Chapter 3. Parts of Speech

Words are grouped by the jobs they do in sentences. Traditional grammar lists eight parts of speech; many modern grammars add determiners as a separate class [3][4].

Part of speech	Job	Examples
Noun	Names a person, place, thing or idea	teacher, London, courage
Pronoun	Replaces a noun	she, they, this, who
Verb	Shows action, state or occurrence	run, is, seem
Adjective	Describes a noun	tall, interesting
Adverb	Modifies a verb, adjective or another adverb	quickly, very, often
Preposition	Shows relationship, usually with a noun	in, on, between, during
Conjunction	Joins words, phrases or clauses	and, but, because
Interjection	Expresses emotion	oh, wow

Nouns. Common (city) and proper (Paris); countable (book) and uncountable (information, water); concrete and abstract; singular and plural; possessive (the girl’s book).

Determiners include articles (a, an, the), demonstratives (this, those), possessives (my, their) and quantifiers (some, many). Use a before a consonant sound and an before a vowel sound: an hour, a university [6].

Adjectives and adverbs. Adjectives have comparative and superlative forms: tall, taller, tallest; beautiful, more beautiful, most beautiful; irregular: good, better, best. Many adverbs end in -ly, but not all (fast, well).

Prepositions commonly confuse learners; learn them in phrases: depend on, interested in, at 5 o’clock, on Monday, in July [6][7].

Conjunctions. Coordinating (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so) link equal elements; subordinating (because, although, if, when) introduce dependent clauses.

Review: Identify the part of speech of each word in: “Wow, the old dog barked loudly.” (Answer: Wow – interjection; the – determiner/article; old – adjective; dog – noun; barked – verb; loudly – adverb.)