Word Classes
Kinds of nouns and pronouns
Sort a noun into its kind, and choose the pronoun that stands in for a noun.
A noun names something. They do not all name the same kind of thing, though, and English has a name for each kind — which is worth knowing, because the kind decides things like whether the word needs a capital letter.
Common and proper
A common noun names any one of a kind: village, doctor, mountain, season. A proper noun names one particular one, and almost always begins with a capital letter: Friday, Kenya, Ravi.
Collective
A collective noun is one word for a whole group: a herd of cattle, a pack of wolves, a team of players.
Abstract
An abstract noun names something you cannot see, touch or point at: silence, hunger, pride, fear. Many are built from another word — bright becomes brightness, wise becomes wisdom. An abstract noun is usually a common noun as well — the two labels answer different questions — so when both fit, abstract is the more exact label, and the one to give.
A pronoun saves you from saying the same noun over and over. "Meera lost Meera's pen, so Meera borrowed a pen" is exhausting to read; "Meera lost her pen, so she borrowed one" says the same thing.
Four kinds of pronoun
Personal: I, we, he, she, they, me, him, us, them. Possessive: mine, yours, ours, theirs. Reflexive: myself, yourself, himself, ourselves, themselves — every one of them ends in -self or -selves. Demonstrative: this, that, these, those.
Worked example
Take the sentence: The players carried the players' bags to the players' bus.
The second "the players'" becomes "their".
It is telling you whose bags they are, so a possessive word does the job.
Try it together
Now clean up this one together.
The sentence is: Anil found Anil's book under Anil's desk, so Anil put the book away.
1.The last "Anil" is the person doing the putting. Which personal pronoun replaces it?
Have a go
Which word is an abstract noun?
Ready to practise?
Eight questions on what you have just read. Nothing is timed, and you can play as many times as you like.