Nouns

Meaning of Abstract Nouns and their use

Abstract Nouns are things that can’t be held. They, often, are emotions, qualities, or characteristics such as “joy.”  

You can think of Abstract Nouns like this, they refer to things that you can’t experience with your five senses. Abstract Nouns can’t be seen, smelled, heard, tasted, or touched. 

Every language has Abstract Nouns. 

Abstract Noun Versus Adjective

What is the difference between an abstract noun and an adjective

There’s a Great Deal of Water in the Ocean

Ideologically, some things can’t be counted. For example, liquid can’t be counted like cookies, you can’t have 3 pieces of water.  A liquid can’t be broken down into pieces.

However, a liquid may be divided into cups (metric or otherwise), or measured in abstract quantities like “some.”  And, other substances, like grains of sand, are too numerous to count. 

When it comes to Uncountable Nouns, quantity words are used to give information about the Noun. Words like some, a bit, a handful, a great deal of and so much are used to express the unit of Uncountable Nouns. 

For example, you may hear a native English speaker say “There’s a great deal of water in the ocean.” This states that there’s a lot of water at the bottom of the sea. 

But there’s another route you may take, exact numbers work with Uncountable Nouns as well. For instance, someone may say that there are 321, 003,271 cubic miles of water in the ocean, or they may simply say “I’d like 5 cups of coffee.” 

Meaning of Possessive noun and how to use it in sentences.

Simply, a Possessive Noun shows ownership. For singular Nouns, a Possessive Noun is made by adding an apostrophe and s to the end of a Noun. For example, if a pen belongs to Aaron, it’s “Aaron’s pen.” 

If the noun is plural and ends in an “s”, place the apostrophe after the finals. For example, “Those are the airplane’s wings.” 

In the following sentence, “William’s” is a possessive Noun, modifying the car to show ownership: 

“William’s car won’t start.”

It is clear that the car belongs to William, the “’s” signifies ownership.

Here’s a dialogue using the possessive form of Nora. 

John: “Whose moped is that?”

Alice: “That is Nora’s moped.” 

John: “Girls can’t own mopeds.” 

Alice: “Girls can own mopeds, they can drive them too. Nora is an excellent driver. Nora’s moped is fast but she drives safely.”

Meaning of the Possessive form

The Possessive Form demonstrates the relationship between two or more objects (physical things, not sentence endings). These sentences are loaded with Nouns, Proper Nouns, and Pronouns. And so, it’s essential to understand the difference between a Proper Noun and a Pronoun to construct Possessive Form sentences. 

Pronouns take the place of a Noun. They are found in a sentence’s Subject as words like “his, her, she” and “theirs.” But, Proper Nouns are specific, capitalized nouns. They may be something like Dr. Smith.  

Let’s look at some Possessive Form sentences:

“Dr. Smith’s cat is at Eric’s house” demonstrates a relationship between “Dr. Smith’s cat” and Eric’s house,” our two Possessive Nouns. And so, our Verb Phrase is “is at.”

Here’s another example of a Possessive Form Sentence: 

“Sarah’s dog is by the station’s door.”