nouns

[Tchevy29@comcast.net]

I am having a lot of trouble identifying nouns in sentences. I know nouns are people, places, and things, but there is so much about the noun I am having trouble with. I am currently enrolled in Medical Transcription and I am having a hard time understanding why and how many words are "nouns". An example sentence: "He developed the sudden onset of left chest pain, which was worse with deep breathing." onset, pain, which, and breathing are the nouns.....but how? It seems they are more of an action than a noun. Also, words like: which, and this are nouns in my sentences I have been learning, but I do not know how they are nouns.

[Casiopea]

Ex: He developed the sudden onset of left chest pain, which was worse with deep breathing.

Welcome.

Here are a few tricks of the trade:

[1] Take the word out of the sentence and add the to it. If the result sounds right, you've got a noun.

Ex: the onset, the pain

[2] Look for the words the, a, and an; they modify nouns.

Ex: the sudden onset

[3] Look for adjectives; they also modify nouns:

Ex: sudden onset <sudden is an adjective>

Ex: left chest pain <left chest functions as an adjective modifying pain>

Ex: deep breathing <deep modifies breathing>

[4] Nouns occur in two places: in subject position and in object position. Subjects tend to come before the verb, and objects tend to come after the verb or after a preposition.

Verb

Ex: developed the sudden onset

Preposition

Ex: of left chest pain

Ex: with deep breathing

Breathing is a verbal noun. It ends in -ing, which makes it "feel like" a verb, but it doesn't act like a verb; it functions as a noun. Nouns sit in a subject or an object position. Breathing is the object of the preposition with. Verbs can't sit there, but gerunds can. Breathing is a gerund, a verbal noun in that context.

Which is a relative pronoun.

Hope that helps.