WHAT IS A GERUND NOUN?

 

WHAT IS A GERUND NOUN?  

Gerund Nouns are nouns formed from verbs describing an action, state or

process.  They usually employ ‘ing’ to make them change from verbs to subject-nouns/gerunds.  Consider the following examples:

-         Singing gladdens my heart

-         His weeping discourages me.

-         Her prolonged mourning has made her to become depressed.

-         The Head of Geography & Regional Planning Department is very slow with the signing of course forms.

-         Pharmacology students are known for the dissecting and bisecting of rats and guinea pigs.

Proper Nouns:

          Proper Nouns are names of specific persons, places, things and ideas, and they are always written with initial capital letters.  The under-listed, are examples of proper nouns:

-         Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan

-         Delta State

-         Acer Computer

-         The Urhobo Voice Mid-Week newspaper

-         African Union

-         Monday,

-         January,

-         2014

-         The 20^th Century

-         The Computer Age.

Common Nouns:

          Common Nouns are nouns which refer to ordinary things without any specific emphasis.  They are usually written without initial capital letters except if they begin a sentence.  Examples of common nouns are:

-         paper

-         pen

-         cat

-         house

-         leaf

-         water

-         air

 

Collective Nouns:

          Collective nouns are those that are considered to be singular grammatically, but they include more than one person, place, thing or idea in their meanings.  Examples of collective nouns are as follows:

-         Team

-         Jury

-         Committee

-         Audience

-         Crowd

-         Class

-         Family

-         Society

-         Panel

Countable (Or Count) Nouns:

Countable (or count) nouns are those used for enumerable or countable

subjects, objects or things.  Humans and animals are good examples of countable (or count) nouns.  So, we can say, for example:  “The students in this class are many”.

Uncountable (Or Non-Count) Nouns:

Uncountable (or non-count) nouns are used for liquids, air and other things

that are difficult to count, like sand, hair etc.  Exceptionally, however, money (even though countable), falls under uncountable nouns; so we can safely and correctly say, for example that “There is much money in this bag”.

Concrete Nouns:

          As the name implies, concrete nouns are nouns used for touchable or tangible items or objects.  Persons, animals, houses, motor vehicles, furniture, clothes, utensils, books etc, are all examples of concrete nouns.

Abstract Nouns:

          Abstract nouns are used for non-touchable or intangible things and ideas.  Examples of abstract nouns are:

air, justice, faith, belief, religion, safety, love etc.

Singular Nouns:

          These are nouns used for a person, place, thing or idea in a single state.

For example:  A boy, a book, a cat, a pen, a church etc.

Plural Nouns:

          Plural nouns are used to indicate persons, places, things or ideas in their plural form or numerous numbers.  Most plural nouns are made known by simply adding the letter ‘s’ to them e.g chairs (as plural of chair).  But as exception, if a noun ends with s, sh, ch or x, then ‘es’ has to be added to pluralise such.  For example, we have:

Boxes (as plural of box),

Churches (as plural of church), and Kisses (as plural of kiss).

Irregular Nouns:

          These are nouns which do not follow the rules of adding ‘s’ or ‘es’ to them to change from singular form to plural form.  Some examples of irregular nouns are:

-        Child (which changes to children in plural),

-        Goose (which changes to geese in plural), and

-        Mouse (which changes to mice in plural).

Note:      One noun can belong to different types or categories.  For example, the noun ‘Peter’ is proper, is countable, is concrete and is also singular, depending on usage.