What is a collective noun and examples
The Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy (DRAE) defines the collective name as that "common name that in singular designates a homogeneous set of things, animals or people". Collective nouns are very important at the lexical level. However, we do not use them very often because they bear few similarities to the individual noun to which they refer and this makes it difficult to use them in everyday language. For example, the collective noun "pack" is nothing like "dog" and indicates a group of dogs.
In this lesson from a TEACHER we are going to study what is a collective noun. First we will explain what are the characteristics of a collective noun that differentiate it from the rest, and then we will see some examples.
A collective noun, also called a collective noun, is a type of noun that makes reference to a set or grouping of things, objects, animals or people that maintain a relationship of similarity between them. This characteristic is what differentiates collective nouns from individual nouns, since the latter refer to particular or individual objects or realities.
It is very important to bear in mind that collective nouns, despite referring to groups or collectives, is used in the singular: "fauna" is a singular noun and also a collective one because it indicates a group of animals. The same happens with "flora", which indicates a group of flowers or plants characteristic of a certain place. Another example would be the collective noun "shoal", which is a school of fish, as opposed to "fish", which is an individual noun because it designates a single fish within a group.
On the other hand, collective nouns They can also be pronounced in the plural. However, when this occurs, it means that there are several groups other than the referent expressed by the collective noun. For example, in the sentence There are many archipelagos in the Atlantic sea, the word "archipelagos" is plural because it indicates that there are several different sets of islands.
In this other lesson from a TEACHER we will discover different sentences with common and proper noun so that, also, you learn to differentiate them.
