Question

Which word in the sentence is a PLURAL noun? The city's lights shone brightly on the horizon last night.

Answer 1

lights

Background Information

What is a noun?

A noun is a person, place, thing, or idea

How do you know if a noun is plural?

Generally, if a noun is plural it will have an -s or -es at the end of the word. There are a few exceptions (ie octopi vs octopus; cacti vs cactus; die vs dice; fish vs fish; deer vs deer), although those are not relevant to this question

Answer Walkthrough

First, let us identify all the nouns in the given sentence by underlining them:

The city's lights shone brightly on the horizon last night.

Our nouns are:

• city's
• lights
• horizon
• night

Now let's describe what kind of noun each is (person, place, thing, or idea)

• city's = place
• lights = thing
• horizon = place
• night = thing

Remember, plural nouns will end in -s or -es. Which of the nouns above end in -s or -es?

• city's
• lights

Let's analyze each noun individually:

City's

This word ends in an -s however it follows an apostrophe ('). Unless the apostrophe (') follows the -s the word is not plural (moms', ducks', etc). Instead, an apostrophe (') before an -s can indicate one of two things. It could indicate a (1) contraction (ie it's = it is) or that the noun is (2) possessing something.

How do we know which is the case? Context is key, but if you are still unable to figure out, you can test it as such:

(1) Does 's indicate a contraction? To see this try removing the contraction and substituting it with the whole word being contracted (is). Does the sentence still make sense?

The city is lights shone brightly on the horizon last night.

This sentence does not make sense, thus we can conclude that it does not indicate a contraction

(2) Does 's indicate a possession? To see this try to identify what the noun is possessing

The city's lights shone brightly on the horizon last night.

The city owns the lights, thus the 's indicates a possession

City's is NOT a plural noun

Lights

Lights ends in an -s and do not contain an apostrophe ('). In the context of the sentence, it makes sense that there are multiple. Thus, lights is the plural noun of this sentence

Answer 2

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Which word in the sentence is a PLURAL noun?

1. The city's lights shone brightly on the horizon last night.

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Here, in the given sentence the word 'lights' can be considered as plural noun.

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Words are divided into many various types, commonly known as parts of speech. According to their work in a sentence the parts of speech are divided into eight parts.

1. Noun
2. Pronoun
3. Adjective
4. Verb
5. Adverb
6. Preposition
7. Conjunction
8. Interjection

Now let's talk about noun,

Noun: A word used as the name of a person, place, animal or thing.

Here, in the given explanation of noun the word 'thing' is used to represent anything that we can think of.

For example: Akbar was a wise king.

In the given sentence, the noun Akbar refers to a particular king, but the noun king might be applied to any other king as well as Akbar. therefore we can call Akbar a Proper Noun, and king a Common Noun.

Types of noun:

1. Common Noun
2. Proper Noun
3. Collective Noun
4. Abstract Noun
5. Countable Noun
6. Uncountable Noun

Remember it:

• A noun that denotes female animal is considered as Feminine Gender.

• A noun that denotes male animal is considered as Masculine Gender.

• A noun that denotes neither male nor female is considered as Neuter Gender.

Let's see,

How Plurals are formed?

• Generally formed by adding -s to the singular.
• But nouns ending in -s, o, -sh, -ch (soft), or -x from the plural by adding -es to the singular.
• Note that, a few nouns ending in -o merely add -s.