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Using Eight Parts of Speech in English Grammar and Writing
In English language or any other, every word that we use in this world belongs to one or more categories and every single word has its own specific role and function. Words are like building blocks and they are interlinked with one another to make up an entire sentence. Any sentence can be broken into different parts of speech and each part can be identified by its functioning. That particular sentence can be all meaningful if all those pieces are studied separately or as a whole but all of them are somehow also dependent on one another. Any sentence cannot be that easily made up just as we bake a cake or make a pizza dough step by step, it is not an easy task but it doesn’t mean making a sentence depends on good luck only.
Parts of Speech in a Sentence
Identifying each category and understanding its role in english grammar makes it all easy to know and easy to digest the complex rules. Thanks to sentences they come together to make up one complete thought. The categories are known as parts of speech also known as the building blocks and there are total 8 of them in the English language.
If someone wants to understand English grammar then it’s must for him to go through all of these 8 Parts of Speech and study them in detail along with examples and their defining properties needs to be analyzed by every beginner.
The Eight Parts of Speech
Although there are 8 traditional parts of speech and determinants were previously categorized under adjectives but now they are treated and considered as a separate parts of speech. In modern classification, parts of speech are also known as word class, lexical class or lexical category.
Noun
This part of speech refers to any name of a person or an animal, a thing, a place or an idea. For example
- Saad
- book
- library
- house
Nouns can be further classified as singular and plural Nouns.
Singular Noun: Singular noun names only one person or one place for example a dog.
Plural Noun: Plural noun names any two or more than two places for example those dogs.
Nouns can also be known as proper nouns only when they are capitalized for example a person’s name John Graham is a proper known while the remaining ones are known as common nouns which are not capitalized.
Further classification of nouns come into the two more categories of abstract and concrete.
Concrete nouns are the nouns that you may touch for example pen, door, television, clothes.
Abstract Nouns: They are those which cannot be physically held for example oxygen, justice, government etc.
Nouns may be Gerunds as well. Gerunds are the -ing form of the Verb and may be used as a Noun. For example Studying- is the Gerund/Noun and is a Verb as well.
Another form of noun are the collective nouns and it refers to a group of persons or animals or things for example a group of horses or a group of students.
Pronoun
This part of speech is replaced by a noun. Not really replaced but they eliminate the need of repetition of a nouns. They can specify the size and the quality as well as the number or Nouns or Pronouns. For example Chiara walked with Chiara’s daughter can be replaced with Chiara walked with ‘Her’ daughter. Now that’s perfect!
Examples of Pronouns: it, she, he, I, you, me, we, us, mine, his, hers, theirs, they, we, ours. Now out of these we can differentiate singular pronouns and plural pronouns.
Singular Pronouns: I, you, me, she, her, it, he, him
Plural Pronouns: we, us, you, them, and they.
Examples of Pronoun in sentences are: That slice of pizza is ‘Mine’
Then there are some possessive pronouns and further classified into:
- Singular Possessive Pronouns: For example your, mine, her, his and
- Plural Possessive Pronouns: For example yours, theirs, ours.
Then comes the reflexive singular pronouns such as herself, himself, yourself, itself refers to an action that is just identical to the doer of the action for example Maria celebrated her birthday ‘Herself’ whereas reflexive plural pronouns are ourselves, yourselves, themselves.
Two other Pronouns such as ‘Each other’ and ‘One another’ are considered to be reciprocal pronouns that share mutual actions or emotion. For example John and Maria helped each other with their homework.
Indefinite Pronouns: These refers to the things which are not really specific such as anybody, anyone, anything, everybody, either, neither, nor, nobody, none, all, nothing, everything, few, many, one, several, some, something, somebody, someone etc. For example
- Everybody has to die one day.
- Nobody is going to stay here tonight.
Demonstrative Pronouns:These are the ones that ‘Point’ towards the Nouns such as those, these, this and that.
For example:
- This book does not belong to me.
- These flowers are so fresh.
- Those clothes are pretty.
Interrogative Pronouns: These are the ones that includes questions such as what, who, whom, which, whose.
For example:
- What are you doing?
- Who is going to the festival?
Adjectives
An Adjective is a type that simply describes or modifies a Noun or a Pronoun. Normally Adjectives takes place before a Noun but they can also come after linking the Verbs. Adjectives can be used to make some good comparison as well. For example if we put -er with the word it will have a different role like bigger, greater, smaller, stronger, taller etc.
This comparison can also be made if we put the word ‘More’ in the sentence for example:
Maria is more intelligent than her elder brother.
It must be noted here that like Proper Nouns, there are Proper Adjectives which can be capitalized in English. Most of them are Nationalities like American, Westerner, Italian, Korean etc. Also they include Adjectives like Catholic, Communist, Capitalist, Democrat etc.
Adverbs
This Parts of Speech also is used to describe the words but they only describe an action Verb, an Adjective and another Adverb. Generally they comes before the Verb. For example
The student ‘carefully’ completed his homework.
Here carefully is an adverb that modifies the action verb to complete.
There are different types of Adverbs commonly used in English language.
1. Relative Adverbs
They introduces the questions and answers them as well.
For example: ‘When’ I was 13, I liked to play guitar.
The answer is present in the question.
2. Adverbs of Frequency
These answers the question ‘How often?’ And the answer may be rarely, always, usually, often, sometimes, never etc.
For example: They ‘Rarely’ forget to visit Church.
3. Adverb of Manner
This explain an action that how it is being done or how something has come to happen.
For example: Rhyna danced ‘Beautifully’
and the word beautifully tells how well she danced.
4. Adverb of Time
It tells at what time something has been done or when will it happen in the future.
For example: He visited ‘Yesterday’
and the word yesterday denotes the time.
5. Adverb of Place
This tells where something will happen or where is something happens and denotes the place.
For example: Her mother looked for her ‘Everywhere’
and the word everywhere shows where her mother looked for!
Conjunctions
These are the Parts of Speech which does the work of joining the words, phrases or clauses together or a group of words. There are seven or eight conjunctions in English such as but, yet, and, nor, or, for, so. For example:
- I am going to pick up my clothes ‘And’ wash them in the evening.
- I have to sleep now ‘Because’ I have to study at night.
- I would love to attend your birthday party ‘But’ I am not feeling well.
A compound sentence is being created when we insert a ‘Comma’ between two independent sentences.
Then there are correlative conjunctions that serve the cause and effect relationship between two clauses.
For example:
‘Either’ she will clean the kitchen ‘or’ it will start stinking.
Prepositions
This word is such a word that comes in front of a Noun or a Pronoun in a sentence. In other words it works in a combination with Noun/Pronoun to make phrases that modifies Nouns/Pronouns, Verb and Adjective as well. Prepositions can best define where an object exists in time or space such as up, over, by, for, against, during, below, about, inside, outside, than, toward etc.
For example: She completed all of her work during her lunch break.
Interjections
This Part of Speech are interesting little pieces of english language that adds emotions to words or writing, usually ending up with an exclamation mark. For example
- I am done with my exams, ‘Yay!’
- ‘Oh!’, I hope you’re doing okay now.
Other examples of Interjection are Ouch, Eh, Hurray, and Oh no, oh yes etc.
Verb
Verbs are next to Nouns. They are most commonly known as ‘Action words’ because they can define what work is being done by the subject or to the subject. For example
- Maria ‘Ate’ a few apples.
- The boy ‘Ran’ a mile.
- She ‘Slept’ for hours.
The words ate, ran and slept describes the actions done by the person and these Verbs are known as Singular Verbs. If we look at this particular sentence: Anna will eat burger at night. In this sentence ‘Will’ is an Auxiliary Verb whereas ‘Eat’ is a Compound Verb.
References
- Woods, G. English Grammar for Dummies.
