Nouns and Pronouns
1. Kinds of nouns
| Kind | Meaning | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Proper | name of a particular person/place | Bhubaneswar, Kalidasa |
| Common | name shared by a whole class | river, boy (also: "the Kalidasa of Odisha") |
| Collective | a group taken as one whole | team, army, jury, fleet, herd |
| Abstract | quality, action or state | honesty, childhood, laughter, poverty |
| Material | substance | gold, iron, cotton |
Abstract nouns: brave → bravery, wise → wisdom, free → freedom, long → length, high → height, young → youth, know → knowledge, decide → decision.
2. Gender
- Masculine / Feminine / Common (teacher, parent) / Neuter (table).
- Collective nouns are neuter: The jury gave its verdict.
- Learn pairs: horse–mare, bachelor–spinster, drake–duck, gander–goose, fox–vixen, stag–hind, ram–ewe, monk–nun, wizard–witch, widower–widow.
3. Number
- Irregular plurals: child–children, ox–oxen, tooth–teeth, mouse–mice, goose–geese.
- -o: heroes, potatoes but pianos. -f/-fe: knives, thieves but roofs.
- Foreign words: criterion–criteria, phenomenon–phenomena, radius–radii, alumnus–alumni, crisis–crises, analysis–analyses.
- Compound nouns: sons-in-law, commanders-in-chief, passers-by, men-servants.
- Always singular (uncountable): advice, information, furniture, scenery, machinery, luggage, poetry, news, mathematics, politics.
- Always plural: cattle, police, scissors, trousers, spectacles.
- After a number: two dozen, five hundred (no s). Without a number: dozens of, hundreds of, thousands of.
- Compound adjective: a ten-minute walk (no s).
- Different meaning in plural: pains (effort), manners (behaviour), quarters (lodging), customs (duty department).
4. Possessive case
- Singular: Barry's. Plural ending in s: boys'. Plural not in s: children's.
- Lifeless things: use "of" (the leg of the table), except time/distance phrases: a year's time, a stone's throw.
- Joint possession: Ram and Shyam's house. Separate: Tagore's and Premchand's stories.
- Long name: the Queen of England's reaction.
5. Pronoun case
- After prepositions and "let": objective — between you and me, for you and me, let you and me.
- After "be": nominative — It is I. It was he.
- After than/as: supply the verb — taller than I (am); as much as (they gave) me.
- Possessive pronouns have no apostrophe: yours, theirs, its. It's = it is.
6. Agreement
- Order of persons: 1st over 2nd over 3rd — You and I … our; You and Hari … your.
- Courtesy order in speech: second, third, first — You, he and I; My friend and I.
- each / every / either / neither → singular verb and pronoun.
- Singular nouns joined by or/nor → singular pronoun; singular + plural → plural pronoun.
- Collective noun as one unit → its; members acting separately → their.
- "One" → one's throughout.
7. Kinds of pronouns
- Reflexive (He hurt himself) vs Emphatic (He himself did it).
- Demonstrative pronoun (This is my pen) vs demonstrative adjective (This pen).
- Distributive: each, either, neither. Indefinite: somebody, anyone. Reciprocal: each other, one another.
8. Relative pronouns
- who (subject), whom (object), whose (possession; also for things), which (things/animals).
- "that" after superlatives, all, only, same, nothing, and after a person + animal pair.
- Verb after a relative agrees with its antecedent: one of the novels that have; the only one of his poems that is; I, who am your friend.
- Parenthesis: Mr Dutt, who (they say) is the best painter.