Word Forms

Week:01

 Welcome to beginning grammar, Introduction to Grammar. In this lesson, you will learn about some different word forms. There are different kinds of words. We are going to look at nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Then we will look at different kinds of nouns: common nouns, proper nouns, and pronouns. To begin, a noun is a word that is a person, place, or thing. For example, a noun is a person like the words mother, student, teacher, and baby.

Noun:

A noun is also a place. The words city, restaurant, classroom, and park are all nouns.

examples;

A noun is a thing. So the words pen, chair, keyboard, and banana are also all nouns.

Verb:

 Another kind of word is a verb. A verb is an action word. Cook, laugh, drink, and dance are all verbs. They tell what happens.

Adjective:

 A 3rd kind of word is an adjective. An adjective is a word that describes a noun. Tall, hot, and pink are all adjectives. They tell you something about the nouns. The giraffe is tall, the coffee is hot, and the flower is pink.

Now you know three kinds of words. A noun is a person, place, or thing, like baby, park and banana. A verb is an action word like dance; the father and daughter dance. An adjective describes a noun like pink. This flower is pink.

Types of noun:

Now let's look more closely at nouns. There are different kinds of nouns. Two of these are common nouns and proper nouns.

 Common nouns and proper nouns:

 Common nouns and proper nouns are both words for a person, place or thing, but a common noun is for any person, place, or thing, and a proper noun is a name.

examples;

 Here's an example. Here's a student. The word student is a common noun. If we give this student a name, Mary, Mary is the name of the student. Mary is a noun, but it is a proper noun because it is a name. Notice the capital letter. We always use capital letters for proper nouns. But do you see student? We don't use a capital letter for the word student because it is a common noun, not a name. Let's take a moment here to look at the English alphabet. This is the alphabet. We have two kinds of letters. These are the capital letters. Sometimes we call them uppercase, but in these lessons, we will call them capital letters. These are the lowercase letters. In English, we start every sentence with a capital letter. You can see that here and here.

We also use capital letters for proper nouns like in this example, student is a common noun and Mary is a proper noun. It is the name of the student. Let's look at some more examples of proper nouns.

City is a common noun but New York is a proper noun because it is the name of a city. 

Notice the capital letters.

The word car is a noun, but Mercedes Benz is a proper noun because it is the name of a kind of car. That's why the m and b in Mercedes Benz are capital letters. The word street is a noun, but when the street has a name like Sunset Boulevard, it becomes a proper noun.

Practice:

Let's practice. You are going to see a word. Think, is it a common noun or a proper noun? Cat. Cat is a common noun. This could be any cat. We don't know the name of the cat. Buddy. Buddy is a proper noun. It's the name of this dog. Hilton. Hilton is a proper noun. Hilton is the name of the building or the hotel chain so it has that capital letter. Hotel. Hotel is a common noun. We don't know the name of the hotel, so we don't use the capital letter. Apple. The word apple is a common noun. Apple. This is a different kind of Apple. This apple is a brand name, so it is a proper noun. Look at the proper nouns here. Notice the capital letters. We use a capital letter to show proper nouns, that is, the names of nouns.

This is what you know. A noun is a word. A noun is a person, place, or thing. There are different kinds of nouns. You know, common nouns, proper nouns. 

Now the last thing that we will look at in this lesson is pronouns.

Pronouns:

 Pronouns are another kind of noun. This is the pronoun chart. In English, we organize the pronouns like this. First-person, second-person, and third person, and singular, that's one. Plural, that's more than one. There are some things to know about pronouns. First, noticed this, I. The pronoun I in English is always a capital letter.

There is only one you in English. Notice that singular you and plural you are the same. Let's look at an example.

Here's a teacher. He says, "You are right." Maybe he is talking to this girl. Maybe he's talking to this boy. Maybe he is talking to all of the students. Maybe he's talking to an older man or maybe he's talking to his dog. Every time he says "You are right" because there is only one "You" in English.

Also, the pronoun, they, can be people or things. Notice that he, she, and it are the singular form of the third-person. But the plural form is just they. That means that they can be two friends, or they can be five books. They can be girls or boys or things. Now let's look at how we use the pronouns.

Pronouns replace nouns. Let's read this. This is Jennifer. She is five-years old. She has a brother. He is seven years old. Jennifer is in kindergarten this year. Let's look for the pronouns. Here we see she two times. The pronoun she replaces the proper noun Jennifer. Then down here we see he, who's he? He is the brother, so here we replace the common noun brother with the pronoun he. We will learn more about pronouns in future lessons. All of these words work together. Let's read this. Hi, my name is Lisa. I'm from a small town in California. I am a student at University of California in Irvine. It is a big school.

First, do you see the common nouns and the proper nouns? Let's underline the common nouns. Name, town, student, and school. Now let's circle the proper nouns. Lisa, California, University of California, Irvine. Proper nouns are easy to see because they have the capital letters. Now, let's look for the pronouns. Do you see pronouns? We have the pronouns I two times and it. Remember I is always a capital letter. Down here 'it', only has a capital letter because it is the first word of the sentence.

Now you know there are different kinds of words. Nouns are words for a person, place, or thing. Verbs are action words, and adjectives are words that describe or tell about a noun. You learned that there are different kinds of nouns. Common nouns like student and hotel, proper nouns like Mary and Hilton, and pronouns like she and it.

practice Exercise :