Parts of Speech: Nouns

• A unit on the parts of speech and key vocabulary

Noun

• Nouns name a person, place, thing, or idea.
• Examples include boy, house, car, freedom, Kate, Minnesota, desk, prejudice, mom, ocean, phone, and sadness.
• Nouns identify the whos, wheres, and whats in language.
• Nouns name people, places, and things.
• Examples: “George and Godzilla walked to Papa John's to order a large pepperoni pizza.”
• George is a person, Papa John's is a place, pizza is a thing, and Godzilla could qualify as another thing.

Common vs Proper Nouns

• Common nouns provide a general name for a person, place, thing, or idea.
• Common nouns are usually not capitalized unless they are found at the beginning of a sentence.
• Proper nouns are names of particular people, places, things or idea.
• Proper nouns are always capitalized.
• Common: actor, planet, month
• Proper: Adam Sandler, Venus, November

Concrete vs Abstract Nouns

• Concrete nouns name persons, places, or things that can be seen, heard, smelled, touched, or tasted.
• Abstract nouns name an idea, quality, or state.
• Concrete: bell, skunk, sand, apple
• Abstract: pride, sadness, uncertainty, independence

Singular vs Plural Nouns

• Singular nouns name only one person, place, thing, or idea.
• Plural nouns name more than one person, place, thing, or idea.
• Singular: city, foot, monster
• Plural: cities, feet, monsters

Collective Nouns

• Collective nouns name a group of people or things.
• Examples: herd, media, pack

Compound Nouns

• Compound nouns are a single noun formed by combining two or more words.
• Examples: footprint, doghouse, backpack

Possessive Nouns

• Possessive nouns show ownership or relationship.
• Examples: hiker's boots, Karen's car

Pronoun

• Pronouns take the place of a noun.
• Instead of "Kate," use "she", and instead of "car" use "it."
• Other pronouns include he, they, I, you, we, them, who, everyone, anybody, that, many, both, and few.
• The word that a pronoun stands for is called its antecedent.
• "Ray said he hates getting up early for school"- he is the pronoun.
• Possessive pronouns show ownership: e.g., "Kara drove her car".
• Singular personal pronouns, including possessive form: I, me (my, mine)
• Plural personal pronouns, including possessive form: we, us (our, ours)
• Second-person personal pronouns, including possessive forms: you (your, yours)
• Third-person personal pronouns, including possessive forms: he, him, she, her, it (his, her, hers, its), they, them (their, theirs)

Reflexive and Intensive Pronouns

• These are formed by adding -self or -selves to personal pronouns.
• Reflexive pronouns reflect action back upon the subject.
• Intensive pronouns emphasize a noun or pronoun in the same sentence.
• Examples: myself, yourself, himself, herself, itself, ourselves, yourselves, themselves

Demonstrative Pronouns

• Point out SPECIFIC persons, places, ideas, or things.
• Examples: this, these, that, those

Indefinite Pronouns

• Do not refer to specific persons, places, ideas, or things.
• Usually doesn't have an antecedent.
• Examples: another, anybody, anyone, anything, each, everybody, everyone, everything, much, neither, nobody, no one, nothing, one, somebody, someone, something, both, few, many, several, all, any, more, most, none, some

Interrogative Pronouns

• Ask a question.
• Examples: who, whom, whose, which, what

Relative Pronouns

• Introduce dependent clauses (something that can't be a sentence alone).
• Examples: who, whom, whose, which, that

Adjective

• Adjectives describe a noun or pronoun.
• Adjectives answer what kind, which one, how many, and how much.
• Articles are a sub category of adjectives, including a, an, and the.
• Adjectives modify nouns and pronouns and answer questions of what kind, which one, how many, or how much.
• Articles (a, an, the) are always adjectives.
• "My, our, his, her, and their" are possessive pronouns, NOT adjectives.
• Examples include old car (what kind), that car (which one), and two cars (how many).
• Adjectives modify or limit the meaning of a noun or pronoun.
• Examples of adjectives: famous song, squeaky noise, green light, this song, that way, these words, one dollar, three tenors, several years, some music, more room, less energy.
• Proper adjectives are capitalized and often end in -n, -an, -ian, -ese, and -ish.
• Possessive pronouns can look like adjectives.

Verb

• Verbs express action, condition, or state of being.
• Action verbs describe what things can do; examples include think, run, jump, climb, eat, and grow.
• Linking (or helping) verbs include am, is, are, was, and were.
• Action verbs can be physical or mental (knocked/wanted).
• Helping verbs (also called auxiliary verbs) are combined with other verbs to form verb phrases.
• A verb phrase may contain one or more helping verb with an action verb.
• Some helping verbs don't have an action verb with them; they indicate that an action is directed at the subject.

Adverb

• Adverbs describe verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs.
• Answer the questions how, when, where, and to what extent.
• Many words ending in "ly" are adverbs: quickly, smoothly, truly.
• Other adverbs include yesterday, ever, rather, quite, and earlier.
• Adverbs modify verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs.
• Adverbs answer the questions where, when, how, and to what extent.
• Add -ly to adjectives to form many adverbs.
• An intensifier is an adverb that defines the degree of an adjective or another verb.
• Intensifiers always precede the adjectives or adverbs they are modifying.

Preposition

• Prepositions show the relationship between a noun or pronoun and another word in the sentence.
• Begin a prepositional phrase, which has a noun or pronoun after it, called the object.
• Some prepositions: over, under, on, from, of, at, through, in, next to, against, like.
• Begin a prepositional phrase and are followed by a noun or proton that is called the preposition's object.

Conjunction

• Conjunctions connect words, ideas, and/or sentence parts: connecting words.
• FANBOYS (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so)
• Other conjunctions can be found at the beginning of a sentence: however, while, since, because.
• Coordinating conjunctions connect words or groups of words of equal importance in a sentence.
• Correlative conjunctions are word pairs that serve to join words or groups of words.
• Subordinating conjunctions introduce a subordinate clause that cannot stand alone and join them to independent clauses.
• Conjunctive adverbs express relationships between independent clauses.

Interjection

• Interjections show emotion.
• Usually the first word(s) and are set off from the rest of the sentence by a comma (,) or exclamation point (!).
• Examples: wow, bam, gee, ha, aha, ouch.