What are the clues to identify a noun 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

A noun is a person, place, thing, or idea. Look for words in a sentence that refer to a person (e.g., boy, teacher), place (e.g., park, school), thing (e.g., book, car), or idea (e.g., love, freedom). Nouns can also be identified by articles (the, a, an) or pronouns (he, she, it).