A noun is a part of speech typically denoting a person, thing, place or idea.
In linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition.
Lexical categories are defined in terms of the ways in which their members combine with other kinds of expressions. The syntactic rules for nouns differ from language to language. In English, nouns may be defined as those words which can occur with articles and attributive adjectives and can function as the head of a noun phrase.
A noun in its basic form will often consist of a single stem, as in the case of the English nouns cat, man, table, idea and so on. In many languages nouns can also be formed from other nouns and from words of other types through morphological processes, often involving the addition of prefixes and suffixes. Examples in English are the verbal nouns formed from verbs by the addition of -ing, nouns formed from verbs using other suffixes such as organization and discovery, agent nouns formed from verbs usually with the suffix -er or -or, as in actor and worker, feminine forms of nouns such as actress, lioness, nouns formed from adjectives such as happiness, and many other types.
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The simple present or present simple is one of the verb forms associated with the present tense in modern English. It is commonly referred to as a tense, although it also encodes certain information about aspect in addition to present time.
It is called "simple" because its basic form consists of a single word (like write or writes), in contrast with other present tense forms such as the present continuous (is writing) and present perfect (has written). For nearly all English verbs the simple present is identical to the base form (dictionary form) of the verb, except when the subject is third-person singular, in which case the ending -(e)s is added. There are a few verbs with irregular forms, the most notable being the copula be, which has the simple present forms am, is and are.
The principal use of the simple present is to refer to an action or event that takes place habitually, as in He writes for a living (in contrast to the present continuous, which refers to something taking place at the present moment: He is writing a letter now). However certain verbs expressing a state, such as be and know, are used in the simple present even when referring to a temporary present state.
Like other English present tense forms, the simple present has certain uses in which it does not refer to present time. For example: My train leaves tomorrow; If we win on Saturday,...
EXAMPLES
The simple present is often used to express habitual actions referring to no particular span of time, as in He walks to school.
The simple present is often employed in newspaper headlines instead of the present perfect:
- Oldest man alive wins Olympic race
- Stock markets 'crash
It is employed in if clauses referring to the future:
- If he finds your sweets, he will eat them!
It is used when a planned event is described along with a time in the future:
- We leave for Berlin tomorrow at 1:00.
It is used with stative verbs in referring to states (unchanging situations) that exist in the present:
- I love you.
- She needs us.
- I know that.
BY: Andres Mojica & Felipe Martinez
