 There are eight parts of speech in the English language: noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, conjunction, and interjection. An individual word can function as more than one part of speech in a sentence when used in different circumstances. Understanding parts of speech is important when determining the correct definition of a word in a dictionary. Noun A noun is a word for a person, place, thing, or idea. man, kitten, Toronto, baseball, Alberta, happiness Nouns are often preceded by articles, as in "a woman entered the room". A proper noun is a specific name for a person, place, thing or organization, and always starts with a capital letter regardless of where it is in the sentence. "The dog whose name was Barfo wanted a bone whenever we were in Edmonton". Pronoun A pronoun is a word used in place of a noun. she, we, they, it, me, their "Mary sat down. She was looking tired". Mary is the antecedent for the pronoun 'she'. Pronouns always refer to the nearest previous noun as the antecedent. Be careful with this. For example, in the sentence "Barfo made Bob angry when he pooped on the carpet", it sounds like Bob is doing the pooping, because the pronoun 'he' refer back to Bob the nearest noun. Rearrange it to read: "Bob got angry with Barfo when he pooped on the carpet". The pronoun also needs to match the number of antecedents. For example, if you want to refer to both Bob and Dave with a pronoun: "Bob and Dave liked to listen to Verb The verb in a sentence expresses action or being. gave, hit, ran, was, bought "Mike hit the ball" "Dave can read pretty well". 'Read' is the main verb; 'can' is a helper verb. A verb must agree with its subject in number (both are singular or both are plural). Different verb forms are used in combination to express when actions occur. The simple present, past, and future tenses simply place events in time. Find out more about verb tense here. Adjective An adjective is a word used to modify or describe a noun or a pronoun. It usually answers the question of which one, what kind, or how many. (Articles [a, an, the] are usually classified as adjectives.) "The third man sat on the yellow bench". Adverb An adverb describes or modifies a verb, an adjective, or another adverb, but never a noun. It usually answers the questions of when, where, how, why, under what conditions, or to what degree. Adverbs often end in -ly. "John brought a very big dog with him". ['very' modifies the adjective 'big'] "He quickly hid the money". ['quickly' modifies the verb 'hid'] Preposition A preposition is a word placed before a noun or pronoun to form a phrase modifying another word in the sentence. "by the tree" "with our friends" "about the book" "until tomorrow" They form a phrase that shows relationships between words in a sentence. The prepositional phrase almost always functions as an adjective or as an adverb. The 25 most common prepositions: Conjunction A conjunction joins words, phrases, or clauses.
Interjection An interjection is a word used to express emotion. It is often followed by an exclamation point. "She is very smart. Wow!" Information on this page was supplemented by material from Butte College located here. Visit the link for many more detailed examples; see especially the tip sheets on the left side of the page. |