Class / concrete nouns

They denote persons or things belonging to a class. They are countable, e.g. a flower - flowers, a tree - trees, a man - men.

COLLECTIVE NOUNS

They denote a number or collection of similar individuals or things regarded as a single unit. They can be divided into the following groups:

- Collective nouns used only in the singular and denoting a number of things collected together and regarded as a single object, e.g. foliage, furniture, luggage, baggage, machinery, equipment;

- Nouns of multitude singular in form though plural in meaning, e.g. police, poultry, cattle, people, gentry, etc. If such noun is used as subject, the verb used as predicate is in plural.

- Nouns that may be both singular and plural, e.g. family, audience, crowd, public, press, committee, council, crew, fleet, nation, group, team, party, staff, government, management, army, names of organizations (the UN, Coca-Cola).

NOUNS OF MATERIAL

They denote material or substance, e.g. iron, gold, water, snow, etc. They are uncountable.

Nouns of material can be used in the plural to denote different sorts of a given material, e.g. Foods are not allowed here.

Nouns of material turn into class nouns when they begin to denote an object of definite shape made of this material, e.g. a glass, an iron.

ABSTRACT NOUNS

They denote some quality, state, action or idea, e.g. kindness, fear, fight, etc. As a rule, they are uncountable, but some of them are countable, e.g. an idea, an hour, etc.

They can turn into class nouns if they denote objects, possessing qualities denoted by abstract nouns, e.g. a beauty - beauties, a sight - sights, etc.

THE MORPHOLOGICAL STRUCTURE OF NOUNS

Nouns can have the following morphological structure.