WORD

CLASSES:
nouns and adjectives

By Nikki Fenech
• When we think of language, we tend to
think of words.
• Words are sorted into classes according
to the way they function in phrases and
sentences.

• There are 8 major word classes:

Nouns Adjectives Pronouns
Prepositions Verbs Adverbs

Conjunctions Determiners
NOUNS
• Nouns are often called ‘naming words’. They
are the names of people, animals, places,
concepts, ideas, feelings and things.

• If you wish to test an item to see if it is a noun,

try putting ‘the’ in front of it. If it is a noun, then
this can usually be done.
• Ex: The old vs The man
• The old does not make sense but The man
does since the former is an adjective whilst the
latter is a noun.
 Proper
Nouns Concrete
Common
Abstract
Collective
The following are examples of nouns:
• skirt
• lemon
Can you name the type
• Benjamin
of noun each one is?
• pollution
• cat
• girl
• fear
• Scotland
Proper Nouns refer to people’s names
and specific places and usually begin
with a capital letter.
Ex: England, Mary, Earth.

Common Nouns are less specific and

they refer to types of people, places,
feelings and objects.
Ex: village, woman, table, car, family,
happiness.
Most nouns are common nouns which can be
subdivided further into either concrete, abstract
and collective nouns.
Concrete Nouns refer to things that exist
physically, that can be seen directly by our
eyes, smelt by our nose, touched by our
hands, heard by our ears and tasted by our
tongue.
Ex: lion, milk, boat, toe, music, perfume, team,
Europeans, colony, tune.
Most nouns are common nouns which can be
subdivided further into either concrete,
abstract and collective nouns.
Abstract Nouns refer to things that do not exist
physically, mostly feelings, ideas, and concepts.
Abstract words are socially constructed by human
beings such as democracy, government, justice,
freedom, etc. In other words, abstract nouns are the
ones that come into the categories of concepts and
human based ideas.
Ex: compassion, humility, honesty, friendship.
Most nouns are common nouns which can be
subdivided further into either concrete, abstract
and collective nouns.

Collective Nouns refer to groups

of people, animals or objects.
Ex: herd, choir, crew, gang, family,
school
Types
of
Nouns
Common nouns can
be either :
• Countable nouns as they
are individual objects, animals
and people which can be
counted.
• Ex: boxes, computers, oranges,
dogs
• Uncountable nouns are
not individual so they cannot be
counted.
• Ex: news, love, information,
furniture
 Nouns can also be:

Singular Plural
ex: a sweet ex: sweets
an apple apples
a book books

Most plurals take an ‘s’ but

some do not.
Ex: sheep, teeth, children,
mice, deer.
Possessive Nouns
These nouns show that something belongs to
somebody by adding an apostrophe or an
apostrophe followed by an ‘s’.
Ex: This is Rachel’s book.
That is Adam’s car.

An apostrophe alone is added to plural

words what already end in ‘s’.
Ex: Those are babies’ toys.
The students’ classroom is locked.
Adjectives – are describing words used to
describe nouns. They are usually placed in front
of the noun they are describing.

Ex: An interesting film

An honest woman
A beautiful day

BUT sometimes they appear after

the noun.
Ex: The book was boring.
The girl was intelligent.
Comparative and superlative adjectives
Adjectives are used to make comparisons:

• Today is colder than yesterday.

• This holiday was more luxurious than last year’s. Comparative
Adjectives
• The Maths exam was harder than the English one.

• The Maths exam was the hardest exam.

• Today is the coldest day of the season Superlative
Adjectives
• Their honeymoon was the most expensive holiday they
went on.
Identify the specific word class of the
following nouns and adjectives:
• fabulous • London
• flower • gang
• discrimination • Maria
• Israel • worse
• desk • ship
• slower • sweaty
• most beautiful
• library
• democracy