Nouns and Verbs

Nouns answer questions like “What is it?” and “Who is it?”

Nouns name things, people, places, and ideas: purses, gymnasts, theater, and democracy.

In some languages, like Spanish and Italian, nouns have gender. English, on the other hand, sometimes shows gender by changing the form of certain words.

Feminine	Masculine	Feminine	Masculine
wife	husband	actress	actor
woman	man	widow	widower
mother	father	waitress	waiter
aunt	uncle	princess	prince
girl	boy	heroine	hero

Many nouns are not gender specific, meaning that the word could apply to men and to women. (Teacher, parent, doctor, friend, teenager, student, cook, cousin, engineer, and lawyer are examples.) If it is important for your audience to know the sex of your subject, you can clarify by writing, “The male cook made tortillas.”

Common nouns are nouns that are not proper nouns.

Proper nouns are capitalized. Why? Proper nouns are specific names or titles. For example, instead of saying, “The girl went on vacation,” I could say, “Mary traveled to Florida.” In English, proper nouns are used for names (of people, streets, countries, cities, bodies of water, etc.), titles of people, titles of books, months of the year, days of the week, holidays, and adjectives relating to nationality nouns.

What needs to be capitalized in the following sentences?

·         janice read the red tent on saturday.

·         In december, we celebrate christmas.

·         The boy likes chinese food and french music.

Pronouns take the place of nouns. They often replace proper nouns to add variety to our writing. For example, if you are writing a story about your brother (John), you do not want to write “John did this. John did that. John knew better.” Instead, you can write, “John broke the vase, and then he hid in his room.” The noun that the pronoun replaces is called the antecedent. Find the antecedent in the following sentences:

Some pronouns to remember: I, me, my, mine, you, your, yours, he, him, his, she, her, hers, it, its, we, us, our, ours, they, them, their, theirs, myself, yourself, himself, herself, itself, oneself, ourselves, yourselves, and themselves.

He is the subject of the sentence, and “him” is used as a direct object.

Every sentence in English must have a subject and a verb. The subject is the person or thing doing the action. The direct object is the person or thing receiving the action.

·         Beth sings a song.

·         Jeremy made a cake.

·         Steve painted the house.

Examples include cat, store, idea, and pen.

I have two cats. We went to eight stores. Julie had several good ideas. Three pens disappeared from my desk.

Examples include sugar, air, rice, tea, knowledge, anger, love, and fear. (These words typically do not have a plural form.)

In English, we typically make nouns plural by adding –s or –es. How do you know when to add “s” and when to add “es”? If the word ends with two consonants, you typically need to add “es.”

Singular	Plural
hat	hats
ocean	oceans
game	games
dish	dishes

A noun ending in –y preceded by a consonant makes the plural with –ies.

Singular	Plural
a cry	cries
a fly	flies
a poppy	poppies
a baby	babies

Irregular plural forms can confuse people. Some of these “rule breakers” are in the following list:

Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
woman	women	man	men
child	children	tooth	teeth
foot	feet	person	people
leaf	leaves	half	halves
knife	knives	wife	wives
life	lives	loaf	loaves
potato	potatoes	cactus	cacti
nucleus	nuclei	syllabus	syllabi
analysis	analyses	diagnosis	diagnoses
oasis	oases	thesis	theses
crisis	crises	phenomenon	phenomena
datum	data	criterion	criteria

Some nouns are the same in the singular and plural forms.

(Sheep, fish, species, and aircraft are several examples.)

Words like water and melon can be joined together to form a different word: watermelon.

bed + room = bedroom                        boy + friend = boyfriend

police + man = policeman                     hair + cut = haircut

You must learn these words and others like them. Having the computer check the spelling will not help because the words are spelled correctly even when they are not joined together.

When you are writing or speaking, verbs can make your story more interesting.

For example: The girl walked to the store.

The girl sauntered to the store.

In our conversations, we often use verbs like got, went, and saw.

But we can use different verbs to be more specific. Did you “go to the park,” or did you “jog at the park?”

Think of verbs to replace the verbs in the following sentences:

·         Jenny went to the movie.

·         Jeff got a new cell phone.

·         Tammy saw a lizard on the sidewalk.

Main verbs change form (tense) to indicate when something happened. If a word does not indicate tense, it is not a main verb. All main verbs have FIVE forms, with the exception of “BE,” which has eight.

Base Form talk, sing

Past Tense Yesterday I (talked, sang).

Past Participle In the past, I have (talked, sung).

Present Participle Right now I am (talking, singing).

-s Form Usually he/she/it (talks, sings).

Gerunds are the –ing form of verbs that are used as nouns. They usually name an action occurring before the action of the main verb. (The following verbs can only be followed by a gerund: admit, appreciate, avoid, complete, deny, discuss, dislike, enjoy, finish, imagine, keep, miss, postpone, practice, put off, quit, recall, recommend, resist, risk, suggest, and tolerate.)

Verb + Gerund = She admits wanting the best seat.

(The wanting occurs BEFORE the admission.)

Infinitives include the word “to.” These words name an action that occurs AFTER the action of the main verb. Some verbs that are followed by an infinitive include: afford, agree, arrange, ask, beg, choose, claim, decide, deserve, expect, fail, hope, manage, need, offer, plan, pretend, promise, refuse, want, and wish.

Verb + Infinitive = She wants to win.

(The winning would happen AFTER the wanting.)

What are helping verbs? (They are the same thing as “auxiliary verbs.”)

Some helping verbs—mostly forms of be, have, and do—show time (will have been playing, has played) or are used for emphasis (does play). Forms of do are also used to ask questions (Do you play?).

be, am, is                                  being, been                   do, does, did

are, was, were                          have, has, had

Other helping verbs, called modals, signify the manner (or mode) of an action. Unlike the auxiliaries be, have, and do, one-word modals such as may, must, and will are almost never used alone as main verbs, nor do they change form to show person or number. Modals DO NOT add –s endings, and two modals are never used together.

One-word modals: can, could, may, might, will, would, shall, should, and must.

·         Despite the weather, Jane will jog three miles.

·         Rachel would give the candy to you if you asked nicely.

·         You should write a letter to your grandparents.

These irregular verbs have to be memorized:

Present	Past	Past Participle
be	was, were	been
become	became	become
begin	began	begun
blow	blew	blown
break	broke	broken
bring	brought	brought
buy	bought	bought
catch	caught	caught
choose	chose	chosen
come	came	come
deal	dealt	dealt
do	did	done
drink	drank	drunk
drive	drove	driven
eat	ate	eaten
fall	fell	fallen
feed	fed	fed
fight	fought	fought
find	found	found
fly	flew	flown
forbid	forbade	forbidden
forget	forgot	forgotten
forgive	forgave	forgiven
freeze	froze	frozen
get	got	gotten
give	gave	given
go	went	gone
grow	grew	grown
have	had	had
hide	hid	hidden

For a complete list, visit http://owl.english.purdue.edu and type in “Irregular verbs”
in the search box.

Information for these handouts was compiled from the Online Writing Lab at Purdue, A Writer’s Resource, and Keys for Writers.