Part I The Noun

1.1. The noun: general information.

The noun is a word expressing substance in the widest sense of the word.

In the concept of substance we include not only names of living beings (e. g. boy, girl, bird) and lifeless things (e. g. table, chair, book), but also names of abstract notions, i. e. qualities, states, actions (kindness, strength, sleep, fear, conversation, fight), abstracted from their bearers.

The noun has the following morphological characteristics:

1. Nouns that can be counted have two numbers: singular and plural (e. g. singular: a girl, plural: girls).

2. Nouns denoting living beings (and some nouns denoting lifeless things) have two case forms: the common case and the genitive case.

3. It is doubtful whether the grammatical category of gender exists in Modern English for it is hardly ever expressed by means of grammatical forms.

1.2. Noun Plurals

The general rule to form the plural forms of the nouns is to add “-s” to the noun in singular.

book – books; house – houses

When the singular noun ends in: -sh, -ch, -s, -ss, -x, -o we form their plural form by adding “-es”.

sandwich – sandwiches; box – boxes;

potato – potatoes

When the singular noun ends in “y”, we change the “y” for “i” and then add “-es” to form the plural form. But do not change the “y” for “ies” to form the plural when the singular noun ends in “y” preceded by a vowel.

nappy – nappies; day – days

All nouns ending in -o preceded by a vowel form the plural in -s and not in -es.

cuckoo – cuckoos

With certain nouns the final voiceless consonants are changed into the corresponding voiced consonants when the noun takes the plural form.

The following nouns ending in -f (in some cases followed by a mute e) change it into v in the plural:

wife – wives; knife – knives

There are some nouns which have two forms in the plural:

scarf – scarfs or scarves wharf – wharfs or wharves

There are seven nouns which form the plural by changing the root vowel:

man – men; goose – geese;

woman – women; mouse – mice;

foot – feet; louse – lice;

tooth – teeth

There are two nouns which form the plural in -en:

ox – oxen; child – children

In some nouns the plural form does not differ from the singular: deer, sheep, swine, fish.

Some words borrowed from Latin or Greek keep their Latin or Greek plural forms: e. g. phenomenon, phenomena; datum, data; crisis, crises; stimulus, stimuli; formula, formulae; index, indices. Some of these nouns have acquired English plural forms: memorandums, formulas, indexes, terminuses, etc.

The tendency to use the foreign plural is still strong in the technical language of science, but in fiction and colloquial English there is an evident inclination to give to certain words the regular English plural forms in -s. Thus in some cases two plural forms are preserved (formulae, formulas; antennae, antennas).

In compound nouns the plural is formed in different ways.

As a rule a compound noun forms the plural by adding -s to the head-word:

editor-in-chief – editors-in-chief;

brother-in-law – brothers-in-law

In some compound nouns the final element takes the plural form:

lady-bird – lady-birds

If there is no noun-stem in the compound, -s is added to the last element:

forget-me-not – forget-me-nots;

merry-go-round – merry-go-rounds

Some nouns have only the plural form:

Trousers, spectacles, breeches, scissors, tongs, fetters. These are for the most part names of things which imply plurality or consist of two or more parts.

Billiards, barracks, works. These nouns may be treated as singulars. We may say: a chemical works, a barracks, etc.

Words like phonetics, physics, politics, optics, etc. are usually treated as singulars except in some special cases.

It was not practical politics!

All party politics are top dressing.

The word news is treated as a singular.

When she goes to make little purchases, there is no news for her.