Revisiting parts of speech

This week we take a break from Literature and revisit parts of speech. The discussion on pronouns was quite interesting to many readers and some asked for more information on the other parts. There is a parent who expressed disappointment on the wrong use of some prepositions. For example, he seemed disturbed by continuously hearing people saying they discussed about, yet, discuss does not go with the preposition about. One discusses an issue not about something.

For example, “We discussed the wedding date as a family,” is correct. But, “We discussed about the wedding,” is incorrect. The other common problem is on the use of “return and back”. I do not know whether it is the slip of the tongue because in most cases people are heard saying, “She returned back home yesterday.” It is very difficult for the speaker to realise any mistake with that and that if it is brought to his attention he might put up a brave fight claiming that he did not make that mistake.

The issue is there are many other words which are commonly confused and parents of the old school are very much concerned when learners, who are their children, exhibit such weaknesses. The general feeling is that schools are not doing enough to teach these basic aspects of language. Before we proceed here are types of nouns. The last time we talked of nouns we gave a general definition of the noun and left other types.

Nouns are names of people, places and creatures. Nouns can be put into various categories as follows: Common nouns. A common noun names general things. As a general rule a common noun does not begin with a capital letter unless if it comes at the beginning of a sentence. Examples: desk, pen, bus, teacher, country. Proper nouns. Proper nouns are exact names of individuals or you can say proper nouns name specific things. What should be noted is that proper nouns always begin with a capital letter.

Examples of proper nouns: Luke, Themba, Bulawayo, Namibia, Nile, Europe. Collective nouns are general nouns which represent a group. They can also be defined as general names that represent several species of the same class. Examples of these are: trees, animals, people, cattle, and cars. We also have abstract nouns. An abstract noun names things that cannot be counted. Examples of these are: beauty, air, wind, wisdom etc.

There is an exception here. Whereas abstract nouns are uncountable, not all uncountable nouns are abstract. Examples of these are: oil, water, milk.

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