Introduction

Greetings fellow steemians. How are you all doing. I believe you are having a great day.
I have come up with a new lesson which I believe will help us steemians greatly in connection with our grammars, spellings, effective use of English and communication skills.

These lessons will be dropped on a weekly basis and all who find it interesting will benefit from it and improve our writing skills as bloggers.

WORD CLASSES

The English grammar consists of sentences. These sentences are made of different classes of words; recognized as parts of speech or word classes.

The word classes are divided into two major classes:

(a)The Open Class System
(b) The Closed Class System

The Open Class System items are:

NOUNS

Traditionally, words that name things are Nouns, often times, these names may be concrete, abstract, qualities, substance, measurement, emotions, time, events, etc for example, you can have

Persons: Esther, Rose, etc

Events: Graduation parties, Marriages, etc

Qualities: Beauty, Intelligence, etc

Things: Television, Cement, etc

Places: America, Nigeria, Africa.etc

Nouns generally denote the class of words which name anything.

TYPES OF NOUNS

Nouns can be divided into four types.

These are names that are commonly shared by many persons (e.g. Men, boy, women, etc); places (e.g. state, country, school); things(e.g. table, cars, plates, etc), occupation (e.g. driver, marketer, writer, etc). Common nouns are usually grouped into countable and uncountable nouns.

Common Nouns

Countable	Uncountable
Three	Water
Plates	Sand
Five Boys	Oil
One Man	Fuel

Simply put, countable nouns are the names of the things that can easily be counted while the uncountable nouns are the names of the things that cannot be easily counted.

Proper nouns are names of specific persons, places, institutions, things, months and days of the week. For example, Glory, Abuja, August, Wednesday, University of Nigeria, Samsung Galaxy etc. The important thing to note about proper noun is that it always Must begin with capital letters in all the places they appear in a sentence.

Noun in this group refers to a group, or collection of persons or things; that is to say they name a number of items that are regarded as a whole. For example, congregation, jury, army, choir, committee, family, crowd, mob, class, gang flock, team, etc.

Abstract noun is the name of something which we cannot see or touch. Most abstract nouns are concepts that are only interpretable in the mind. For example, love, hatred, faithfulness, happiness, sadness, pity, sorrow, etc.

HOW NOUNS OPERATE IN SENTENCES

Nouns play the following roles in sentences as a subject, object, complement and sometimes they operate in apposition.

(a) Noun as Subject in a sentence:

This usually occurs whenever you have the noun element begins a sentence Consider the following examples:

Regina is a kind-hearted fellow.
Modesty is a good virtue.
The Family are having prayers.
Some writers are gifted individuals.

In all these examples, it is easily noticed that nouns begin the sentences and they come before the verb element. When nouns are used in this way it is said to be in the nominative case.

(b) Noun as a Complement in a sentence:

This is reverse of the one discussed above, in this case, the noun element comes after the verb e.g.

Edward is the Rector
Daniel and Sharon are Students
Kindness is an habit

(c) Noun as an Object in a sentence:

In this category, we can talk about the direct and indirect object for a better understanding, consider the following instances:

David killed the goat
Patrick printed the book for the teacher

Note that in the first sentence, the goat suffers the action of the subject (David) directly while in the second sentence, "the teacher" is indirectly affected by the action of the verb "printed". Again the second sentence carries two objects: direct and indirect,

(d) Noun in Apposition:

This occurs when we have two nouns operating in almost the same position. This is usually done for clarity. E.g.

Eddie Tim, the Rector is crowned a Chief
Mr. Felix , the GNS lecturer lives in England

The President appointed Ambassador Frank, the NDDC Chairman

In terms of number, we can isolate singular and plural nouns. A singular noun names only one person, place or thing while plural nouns name more than one thing.

★ Some nouns form their plural by the simple addition of the "S" Suffix at the end
Example:

Plural	Singular
Boy	Boys
Book	Books
Plate	Plates
Spoon	Spoons

Other nouns take various forms, for example:

★ When a noun ends with S. ch. sh. x. o, we only add 'es' suffix to form the plurals.
Example:

Singular	Plural
Ash	Ashes
Tomato	Tomatoes
Mosquito	Mosquitoes
Box	Boxes

★ When a noun ends with "O", it takes the 'S' suffix to show plural
Example:

Singular	Plural
Photo	Photos
Radios	Radio
Piano	Pianos

★ When a noun ends with 'Y' the plural changes "y" to 'ies'
Example:

Singular	Plural
Baby	Babies
Lorry	Lorries
Lady	Ladies
City	Cities

★ Some singular nouns that end in 'for "fe" changes to "ves" to form their plurals.
Example:

Singular	Plural
Thief	Thieves
Knife	Knives
Wife	Wives

★ Other classes of nouns undergo an integral change in the vowel(s) to show plurality
Example:

Singular	Plural
Mouse	Mice
Man	Men
Tooth	Teeth

★ There are some nouns that add "en" to form their plural.

Example

Singular	Plural
Child	Children
Ox	Oxen

★ However, there are other nouns that do not change.

Example:

Singular	Plural
Deer	Deer
News	News
Statistics	Statistics
Trousers	Trouser
Information	Information
Sheep	Sheep

Conclusion

That is the end of the lesson. I believe you have learned something in this lesson. Please drop your questions and suggestions at the comment section. I will be glad to hear from you.