Today we’ll be talking about the parts of speech in English.
We have the following main parts of speech:
Parts of Speech
Nouns
Verbs
Adjectives
Adverbs
Pronouns
Prepositions
Conjunctions
Let’s now have a look at the basic characteristics of all of them one by one.
Table of Contents
Nouns
Nouns are words that name people and other living creatures, places, things and abstract ideas.
people: girl, Mike, student
other living creatures: bird, tree
places: meadow, Sweden
things: balloon, bike
abstract ideas: love, date, happiness
They function in a sentence as the subject, object of a verb or object of a preposition.
subject: Julia buys a lot of balloons.
object of a verb: Mike loves Julia.
object of a preposition: There is a bike under the tree.
Pronouns
Pronouns stand for nouns, so they reference people and other living creatures, places, things and abstract ideas.
Pronouns, just like nouns, function as the subject, object of a verb or object of a preposition.
subject:
The trees look awesome.
They look even better in the winter.
object of a verb:
Mike often kisses his girlfriend.
He really likes kissing her.
object of a preposition:
Julia is holding three balloons in her hand.
She’s going to keep them all for herself.
Adjectives
Adjectives modify nouns and sometimes pronouns.
modify nouns: blue sky, cold water, a sunny day
modify pronouns: something beautiful
They function as a part of the subject, object or predicate.
part of subject: The wooden boat is floating on the water.
part of object: I admire this picturesque landscape.
part of predicate: This region seems a nice place to live.
Adverbs
Adverbs modify verbs, adjectives, other adverbs and entire clauses.
modify verbs: Herbert paints well.
modify adjectives: He looks extremely satisfied.
modify other adverbs: He’s holding the paint roller pretty firmly.modify entire clauses: Actually, he doesn’t have much experience.
Prepositions
Prepositions express relationships between words, and in particular between a noun or pronoun and another part of the sentence.
Prepositions together with these nouns or pronouns form prepositional phrases, which function as adjectives or adverbs.
with a noun: Nelly is walking through the forest.
with a pronoun: A butterfly is sitting on her finger and she’s playing with it.
as an adjective: The bubbles above the ground don’t smell good.
as an adverb: There’s moss under the trees.
Verbs
Verbs describe actions or states. They function as the root of the predicate. Every sentence must include at least one verb.
verbs of action: teach, learn, write, talk, ask
verbs of state: be, seem, look, sound
verbs of action in a sentence:
The oldest cat teaches math and the younger cats learn.
They write and ask questions.
They often talk in class.
verbs of state in a sentence:
The cats are cute.
They seem interested.They look smart an sound intelligent.
Conjunctions
Conjunctions connect other words, phrases or clauses and express the relationships between them. There are coordinating and subordinating conjunctions.
coordinating conjunctions: and, but, or, so
The plane crashed and the survivors were taken to the hospital.
Eight people survived, but over one hundred died.
subordinating conjunctions: while, where, if, because
While they were helping the survivors, the nearby building caught fire.
We don’t know if the pilot is alive.
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