- Parts of Speech
The parts
of speech are categories used to organize or classify words according to how
they are used. We use parts of speech as a way to make it easier to talk about
language. We
usually use eight categories of parts of speech to classify all the words we
use in English. This classification is not perfect. Sometimes it is hard to
tell which category a word belongs in. the same word may belong in different
categories depending on how it is used. there may be better ways to classify
English than by using the eight parts of speech. But this classification has
been used foa a long time and many grammar books use it, so it is easier to
keep on using it. It is possible to speak or learn a language without knowing
the parts of speech, but for most of us, knowing about parts of speech makes
things easier.
The eight parts of speech that are used to
describe English words are :
1. Nouns
From
Internet
A noun is often defined as a word which names a person, place or
thing. Here are some examples of nouns: boy, river, friend,
Mexico, triangle, day, school, truth, university, idea, John F. Kennedy, movie,
aunt, vacation, eye, dream, flag, teacher, class, grammar. John F. Kennedy is a
noun because it is the name of a person; Mexico is a noun because it is the
name of a place; and boy is a noun because it is the name of a thing.
Some grammar books divide nouns into 2 groups
- proper nouns and common nouns. Proper nouns are
nouns which begin with a capital letter because it is the name of a specific or
particular person place or thing. Some examples of proper nouns
are: Mexico, John F. Kennedy, Atlantic Ocean, February, Monday, New York City,
Susan, Maple Street, Burger King. If you see a word beginning with a capital
letter in in the middle of a sentence, it is probably a proper noun.
Most nouns are common nouns and do not begin with a capital letter.
Many nouns have a special plural form if there is more than
one. For example, we say one book but two books. Plurals are
usually formed by adding an -s (books) or -es (boxes) but some plurals
are formed in different ways (child - children, person - people, mouse - mice,
sheep - sheep).
From Literatur
A noun
is a word used to name a person, animal, place, thing, and abstract idea. Nouns
are usually the first words which small children learn. The highlighted
words in the following sentences are all nouns:
Late last
year
our neighbours
bought a goat.
Portia White was an opera singer.
The bus inspector
looked at all the passengers' passes.
According
to Plutarch,
the library
at Alexandria
was destroyed in 48 B.C.
Philosophy is of little comfort to the starving.
My opinion as follows:
NOUN:
These name persons, things, places, ideas -- can be concrete or abstract. EX: Stephanie, door, biology, honor.
2. Verbs
A verb is often defined as a
word which shows action or state of being. The verb is the heart of
a sentence - every sentence must have a verb. Recognizing the verb
is often the most important step in understanding the meaning of a sentence. In
the sentence The dog bit the man, bit is the verb and the word which
shows the action of the sentence. In the sentence The man is sitting on a
chair, even though the action doesn't show much activity, sitting is the verb
of the sentence. In the sentence She is a smart girl, there is no action
but a state of being expressed by the verb is. The word be is different from
other verbs in many ways but can still be thought of as a verb.
Unlike most of the other parts of speech,
verbs change their form. Sometimes endings are added (learn -
learned) and sometimes the word itself becomes different (teach-taught).
The different forms of verbs show different meanings related to such
things as tense (past, present, future), person (first person, second person,
third person), number (singular, plural) and voice (active, passive). Verbs
are also often accompanied by verb-like words called modals (may, could,
should, etc.) and auxiliaries(do, have, will, etc.) to give them different
meanings.
One of the most important things about verbs
is their relationship to time. Verbs tell if something has already
happened, if it will happen later, or if it is happening now. For things
happening now, we use the present tense of a verb; for something that has
already happened, we use the past tense; and for something that will happen
later, we use the future tense. Some examples of verbs in each
tense are in the chart below:
Present
|
Past
|
Future
|
look
|
Looked
|
will look
|
move
|
Moved
|
will move
|
Talk
|
Talked
|
will talk
|
Verbs like those in the
chart above that form the past tense by adding -d or -ed are called regular
verbs. Some of the most common verbs are not regular and the
different forms of the verb must be learned. Some examples of such
irregular verbs are in the chart below:
Present
|
Past
|
Future
|
See
|
Saw
|
will see
|
Hear
|
Heard
|
will hear
|
Speak
|
Spoke
|
will speak
|
The charts above show the simple
tenses of the verbs. There are also progressive or continuous
forms which show that the action takes place over a period of time, and perfect
forms which show completion of the action. These forms will be discussed
more in other lessons, but a few examples are given in the chart below:
Present Continuous
|
Present Perfect
|
is looking
|
has looked
|
is speaking
|
has spoken
|
is talking
|
has talked
|
Simple present tense verbs have a special form for the third person singular.
A verb must "agree"
with its subject. Subject-verb agreement generally means
that the third person singular verb form must be used with a third
person subject in the simple present tense. The word be - the most
irregular and also most common verb in English - has different forms for
each person and even for the simple past tense. The forms of the word be
are given in the chart below:
Number
|
Person
|
Present
|
Past
|
Future
|
Singular
|
1st (I)
|
am
|
was
|
will be
|
2nd (you)
|
are
|
were
|
will be
|
3rd (he, she, it)
|
is
|
was
|
will be
|
Plural
|
1st (we)
|
are
|
were
|
will be
|
2nd (you)
|
are
|
were
|
will be
|
3rd (they)
|
are
|
were
|
will be
|
Usually a subject comes before a verb
and an object may come after it. hat does the action of the verb
and the object is what receives the action. In the sentence Bob
ate a humburger, Bob is the subject or the one who did the eating and
the hamburger is the object or what got eaten. A verb which
has an object is called a transitive verb and some examples are
throw, buy, hit, love. A verb which has no object is called
an intransitive verb and some examples are go, come, walk, listen.
As you can see in the charts above, verbs
are often made up of more than one word. The future forms, for example, use the
word will and the perfect forms use the word have. These words are called
helping or auxiliary verbs. The word be can serve as an auxiliary
and will and shall are also auxiliary forms. The chart below shows two
other verbs which can also be used as auxiliaries:
Number
|
Person
|
Present
|
Past
|
Singular
|
1st (I)
|
have
do
|
had
did
|
2nd (you)
|
have
do
|
had
did
|
3rd (he, she, it)
|
has
does
|
had
did
|
Plural
|
1st (we)
|
have
do
|
had
did
|
2nd (you)
|
have
do
|
had
did
|
3rd (they)
|
have
do
|
had
did
|
`There
is a type of auxiliary verb called a modal which changes the
meaning of a verb in different ways. Words like can, should,
would, may, might, and must are modals and are covered in other lessons.
From
Literatur
The verb is perhaps the
most important part of the sentence. A verb
or compound verb asserts something about the subject of the sentence and express actions,
events, or states of being. The verb or compound verb is the critical element
of the predicate of a sentence.
In each of the following
sentences, the verb or compound verb is highlighted:
Dracula bites
his victims on the neck.
The verb
"bites" describes the action Dracula takes.
In early
October, Giselle will plant twenty tulip bulbs.
Here the compound verb
"will plant" describes an action that will take place in the future.
My first
teacher was Miss Crawford, but I remember the
janitor Mr. Weatherbee more vividly.
In this sentence, the
verb "was" (the simple past tense of "is") identifies a particular
person and the verb "remembered" describes a mental action.
Karl
Creelman bicycled around the world in 1899, but his diaries and his bicycle were destroyed.
In this sentence, the
compound verb "were destroyed" describes an action which took place
in the past.
My opinion as follows:
VERB:
These state an action or a state of being. EX: kick, call, create, is, will be. Verbs can be transitive, meaning that they act on
something else, or intransitive,
meaning that they don't. EX:
Transitive: Walter kicked the
football. Intransitive: I was asleep.
Verbs can also be linking verbs,
meaning that they connect a subject to a word or group of words which describe
or complete its meaning. EX: The car
was blue and full of bullet holes.
3. Adjectives
From Internet
An adjective is often defined as a
word which describes or gives more information about a noun or pronoun.
Adjectivesdescribe nouns in terms of such qualities as size,
color, number, and kind. In the sentence The lazy dog sat on the rug, the
word lazyis an adjective which gives more information about the noun
dog. We can add more adjectives to describe the dogas well
as in the sentence The lazy, old, brown dog sat on the rug. We can also
add adjectives to describe the rug as in the sentence The lazy, old,
brown dog sat on the beautiful, expensive, new rug. The adjectives do
not change the basic meaning or structure of the sentence, but they do give a
lot more information about the dog and the rug. As you can see in the example
above, when more than one adjective is used, a comma (,) is used between the adjectives.
Usually an adjective comes before
the noun that it describes, as in tall man. It can also come after a form of
the word beas in The man is tall. More than one adjective can be
used in this position in the sentence The man is tall, dark and handsome.
In later lessons, you will learn how to make comparisons with adjectives.
Most adjectivesdo not change form
whether the noun it describes is singular or plural. For
example we saybig tree and big trees, old house and old houses, good time and
good times. There are, however, some adjectives that do have
different singular andplural forms. The common words this
and thathave the plural formsthese andthose. These words are called demonstrative
adjectives because demonstrate or point out what is being referred to.
Another common type of adjective
is the possessive adjective which shows possession or ownership. The
words my dog or my dogs indicate that the dog or dogsbelong to me. I
would use the plural form our if the dog or dogsbelonged to me and other
people. The chart below shows the forms of possessive adjectives.
|
|
Singular
|
Plural
|
1st Person
|
my
|
our
|
2nd Person
|
your
|
your
|
3rd Person
|
his/her/its
|
their
|
·
*Personis used here as a grammar
word and has these meanings:
1st person or the self (I, me, we),
2nd person or the person spoken to (you)
3rd person or the person spoken about (he, she, him,
her, they, them).
From Literatur
An adjective
modifies a noun or a pronoun by describing, identifying, or
quantifying words. An adjective usually precedes the noun or the pronoun which
it modifies.
In the following
examples, the highlighted words are adjectives:
The truck-shaped
balloon floated over the treetops.
Mrs.
Morrison papered her kitchen walls with hideous wall paper.
The small boat
foundered on the wine dark sea.
The coal mines
are dark
and dank.
Many stores have already begun
to play irritating
Christmas
music.
A battered music box
sat on the mahogany
sideboard.
The back
room was filled with large, yellow rain boots.
My husband
knits intricately patterned mittens.
for example, the adverb
"intricately" modifies the adjective "patterned."
Some nouns, many
pronouns, and many participle phrases can also act as adjectives.
In the sentence
Eleanor
listened to the muffled sounds of the radio hidden
under her pillow.
Grammarians also consider
articles ("the," "a,"
"an") to be adjectives.
