(4) What kinds of nouns are there?
There are a number of different ways of categorizing nouns, but probably the one with the greatest consequence for English grammar is the distinction between count and noncount (also called mass) nouns. This distinction has consequences for what forms the noun has and for what the noun can cooccur with.
Noncount nouns do not appear in the plural. We can talk about beans since bean is a count noun, but rice has does not appear in the plural in its mass sense. (Like most noncount nouns, rice can also be used more markedly as a count noun referring to species of rice and so can be used in the plural in sentences like That company markets many different rices and other grains.)

Noncount nouns cannot be counted. A native speaker of English feels comfortable using numbers with count names, but does not feel comfortable using numbers with non-count nouns.   So a native speaker of English might talk about one bean or two beans or three beans  or more, but  not about *one rice or *two rices.  (The * means that this is not something that a native speaker of standard English would produce or accept as English.)

Noncount nouns cannot be modified with the indefinite article a or an, so one can talk about a bean, but not a rice.

For more about this question, see the answer to question (5) What is the difference between information and facts?