--- title: Nouns: the names of things, people, places and ideas — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Nouns: the names of things, people, places and ideas», a lesson of the language course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: A noun is a naming word: it names a person (girl, Mia), a place (kitchen, London), a thing (cat, mat) or an idea or --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/2-nouns-names-of-things-people-places-ideas/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Language](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/) / Nouns: the names of things, people, pl… # Nouns: the names of things, people, places and ideas Lesson 2 of the language course of Mova's primary school: 18 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/language/2-nouns-names-of-things-people-places-ideas/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/2-nouns-names-of-things-people-places-ideas/0/) — A noun is a naming word: it names a person (girl, Mia), a place (kitchen, London), a thing (cat, mat) or an idea or feeling (happiness, fear). - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/2-nouns-names-of-things-people-places-ideas/1/) — In "The cat sat on the mat in the kitchen" there are three nouns: cat, mat and kitchen; "the" is a pointer word, "sat" is the doing word, and "on" and "in" show where. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/2-nouns-names-of-things-people-places-ideas/2/) — A good test: can you put "the" or "some" in front of it, and does it name something? - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/2-nouns-names-of-things-people-places-ideas/3/) — "The happiness", "some fear" work, so happiness and fear are nouns, even though you can't touch them. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/2-nouns-names-of-things-people-places-ideas/4/) — The same word can change jobs: in "I run fast" run is a verb, but in "The run was long" it is a noun, because now it names a thing. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/2-nouns-names-of-things-people-places-ideas/6/) — A noun names a person, place, thing or idea. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/2-nouns-names-of-things-people-places-ideas/8/) — A concrete noun names something you can see or touch, like a mat; an abstract noun names an idea or feeling, like happiness, fear or friendship. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/2-nouns-names-of-things-people-places-ideas/9/) — A proper noun is the name of a particular person, place, day or month, like Mia, London or Monday, and starts with a capital letter; a common noun is a general word like girl or city. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/2-nouns-names-of-things-people-places-ideas/10/) — The word "I" always has a capital letter in English. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/2-nouns-names-of-things-people-places-ideas/11/) — A collective noun names a group, like a team, a class, a herd or a flock of sheep. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/2-nouns-names-of-things-people-places-ideas/12/) — Many fancy animal group names, like a murder of crows or a parliament of owls, come from old hunting lists written in the 1400s and are used mostly for fun. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/2-nouns-names-of-things-people-places-ideas/13/) — A word's class (noun, verb, adjective and so on) depends on the job it does in the sentence. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/2-nouns-names-of-things-people-places-ideas/14/) — Countable nouns can be counted (sweets); uncountable nouns are measured (sugar, water). - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/2-nouns-names-of-things-people-places-ideas/15/) — In careful writing people use "fewer" with countable nouns and "less" with uncountable ones, though in casual speech many say "less" for both. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/2-nouns-names-of-things-people-places-ideas/16/) — Some nouns end in s but take a singular verb, like "the news is" and "maths is"; some are always plural, like trousers, scissors and glasses, because they have two parts. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/2-nouns-names-of-things-people-places-ideas/17/) — With group nouns like team or family, British English often says "the team are" and American English usually says "the team is"; both are correct in their own country. - [18](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/2-nouns-names-of-things-people-places-ideas/18/) — A blend is a new word made from parts of two words, like spork, brunch and smog. - [19](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/2-nouns-names-of-things-people-places-ideas/19/) — In north-west England a butty is a sandwich, and "our kid" means my brother or sister, or a close mate. - ← previous: [What language is: sounds, words and rules everyone shares](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/1-what-language-is-sounds-words-and-rules/) - next →: [Verbs: doing words and being words](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/3-verbs-doing-words-and-being-words/) - ↑ back to [Language](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/language/)