noun

A noun names a person, place, thing, idea, action, or anything else that can be named. They may be common nouns, proper nouns, count nouns, or mass nouns, and they have four main properties:

1.  Case: A noun’s case denotes its relationship to other elements in the sentence. The three cases are nominative, objective, and possessive. In English, nominative and objective nouns are the same, while possessives usually use an apostrophe (for plural) or ’s (for singular).

2.  Gender: In English, most nouns don’t have genders. The exceptions are those that denote specifically male or female people or animals—for example, queen, boyfriend, rooster, actress, ewe.

3.  Number: Nouns are either singular or plural. Mass nouns can only be singular.

4.  Person: Person relates to whether an individual is speaking (first-person—e.g., “We the people“), spoken to (second-person—e.g., “You are people”), or spoken of (third-person—e.g., “Those people“). This property doesn’t change the form of the noun.