weekend, it was such fun!

               Will you have another biscuit? I made them myself.

Pronouns are divided into different functions:



2.1 Personal pronouns
 Personal pronouns are used to represent specific people or things. This depends on:

               -number: singular I) or plural (we)

               -person: 1st person I), 2nd person you) or 3rd person (he)

               -gender: male (he), female (she) or neuter (it)

               -case: subject (we) or object (us)

When I talk about myself, I use ‘I’, not Sophia, when I talk to my friends I don’t use their names, but ‘you’ or about somebody else, ‘he’ ‘she’ etc.


2.2 Possessive Pronouns

We use possessive pronouns to show who something belongs to. Usually we use possessive pronouns in relation to people, but we can also use them for animals and things.

We use possessive pronouns depending on:

               -number: singular (mine) or plural (ours)

               -person: 1st person ( mine), 2nd person (yours) or 3rd person (his/hers)

               -gender: male (his), female (hers)

Possessive pronouns can be the subject or object, and can refer to a singular thing or many things in plural.  For example:

                              What beautiful pictures! Which one is yours? ( yours = picture)

                             Do you like the pictures? All of them are mine. ( mine = pictures).


2.4 Interrogative Pronouns

The interrogative pronouns are what we use to ask questions.

The pronoun represents the thing we want to know.  There are four main interrogative pronouns: who, whom, what, which. We sometimes include whose as well as a demonstrative pronoun as it is an interrogative possessive pronoun and so it fits in both categories.


3. Articles

A/an and the are articles.  A/an is the indefinite article.  We use it to mean things in general. A we use it before consonants, and an we use it before vowels. The is the definite article.  We use it when we want to be specific about something.

For example, if you think of the sky during the day, there is one sun and a lot of clouds.  So we would say: “Look at the sun!” and “I can see a rain cloud”.