Parts of Speech #

I. Noun #

• a word used as name of a person, place or thing.

e.g. tree; horse ** Ex: The boy threw the ball

There are three kinds of nouns:

Common: Any person place or thing – boy ,city or hat

Proper: Specific name of person, place or thing – Sean, Sydney, Sombrero

Abstract: Not concrete or tangible – a concept – jealousy, beauty, truth

II. Noun Equivalents #

A pronoun is a noun equivalent, i.e. it is used in place of a noun.

nominalise - verbs, adjectives, adverbs…

1. to convert (another part of speech) into a noun, as in changing the adjective lowly into the lowly or the verb legalize into legalization.

2. to convert (an underlying clause) into a noun phrase, as in changing he drinks to his drinking in I am worried about his drinking.

There are two types of nominalization.

Type A involves a morphological change, namely suffixation: the verb “to investigate” produces the noun “investigation,” and “to nominalize” yields “nominalization.” – Henry Hitchings, “Those Irritating Verbs-as-Nouns,” New York Times, March 30, 2013

The other noun equivalents in English are:

1. The adjective used as a noun, - The good are always merry.

2. The gerund: Surfing has become a very popular pastime.

We like surfing during the summer months.

3. The noun infinitive:

To keep silent is often too difficult.

I desire to dream away an hour or two.

4. The noun phrase:

What to wear is my problem.

Do you know how to study effectively?

5. The noun clause:

Why Snodgrass acted in that way puzzled his friends.

They all thought that Snodgrass behaved foolishly.

If, in the above examples, you of ask; Who? or What? before the verb, and Whom? or What? after it, you will find that noun equivalents, like pure nouns, can be used either as subjects or as objects.

III. Verbs: #

• part of speech used to indicate action or state of being. As a predicate it makes a statement about the subject of the sentence.

Action verb:

The girl threw the ball.

State of being verb:

She is the best girl for the position.

Regular and irregular verbs

What’s the difference between regular and irregular verbs? And why do regular verbs sometimes become “irregular” over time?

… and so I sneaked out of the house and went to party anyways!

It’s snuck. Sneaked just sounds … wrong.

Spoilt Versus Spoiled: Irregular Verbs Explained

It might surprise you to know that what we now call irregular verbs were actually once the common past tense of verbs, which made much more sense in older forms of English. So words like ate, drank and rode are remnants of these times. Other words like clamb (for climb) and chode (for chide) didn’t quite make the cut.

Soon the ’ed’ form of past tense verbs became more popular, but some verbs stayed ‘irregular’ - and some have even swapped back and forth multiple times.

Spelling Rules for Creating the Past Forms of Regular Verbs

For regular verbs, the simple past tense and past particle are formed like this:

Add “ed” to most verbs: jump > jumped paint > painted

If a verb of one syllable ends [consonant-vowel-consonant], double the final consonant and add “ed”: chat > chatted stop > stopped

If the final consonant is “w,” “x,” or “y,” don’t double it: sew > sewed play > played fix > fixed

If the last syllable of a longer verb is stressed and ends [consonant-vowel-consonant], double the last consonant and add “ed”:

incur > incurred prefer > preferred

If the first syllable of a longer verb is stressed and the verb ends [consonant-vowel-consonant], just add “ed”:

open > opened enter > entered swallow > swallowed

If the verb ends “e,” just add “d”: thrive > thrived guzzle > guzzled

If the verb ends [consonant + “y”], change the “y” to an “i” and add “ed”: cry > cried fry > fried

Comparing Regular Verbs to Irregular Verbs Regular verbs contrast with irregular verbs, which form their simple past tenses and past participles in a variety of ways.

With a regular verb, the simple past tense and the past participle are the same. For example:

With irregular verbs, however, the past forms can be same or different. For example:

Base Form Simple Past Tense Past Participle run ran has run grow grew has grown tell told has told bleed bled has bled

Mixed Irregular Verbs

There are also a small group of verbs where both regular and irregular past tense forms are accepted as correct - often in cases where the two forms are quite similar.

Examples :

Spilt and spilled Leapt and leaped Dreamt and dreamed Knelt and kneeled Spoilt and spoiled

In most cases the ’ed’ form is more common in American English, while both are used interchangeably in British English, however the irregular form is often considered more formal or correct.

Tenses

Past, Past, Future, Continuous, progressive,

My nephew WAS WAILING when they ARRIVED but HAS BEEN LAUGHING at my playful dogs ever since.

Past, Past continuous, past perfect

Present, Present continuous, Present perfect

Future, Future continuous, Future perfect

Verbals:

Gerunds - verbs, ending in “ing” used as nouns.

Participles

Infinitives – to be

Transitive/Intransitive

Transitive - verbs with objects

hit the ball, build a house…..

Intransitive - verbs without objects

sit, lie, swim….

Active/Passive

He hit the ball/ the ball was hit.

IV. Adjectives: #

• a describing word to a noun; a word which qualifies a noun.

e.g. a tall boy; a white house

There are at least six different types of adjectives:

Descriptive: A big house

Demonstrative: That house.

Possessive: Their house.

Numerical: Eight houses.

Distributive: Each house.

Interrogative; Which house?

Adjectives can have three degrees of comparison:

Positive - a good house.

Comparative - a better house.

Superlative - the best house.

Extreme adjectives do not need qualification or magnification:

Unique, ultimate, quintessential, utter, absolute, final, thorough, complete exclusive, inimitable, sole…

V. Adverbs: #

a word used to express the attribute of an attribute; a word which qualifies an adjective, verb or other adverb.

Adverbs tell us when, where, how or why things happen.

e.g. a very tall boy; he spoke quietly.

VI. Prepositions: #

A word to introduce a phrase or to indicate relative position.

Down, in, under, over, through, around, above, below, on,

“I lately lost a preposition: it hid I thought beneath my chair, so angrily I cried, ‘perdition’, up from out of in under there.” (everlasting punishment in hell)

For years it was believed you did not finish a sentence with a preposition. Winston Churchill mocked this pedantic “rule”, which was obsolete half a century ago, saying that for some pedants, seeing prepositions at the end of a sentence

“is something up with which they will not put”.

“Most of the enlightened authorities now allow this construction.”

“is something which they will not put up with”.

VII. Articles: #

• a word to introduce a noun: “A”, “An”, “The”

A house - “A” is used before a noun beginning with a consonant.

An apple/an hour - “An” is used before a noun beginning with a vowel/sound.

VIII. Conjunctions: #

• joining words, the glue that unites words or clauses.

Co-ordinate conjunctions join equal statements; and/or/but

Subordinate conjunctions combine unequal statements or clauses.

(when, while, because, until although, whereas, besides, unlike………)

Jack played on the swing and Jill went down the slippery slide.

I arrived at the station when the train arrived.

XI. Interjections: #

• Any word thrown into a sentence to show surprise, awe or fear.

Wow! That’s a big fish you caught!

Oh no! not another wave!

Parts of a Sentence: #

Subject: The noun or its equivalent central to the idea of the sentence. What the sentence is about.

Predicate: The action or the state of being of the subject.

The Object: The recipient of the action or the state of being of the subject.

Clause: a single passage of a discourse or writing containing a subject and predicate. Any compound sentence has two independent clauses, while a complex sentence has a main clause and a subordinate (dependent) clause.

e.g. The boy, who spoke quietly, was chosen as the best speaker. (Complex)

The boy spoke quietly and I spoke loudly. (Compound)

Phrase a small group of words which has some degree of unity within the structure of a sentence. e.g.

The leading lady took the centre of the stage.

Smiling sweetly, she acknowledged the applause.