Page 26 - New Grammar with a Smile 5

There are four kinds of nouns—common, proper, collective and abstract.

1. Common noun: It is the name of a person, an animal, a place or a thing, in general.
For example, boy, man, dog, park, bag and ship.

2. Proper noun: It is the name of a person, an animal, a place or a thing, in particular.
For example, Rajam, Bill Gates, Rufus, the Jagannath Temple, the Indian Ocean
and the Titanic.

3. Collective noun: It is the name of a collection of people, animals or things.
For example, herd, crowd, fleet and crew.

4. Abstract noun: It is a noun that we cannot touch, see, hear, smell or taste.
For example, loyalty, sincerity, charity, patience, surprise and truth.

Abstract nouns can be formed by adding suffixes to some adjectives, verbs and
common nouns. For example,

Suffix Examples

-ness happiness readiness goodness forgetfulness

-ity possibility scarcity probability responsibility

-ment enjoyment merriment disappointment appointment

-ship friendship partnership membership relationship

-ance appearance admittance governance assurance

-ence silence absence existence independence

-ion/-tion description production connection addition

-sion admission decision explosion intrusion

-hood childhood motherhood neighbourhood priesthood

A. Write a common noun for each proper noun.

1. Neeraj Chopra—player 2. Africa—continent

3. Ruskin Bond 4. the Taj Mahal

5. Mary Kom 6. Europe

7. Guwahati 8. the Bible

9. Kerala 10. CNN IBN

11. the Yamuna 12. The Sound of Music

26