How do you identify nouns in a sentence?

Answer 1

A noun is a word for a person, a place, or a thing. Examples:

• nouns for a person: mother, man, teacher, neighbor, friend, carpenter, mayor, manager.
• nouns for a place: city, county, province, country, continent, island, park, animal preserve.
• nouns for a thing: house, horse, potato, plate, shoe, roof, escalator, aluminum, cell phone.

Another group of words that are nouns are what some people call 'idea' nouns (abstract nouns); a word for an idea, a feeling, a belief, etc. is a also a word for a thing. Examples:

• ability, education, hope, fear, love, truth, knowledge, permission, information, relationship.

You can practice identifying nouns by taking a paragraph of printed text and, as you read the words, try picking out the words (underline, circle, or highlight) that may be a person, a place, a thing, or an idea. Then go to a dictionary (hard copy or on-line) and look up the words to see how many you got right. Do this as many times until you see that you are getting most of them correct. There are a lot of free on-line dictionaries.

All of us need to use a dictionary once in a while, no one knows all of the words in their language. That's why dictionaries were invented.

Answer 2

To identify nouns in a sentence, look for words that represent a person, place, thing, or idea. Nouns can be common (e.g., dog, cat) or proper (e.g., John, Paris). They can also be concrete (e.g., table, book) or abstract (e.g., love, happiness).