Parts of Speech - CULI
Parts of Speech - CULI
Parts of Speech - CULI
BASIC
ENGLISH
SKILLS (Part 1)
PARTS OF SPEECH
CULI 2011
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school, we learned that there were different types of words and that they did
different jobs. For instance, there were words which we used to name things
(like car), words which we used to describe things (like soft), and action words (like
jump). We also learned that sentences were made from words, and that there
In English, there are nine jobs (or functions) for words to do. Put another way,
we say that there are nine parts of speech. Each word in a sentence can be
every sentence or series of words contains all the parts of speech (this would
complicated than others, because they contain more words and/or more rules.
Parts of Speech
Of course, being able to recognize these parts of speech and to understand how they
work can help you to improve your English.
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This handout has been compiled in order to help you to improve your English. At
university, you will be graded on your ability to use English, and you should possess an
English-English dictionary. You should also consider purchasing an English grammar
book.
If you are unsure about the classification of an individual word as a part of speech, a
dictionary (or an e-dictionary) can help. When you find the word you want, it will be
followed by its classification, or type. For example, if we look for cat, it will be shown as
cat, n. or cat (n.) which shows, in this case, that cat is a noun. Alternatively, there are
many internet websites which show English words and English grammar if you use
Google (or other popular search engines) to help you with your search.
It is important to note that many words cannot be placed within a single classification. For
instance, the word light can act as noun, verb or adjective:
Can you see the different ways in which we used the word light ?
Nouns
In the dictionary, there are more nouns than all the other parts of speech put together.
That is why, when learning English or other foreign languages, we build a vocabulary
which initially consists mainly of nouns (man, car, sun, girl, food, leg, teacher etc.) and
then we learn other words and grammar rules a bit later. Also, we can watch babies
learning, and we know that, in addition to words like me, they point to and name the
things that they can see or touch (car, doll, etc.) before they acquire more complex
vocabulary.
Common nouns are general naming words and are only capitalized when they
come at the beginning of a sentence. Proper nouns name particular people,
places, or things. Proper nouns are always capitalized.
Concrete nouns refer to objects that can be seen or touched, like table, boy or bus.
Abstract nouns name a concept, quality or idea. They are usually common nouns.
Intelligence is a concept or quality. We cannot see or touch it.
Self-study/Homework
There is a lot more to know about nouns. Find out some other things
about nouns, and be ready to discuss these in class, with examples:
What are countable and uncountable nouns?
Plural nouns and the different ways we form them.
Compound nouns. What types are there?
How nouns become possessive.
What is a collective noun? What is a mass noun?
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Pronouns
A pronoun is a word that takes the place of a noun or a noun phrase (which is a group of
words having a noun as its key word or identifying word). This is the pronoun’s only job,
but it is a large job which contains many smaller jobs or different tasks, because there are
many types of pronouns.
So, a pronoun is a word which acts in place of a noun. We often use pronouns to refer to
something already mentioned. They can save you from repeating the same nouns over
and over again, which would appear or sound very awkward if you chose to do it. Here,
we use pronouns effectively:
Katrina rode the giant rollercoaster three times. It roared down the steep dips and
scared her as it hurled around the curves.
Pronouns are very common, but the most common of all are personal pronouns. You will
almost always use one or more whenever you speak. I is such a pronoun. You use it
instead of saying “John Smith” (your name) or “the person who is here and is speaking
now”. You is also a personal pronoun, and there are many others. You probably know
them: he, she, it, him, his, we, us, they, them…are some of the personal pronouns.
personal
possessive
demonstrative
indefinite
interrogative
relative
intensive and reflexive
reciprocal
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Singular Plural
Subject and object pronouns are fairly easy. In a basic sentence form, the subject is the
doer of the action, the verb is the action word and the object is the receiver of the action
(or the thing that is affected).
Singular Plural
I me my, mine we us our, ours
you you your, yours you you your, yours
she her her, hers they them their, theirs
he him his
it it its
Note that the first type of possessive pronoun (my, your, their, etc) is used before a noun:
(Some grammar books say that this form is a true possessive pronoun. Remember also
that we cannot say mine pen.)
personal possessive(s)
She forgot to post our letters.
Is this pen yours or mine?
Self study/Homework
Find out when we use its and when we use it’s. What is the difference?
This book is the one I lost over ten years ago. (adjective)
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Note: There are many words in this group. Some of these words can precede a noun to
give us information about the noun (e.g. Many people……….). In these cases, the word is
a determiner rather than a pronoun. Furthermore, if one of these words is followed by
of + pronoun (e.g. Both of them…), it is classed as a distributive pronoun. Don’t worry too
much about these technical terms. What is more important is that the pronoun agrees
with its antecedent (what it represents) or with other parts of the sentence. Look:
As we can see, many of these pronouns are singular and require a singular verb form,
although several, many, few and both are plural.
These are all direct questions, and require question marks. Sometimes, this type of
pronoun is used in indirect questions, which do not have a question mark:
Note: If the wh- word immediately precedes a noun (e.g. Which movie was the best?),
then we call it an interrogative adjective if we want to be very correct. In either case, we
use what…in sentences where there is a range or large number of possible answers (e.g.
What was he talking about?) and which…where the choice or range of answers is limited
(e.g. There were five cars. Which car did he buy?)
For simplicity, some students prefer to call these words wh- words (even though how is
normally included) or question words. Some of these words are really adverbs, and
some of them are also used as linking words to join up sentences or parts of a sentence
(The woman who lives next door is a doctor), as we shall see below. However, the wh-
words are very important, and you need to know them. Don’t forget that why, where and
when are also important as wh- or question words.
Don’t worry too much about learning technical words which are used when trying to
describe or understand grammar. What is more important is that you know the basic
types of words (verbs, pronouns, adjectives etc.) and what they do. Even more important
is that you practise and use the words, even if you occasionally make mistakes.
Self study/Homework
What is the difference between whose and who’s?
However, there are a number of rules to study, and we shall return to this type of pronoun
in a later handout which looks at sentence structure.
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One another is usually used when more than two people are involved, as in:
The women of the village looked after one another during the war.
Some grammar books allow either reciprocal pronoun to be used regardless of whether
two or more than two people are involved.
Verbs
All sentences have a verb. If a series of words contains no verb, then it is not truly a
sentence. Verbs, as you know, are doing words or action words (run, hit, drive, eat), but
some verbs show a ‘state of being’ (seem, appear, know, like). These are known as
stative verbs rather than action verbs:
Action verbs often have a time boundary: the action takes place once or has an obvious
beginning and end (I hit the ball into the net). Stative (or state) verbs refer to a longer or
unspecified time period (I like my teacher very much). One important difference is that we
do not usually use a stative verb in the present continuous tense (sometimes called
present progressive tense). Look at the examples:
The verb cut is transitive. We cannot say I cut without adding more information
(I cut what?)
Some verbs do not need to take an object. These verbs are intransitive.
All of the types of verbs described above are known as main verbs, although
there is another important category called auxiliary verbs. We can describe
these as ‘helping verbs’, and the main ones are do, be and have. These little
helping verbs are extremely important, as they are used with main verbs to
form specific tenses and are also used for negatives and questions:
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Examples:
Examples:
There a quite a few rules to learn about modals, and you will study them again later on.
VERB TENSES
Verbs possess tense in order to help us express the TIME that the action takes place (i.e.
when it happens). English, like French, Spanish, German and many other languages,
uses tenses, and there are 12 tenses in English. Some languages, including Thai, do not
have tenses, and the time when the action occurs is understood from the rest of the
sentence.
When we start to look at tenses, we can say that something takes place in the
present, the past or the future. Examples:
Within each “time” category there are different tenses, and each tense has a different job
to do. The tenses are very important in English, because they tell us whether something
has already happened, is happening now, will happen in future, happens regularly, and so
on. When we communicate with other people, such information is often vital, for obvious
reasons. To list and explain all of the tenses would take up many pages, and it is not our
intention to study them here.
There are many thousands of regular verbs in English. These verbs follow the same
rules when we change their forms to indicate time (tense). However, there are also
around 250-300 irregular verbs which follow different or unexpected rules. This sounds
like a lot, although some of them are not used a great deal. However, some of them are
used all of the time. The verb BE is the most common verb of all, and it is also said to be
the most irregular. Am, is, are, was, were, etc. are forms of the verb be.
Most grammar books contain a list of the irregular verbs. Also, you may remember
learning them at school, often by repeating in class:
run ran run hit hit hit drive drove driven (etc.)
Self study/Homework
Have a look at the three ‘verb parts’ above (example: run ran run). What are the three parts
shown, and how are they used? If we took a regular verb, like to paint, how would these
three parts appear?
PHRASAL VERBS
There are many of these, and they are especially common in spoken English. They are
formed by a main verb followed by a little word (or particle) which is a preposition or
adverb like up or off. However, the two words combined can give a completely different
meaning to the original meaning of the verb alone. There are no ‘easy rules’, and you
have to learn the meanings! Here is an example.
but--
Adjectives
Adjectives are words that describe or modify nouns (and pronouns). There are many of
them, and you will know some already:
a fat man
the young dog
some noisy children
Is she angry?
However, it may be located after this noun if a form of the verb be (or some other stative
verbs like appear, seem, etc.) are used. Most books describe this form of adjective as a
complement.
Most descriptive (describing) adjectives also have a comparative and superlative form:
although not all of them follow this -er and –est pattern. We cannot say the
beautifullest.
Many adjectives combine with prepositions in fixed ways to form familiar phrases:
Self study/Homework
Find and list three more fixed adjective—preposition combinations:
1. Interested in 2. 3.
Use your grammar book or the internet to find out about the correct order
(sequence) of adjectives when we string them together. Revise the following:
A Japanese pink plastic old doll = An ____ ____ ____ ____ doll
Adverbs
An adverb is a word that describes or modifies a verb, although it can also modify an
adjective or another adverb, a preposition or a conjunction. There are many adverbs, and
this is a large group of words to study. However, the most common function of an adverb
is to modify the main verb of a sentence (ad-verb), which usually changes the whole
meaning of the sentence:
More examples:
Adverbs are commonly defined by the types of questions they answer about
the verbs they modify. The most common adverbs are:
Adverbs of frequency are also very common, and these tell us how often or
regularly something happens: always, usually, sometimes, rarely, never,
occasionally (etc.)
Is it still raining?
Has he passed his exams yet?
I have already finished my homework.
There are several other types of adverbs as well, and some very common words like too,
really and tomorrow are often regarded as adverbs.
Prepositions
These are words like in, on, to, at and before. Most often, they show how two parts of a
sentence are related in space and time:
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He lives in London.
The cat is on the table.
Julie drove to the supermarket.
We can meet at 5 o’clock.
Give me the homework before Wednesday.
During 1998, cold air from Alaska and warm air from El Nino combined and
caused heavy storms in many states. (shows mixed time and space prepositions)
Note: Prepositions (pre-positions) are most often used before the words they modify
(e.g.…in London) At times, a preposition is used alone at the end of a sentence, but it
should add meaning to the sentence.
Conjunctions
A conjunction joins words, parts of a sentence or more than one sentence with another. It
is a linking or joining word, and this is its only job.
There are many conjunctions, and they are used all of the time. The word
and is a conjunction, and it is the third most commonly used word in English
after the and of. There are two main types of conjunction: coordinating and
subordinating.
In these examples, each half of the unit or sentence consists of equally important
information.
The main coordinating conjunctions are and, but, or, nor, yet, so.
In this sentence, the main point is that they were late. That is a fact. The reason why they
were late is useful to know, but it is not as important. Also, if we turn the sentence around,
the role of the subordinating conjunction remains the same:
There are many subordinating conjunctions, and they include after, although, as, as if,
as soon as, because, how, if, since, so that, than, unless, when, whether, while and
why.
DETERMINERS
Determiners form a large group of words which give information about nouns but are
‘function’ words rather than describing words. They are normally quite short words which,
if we write them alone, do not mean a lot (a, an and the are determiners, but are also
known as articles). Adjectives like beautiful are describing words, but determiners only
perform a function in the sentence. If we see the word beautiful, we know what it means
(it has content), but if we see the alone, we think the? the what? But then, when we pair it
with a noun (the teacher), we can see that a determiner has a useful and very common
function in specifying or telling us about something.
The main determiners apart from the (the most commonly used word in English) and
a/an are:
Actually, words in other categories are often listed under determiners, just as many other
words may be found listed as adverbs. We have seen that the important group of words
called articles is listed within the larger category of determiners. If we look above, we see
that some of the categories in the list have been studied earlier (e.g. possessive
pronouns, demonstrative adjectives), but we can also list them under determiners.
Self study/Homework
Use a grammar book to check the rules about using articles (the, a/an) and make
notes for discussion in class. What is the ZERO article? Find out about it.
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INTERJECTIONS
The final part of speech is very small and is made up of words or short expressions which
do not really belong in any other category. They are not verbs, pronouns, adverbs or
anything else. Interjections are exclamatory words which we use to add force and
meaning to speaking and writing:
Sometimes we use interjections to interrupt people (Shhhh!). We may also use them
‘softly’ without an exclamation mark (!): “Ah-ha, that’s better”.
Compiled by Ajarn Paul Vogel (CULI) 2008. Revised 2010. With grateful thanks to Gordon Jarvie and the late Graham King.