Ten Parts of Speech in English
A Grammar Lesson
The ten parts of speech are lexical verbs (action words, such as 'run'); auxiliary verbs (verbs used with other verbs, such as 'must'); nouns (people, places, or things); adjectives, which modify nouns; determiners ('the', 'an', 'a'); adverbs, which modify verbs; pronouns, which replace nouns (for example, 'I', 'he'); prepositions, which link between two words (for example 'to', 'of'); conjunctions, which join phrases (for example 'and', 'but') and interjections, which are short exclamations such as 'Wow!'.
Although there are ten parts of speech, only two are needed in every sentence. Every grammatical English sentence has at least one noun (or pronoun) and one verb, although the noun may only be implied. The shortest possible English sentence is 'I am' which has a pronoun ('I') and a verb ('am'). In the imperative form of verbs, the noun is implied. That is, if we yell 'Run!' the 'you' is implied.
But English would be very limited if you only used nouns and verbs! You can modify nouns with adjectives, such as 'hot'. But you can also modify nouns with determiners. 'The boy' means something different from 'a boy'. Thus, some grammarians list determiners as a type of adjective. You can modify verbs with adverbs, which often end in 'ly'.
There is still more to putting English sentences together, it's not just nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. Many children go through a phase of writing in this way. 'I went to school. It was boring. I sat in my chair. I ate lunch. I came home.' English sentences can be put together with all the other parts of speech. 'I went to school and it was extremely boring. All day long I sat stiffly in my hard chair. Then, joyously, I came home'.
Source: http://www.englishclub.com/grammar/parts-of-speech_1.htm
Published by Peter Flom
I am a statistician, working with a wide variety of clients, mostly researchers in psychology, education, medicine, social sciences and other fields. I also have given talks and written articles on learning... View profile
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8 Comments
Post a Commentcool! *****
Good work :)
One of my favorite quotes of Gen Grant just before he died:
"The fact is I think I am a verb instead of a personal pronoun. A verb is anything that signifies to be; to do; or to suffer. I signify all three."--Bearing his discomfort stoically at Mt. McGregor shortly before his death.
A nice grammatical refresher, Peter. Thanks!
Thank you for the brush-up.
Good work. Ten parts of speech... and then functional shift!
It amazes me how much we take for granted when it comes to writing. We learned all this stuff in school but we don't think about it now. It's just there and we use it unconsciously. Of course I just looked at what I wrote and I see I did that unconsciously too.
And they wonder why English is one of the hardest languages to learn! Very good.