Noncount Nouns

 

Welcome to Our Online English Grammar HELP! Student Handbook!

Today we continue with our Grammar HELP! Book's discussion of nouns and pronouns. It is for beginners and intermediate learners of English.

We begin with written activities.  You can print out the exercises below and complete them.


1-4b Subject-Verb Agreement with Noncount Nouns

 

Look at the four sentences in the box below.  Look at the main verb in each of the following sentences. What do you notice about each one?

1.  Capitalism is the system on which the U.S. economy is based.
2.  There was a lot of crime.
3.  There was no crime and no theft.
4.  There is too much noise outside.

Each main verb in each sentence is a singular verb.

The verb for a noncount noun should be in the singular form.

What about when the sentence has a compound subject, and one noun is noncount and the other one is a plural count noun?

In this case, when the subject consists of a plural count noun and a (singular) noncount noun, the verb will agree with the noun that it is closest to.  See below.

Verb is closest to non-count noun:
There was a lot of crime*.  There were many problems.
There was a lot of crime* and many problems.



Verb is closest to plural noun:
There were many problems. There was a lot of crime*.
There were many problems and a lot of crime.

* Some words have a count and a noncount status.  In these sentences, the noun "crime" is used as a noncount noun.  Consult your dictionary for more information on this word.

Next...Noun Phrases

 

Please continue with our next unit, Noun Phrases.

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