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. Verb: #

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

The girl threw the ball.

She is the best girl for the position.

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………)

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.