The sentence

Nouns
A. One-word nouns
Noun endings: people who do things/people who come from places
1. We use some words only as nouns: e.g. desk, hat, tree, etc.
2. However, we often make nouns from other words by adding different endings or suffixes
and sometimes making other small changes. For example, if we add –er to a verb like play,
we get the noun player, if we add –ity to the adjective active, we get the noun activity.
There is no easy rule to tell us which endings to use to make nouns.
3. Typical endings which make nouns:
people who do things: actor, assistant, beggar, driver, engineer, historian, pianist.
people who come from places: Athenian, Berliner, Milanese, Muscovite, Roman.
Nouns formed from verbs, adjectives, other nouns
1. Some nouns have the same form as verbs: act, attempt, blame, book, call, capy, cost,
dance, fall, fear, help, joke, kiss, laugh, try, vote, wait, walk, wash.
2. Typical endings which make nouns from:
- verbs: acceptance, agreement, arrival, behaviour, discovry, knowledge, possession.
- adjectives: absence, activity, anxiety, constancy, happiness.
- other nouns: boyhood, kingdom, lunacy, mouthful, sexism.
And note –ing forms used as nouns: I’ve given your shirt an ironing.
Nouns and verbs with the same spelling but different stress
1. With some words, when the stress is on the first syllable, the word is a noun.
When the stress is on the second syllable, it is a verb. The meanings are related:
noun: We have finished Book 1. We have made good ‘progress’
verb: We are now ready to progress to Book 2.
2. The meanings can also be quite different:
noun: My son’s conduct at school hasn’t been very good.
verb: Mahler used to conduct the Vienna Philharmonic.
B. Compound nouns
Nouns formed with gerund (‘-ing’) + noun: ‘dancing – shoes’
1. When a noun has two or more parts (e.g. classroom), we call it a compound noun.
We can make compound nouns with the –ing form: e.g. dancing - shoes
2. The –ing form can sometimes be an adjective:
Can you see that ‘dancing’ couple? (= couple that is dancing)
When the –ing form is an adjective, we stress both words and never use a hyphen.
3. The –ing form can be the first part of a compound noun:
I need a pair of ‘dancing – shoes. (= shoes used for dancing; not ‘shoes that are dancing’)
When the –ing form is a noun, we stress the first word only and a hyphen is optional.
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