Nouns and Pronouns

Nouns are one of the most common types of words that we use in sentences every day, whether it be in conversations with friends or writing an essay for class. In this video, we’ll be taking a look at all of the different types of nouns and how they function in sentences, and we’ll also see how nouns and pronouns work together to make sentences flow smoothly. Let’s get started!

Nouns are words that name a person, place, thing, or idea. For example, sister and Lindsey are people, school and Halsted Street are places, puppy and tree are things, and happiness and energy are ideas, so all of these words are nouns!

Nouns can be broken down even further into different categories depending on what the noun is doing in the sentence.

COMMON NOUNS

Common nouns, like these, are words that refer to general people, places, things, and ideas. This means that a common noun is not given a specific name or title like John or Eiffel Tower (we’ll talk about names a little later on). Here’s an example of a common noun used in a sentence:

The common noun used in this example is dinner, which, in this case, is a thing. Let’s look at one more.

This sentence has multiple common nouns, for example, doctor and park. In this case, these common nouns are a person and a place. Seems simple enough, right?

Now let’s look at proper nouns.

PROPER NOUNS

Proper nouns are people, places, or things that have specific names or titles, and they are always capitalized. For instance, the word road is a common noun, but Tomball Lane is the specific name of the road, so Tomball Lane is a proper noun.

Here’s an example sentence:

There are two proper nouns in this sentence: Rachel and Arizona. These are specific names of a person and a place, and they are both capitalized. The word car, on the other hand, is a common noun since we’re not mentioning the car by a specific name or title.

Now, take a look at these two sentences:

The word dad is used in both of these sentences, but notice how it’s capitalized in one sentence and not capitalized in the other. Why is that? Well, in the first sentence, dad is a common noun, meaning we aren’t using dad as a specific name or title. In the second sentence, dad is used as the name of a specific person, so it is considered a proper noun.

PLURAL NOUNS

Now, as you might expect, nouns can be singular or plural. Just as it sounds, a singular noun describes a single thing, while a plural noun refers to multiple things.

There are a few different ways to make a singular noun plural, depending on what letter the noun ends with. The general rule is that you add an s to the end of a noun to make it plural, like in the words bat, car, and table.

If a singular noun ends with s, x, z, ch, sh, or ss, you add -es to the end to make it plural.

If a word ends with y, there are two different rules to keep in mind. If the letter before the y is a consonant, you remove the y and add -ies to the end.

For instance, to make the word city plural, you would replace the y with -ies because the letter before the y is a consonant, t. If a vowel precedes the y, then you simply add the letter s to the end.

There are also two different rules to follow if a noun ends with o. If the letter before the o is a consonant, you add -es to the end to make it plural.

If the letter before the o is a vowel, you simply add the letter s to the end to make it plural.

If a noun ends with f or fe, you need to change the ending to -ves. This means that half becomes halves and knife becomes knives.

Now, as with all rules, there are definitely exceptions to all of these we’ve just discussed. For instance, the plural of child is not childs (it’s children), and the plural of tooth is not tooths (it’s teeth). These are examples of what we call irregular plurals.

Since there is no hard-and-fast rule for these plurals, you’ll need to memorize them as you come across them.

Now that we know all about singular and plural nouns, let’s move on to possessive nouns.

POSSESSIVE NOUNS

Possessive nouns are nouns that describe ownership of something. We show ownership by adding an apostrophe and an s to the end of a singular noun and only an apostrophe to a plural noun that ends with s.

Take a look at this example:

In this sentence, we see three nouns but only one of them is possessive. Mom’s is the possessive noun because the car belongs to her, not Liz.

Nouns that don’t refer to humans or animals can also be possessive.

In this example, the possessive noun is trees’ because the leaves mentioned belong to the trees. Did you notice the placement of the apostrophe? Because trees is plural, we just add an apostrophe to the end and do not add another s after it.
As I mentioned before, if a noun is plural but does not end with s, you add an apostrophe and an s to the end to make it possessive.

COLLECTIVE NOUNS

Before we move on to pronouns, let’s take a look at collective nouns. Collective nouns are nouns that refer to a group of people or things. For instance, if you’re referring to a group of multiple people playing a sport, you would use the collective noun team.

All right, now that we’ve discussed several different types of nouns, let’s move on to pronouns.

PERSONAL PRONOUNS

Pronouns are words that take the place of nouns. In other words, pronouns can describe a person, place, or thing without you having to name it multiple times in the same sentence or paragraph, which alleviates unnecessary repetition. The noun that the pronoun is replacing is called the antecedent.

Let’s first take a look at personal pronouns.

These are pronouns that are used to refer to people. For example, instead of saying “When Tina walked in the house, Tina took off Tina’s shoes,” you could use the pronouns her and she to replace the noun Tina:

When a personal pronoun is acting as the subject of a sentence or phrase, we call it a subjective personal pronoun, and when it’s acting as the object, we call it an objective personal pronoun.

In this sentence, for example, they is a subjective pronoun and us is an objective pronoun.

POSSESSIVE PRONOUNS

Just like nouns, pronouns can be used to show possession; we call these “possessive pronouns.”

Take a look at this sentence:

In this example, the possessive pronoun hers is replacing the noun notebook. If we had not used a pronoun here, we would have said “It looks like this notebook is her notebook,” which is a bit repetitive.

This is when it becomes important to know the difference between possessive pronouns and possessive adjectives, because they’re often confused with each other. A possessive pronoun takes the place of a noun, while a possessive adjective describes a noun. For example, the word my is a possessive adjective (“I’m reading my book”), but the word mine is a possessive pronoun (“The book is mine.”).

DEMONSTRATIVE PRONOUNS

Demonstrative pronouns are used to refer to specific things that are either near or far away.

For instance, if you wanted to refer to a book that you’re holding, you would say “Could you put this on Mark’s desk?” Notice that the pronoun this completely replaces the word book; that’s what makes it a pronoun. If we said “Could you put this book on Mark’s desk?” the word this is an adjective describing the word book, not a pronoun replacing the word book.

INTERROGATIVE PRONOUNS

Interrogative pronouns are used to refer to nouns in the form of a question.

Here’s an example:

In this sentence, the interrogative pronoun who is taking the place of the noun that answers the question. In other words, if we said “Percy invented the microwave oven,” the pronoun who takes the place of the proper noun Percy.

Once again, it’s important not to confuse interrogative pronouns with interrogative adjectives. If I say “Whose jacket is this?” the word whose is not a pronoun—it’s an adjective. For whose to be a pronoun, I would have to say “Whose is this?” In that case, it’s a pronoun because it completely takes the place of the noun jacket.

Remember, an interrogative pronoun takes the place of a noun, while an interrogative adjective describes a noun.

INDEFINITE PRONOUNS

Indefinite pronouns are used to refer to non-specific people, things, or amounts.

Take this sentence for example:

In this case, the indefinite pronoun is anybody because it refers to an immeasurable amount of people.

Okay, we’ve discussed a lot about nouns and pronouns, so let’s go over a few review questions before we go.

1. What kind of noun is Tuesday?

1. Common noun
2. Possessive noun
3. Proper noun
4. Collective noun

 
2. Which of the following singular nouns was pluralized incorrectly?

1. singer → singers
2. dish → dishes
3. church → churches
4. tax → taxs

 
3. Which word in the following sentence is an objective pronoun?
She caught them cheating on their homework assignment this morning.

1. she
2. them
3. their
4. this

 
4. Which of the following sentences contains an interrogative pronoun?

1. Whose is this?
2. Which one is hers?
3. What kind is that?
4. Where is it?

All right, that’s all for this video! Thanks for watching, and happy studying!

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