WORD CLASSES

NOUNS
A noun is a word for a person, animal, place, thing or quality.

There are two main classes of nouns. They are proper nouns and common nouns.

Proper nouns refer to particular persons, places, titles and brand names. Proper nouns
begin with capital letters.

Common nouns refer to any class or group of persons, places or things. Common
nouns can be divided into five categories.
 CONCRETE NOUNS

Collective Nouns refer to things that you can see, hear, taste, smell
and touch.

They are used with the article ‘a’, ‘the’, or ‘an’.

They can take the singular or plural form.

 COLLECTIVE NOUNS

Collective nouns refer to groups of items, animals or people of the

same kind.

Collective nouns can be either singular or plural, depending

whether the emphasis is on the group or the units within the group.
 MASS NOUNS

Mass Nouns refer to substances which cannot be divided.

Mass Nouns are usually used in the singular form.

Mass Nouns are used with determiners to show quantity and

measurement to become countables.
 ABSTRACT NOUNS

Abstract Nouns are used for non-concrete items.

Abstract Nouns refer to qualities, actions, and conditions/states.

COMPOUND NOUNS

Compound Nouns are made up of two or more words put together

to form a noun.

Compound Nouns can be written as one word, two words or with a

hyphen but they mean one thing.

Compound nouns can take the singular or plural form.

 ADJECTIVES

Adjectives give us more information about a noun.

Adjectives are usually placed before the nouns.

Adjectives follow the order of Quantity, Age or Quality, Size, Shape

or Colour, Origin.
 PRONOUNS

Pronouns are used to replace nouns.

There are four kinds of pronouns namely Personal Pronouns,

Possessive Pronouns, Relative Pronouns, Reflexive and Emphatic
Pronouns.
 VERBS

A verb is a word which denotes an action. It is also called an action

or ‘doing’ word.

A verb also expresses a state of being or fact.

There are two types of verbs namely main verbs and

auxiliary/helping verbs.
 ADVERBS

An example is a word that modifies a verb, an adjective or another

adverb.

Adverbs commonly answer the questions how (manner), when

(time), where (place), to what extent (degree) and how often
(frequency).
 PREPOSITIONS

A preposition is a word that shows the relationship between words

in a sentence.

It is used to show the time, duration, position, place, movement or

direction.
 CONJUNCTIONS

Conjunctions are ‘joining’ words.

Conjunctions are used to link one idea to the next.

 INTERJECTIONS

When we want to show our emotions and feelings such as

pleasure, satisfaction, surprise, pain, disgust, etc., we use
interjections.