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Word classes (or parts of speech)

All words belong to categories called word classes (or parts of speech) according to the
part they play in a sentence. The main word classes in English are listed below.
Noun
Verb
Adjective
Adverb
Pronoun
Preposition
Conjunction
Determiner
Exclamation
Noun
A noun is a word that identifies:
a person (man, girl, engineer, friend)
a thing (horse, wall, flower, country)
an idea, quality, or state (anger, courage, life, luckiness)
Read more about nouns.

Verb
A verb describes what a person or thing does or what happens. For example, verbs
describe:
an action jump, stop, explore
an event snow, happen
a situation be, seem, have
a change evolve, shrink, widen
Read more about verbs.
Adjective
An adjective is a word that describes a noun, giving extra information about it. For
example:
an exciting adventure
a green apple
a tidy room
Read more about adjectives.

Adverb
An adverb is a word thats used to give information about a verb, adjective, or other
adverb. They can make the meaning of a verb, adjective, or other adverb stronger or
weaker, and often appear between the subject and its verb (She nearly lost everything.)
Read more about adverbs.

Pronoun
Pronouns are used in place of a noun that is already known or has already
been mentioned. This is often done in order to avoid repeating the noun. For example:
Laura left early because she was tired.
Anthony brought the avocados with him.
That is the only option left.
Something will have to change.
Personal pronouns are used in place of nouns referring to specific people or things, for
example I, me, mine, you, yours,his, her, hers, we, they, or them. They can be divided
into various different categories according to their role in a sentence, as follows:
subjective pronouns
objective pronouns
possessive pronouns
reflexive pronouns
Read more about pronouns.

Preposition
A preposition is a word such as after, in, to, on, and with. Prepositions are usually used
in front of nouns or pronouns and they show the relationship between the noun or
pronoun and other words in a sentence. They describe, for example, the position of
something, the time when something happens, or the way in which something is done.
Read more about prepositions.

Conjunction
A conjunction (also called a connective) is a word such as and, because, but, for, if,
or, and when. Conjunctions are used to connect phrases, clauses, and sentences.The
two main kinds are known as coordinating conjunctions and subordinating conjunctions.
Read more about conjunctions.

Determiner
A determiner is a word that introduces a noun, such
as a/an, the, every, this, those, or many(as
in a dog, the dog, this dog, those dogs, every dog, many dogs).
The determiner the is sometimes known as the definite article and the determiner a (or an) as
the indefinite article.

Read more about determiners.


Exclamation
An exclamation (also called an interjection) is a word or phrase that expresses strong
emotion, such as surprise, pleasure, or anger. Exclamations often stand on their own,
and in writing they are usually followed by an exclamation mark rather than a full stop.
Kind of words

Noun: A noun is a person, place, thing, quality, or act.


Examples : shoes, turtle, anger, sadness, town
Verb: Verbs are action or existence words that tell what nouns do.
Examples: to laugh, to read, watched
Adjective: An adjective describes a noun.
Examples: bald, heavy, useful

Adverb: An adverb describes a verb, adjective, or adverb. It often ends in


'ly'.
Examples: simply, patiently

Interjection: An outcry or sudden utterance. Usually starts a sentence.


Examples: ouch, god, my
Preposition: A preposition describes the relationship between a noun and
another noun (or verb or adverb).
Examples: at, down, to, from
Conjunction: A conjunction joins together words, phrases, or clauses.
Examples: but, and, so
Pronoun: A pronoun replaces a noun or noun phrase that is understood
from context.
Examples: she, me, it

Word classes in English grammar


The verb
A group of words cannot be described as a sentence or a clause unless at least one of the words is a
verb. In some ways, we can describe it as the most important part of speech because it is the action
word that tells the listener or reader what is happening in the sentence. Verbs can be action words
like run, initiate, judge, throw, but they can also denote less active notions and have more to do with
mental processes and perceptions, like see, know, think and so on.
The noun
A noun is a word which is used to denote a person (traffic warden, woman, Prime Minister, pianistetc.),
a concrete or abstract entity (binoculars, fork, field, truth, incoherence etc.) or a place (office, garden,
railway station). These are all common nouns; there are also proper nounswhich are the names of a
specific person, place, event etc., usually starting with a capital letter, for
example, York , John, Christmas, Saturday.
A noun can be extended to a noun phrase. In the example phrases given below, the noun (in the first
example) and the noun phrase (in the remaining examples) is in bold. Note how much the noun phrase
can be extended by adding extra information each time.

Dogs can be vicious


Some dogs can be vicious
Some of the dogs can be vicious
Some of the bigger dogs can be vicious
Some of the bigger dogs in the dog pound can be vicious

The adverb
The traditional approach to adverbs has been to assign mainly those words which are made from
adjectives by the addition of the ending ly (quickly, hopelessly), plus certain other words which are
difficult to classify, like not, just and soon. Their main function is to qualify the action of the verb in the
clause in some way, but they can also be used to add more information to an adjective or other adverb
e.g. awfully good, incredibly slowly. The class of adverbs is very wide-ranging in form and is used to
add comments to many of the other word classes.

The preposition
Prepositions allow us to talk about the way in which two parts of a sentence are related to each other.
They include words like in, on, under, beside, through, inside, before, opposite. More often than not,
these relationships are to do with either time or space, but other types of relationship, such as
possession, cause and effect and method can be expressed by using prepositions. The words
themselves are generally short and simple but some prepositions are multi-word units; for
example, out of, by means of, in spite of, instead of, up to etc. Unless they are part of a verb
(getin, pick up, switch off), prepositions are always followed by a phrase containing a noun at
school, in the summer, over the moon and so on.

The adjective
An adjective gives the reader or speaker extra information about a noun or delimits it in some way. It
can occur in two positions in a phrase:

before the noun as in clear water, beautiful beaches, a terrible decision. The adjectives in these
examples are said to be attributive,
following any form of the verb be (e.g. am, is, was, been) and similar verbs
(seem, appear,become) as in the water became clear, the beaches are beautiful. These adjectives
are inpredicative position.

The pronoun
Pronouns are usually treated as a special sub-class of nouns. This is because they stand in for a noun
or group of nouns. They are limited in number and belong to what is called a closed set, that is, a
group of words to which new members are, for practical purposes, not allowed. Some examples of
pronouns are: I, you, he, she, our, its, something, anyone and so on. Thus, instead of saying, Bills
arrived. Bills in the lounge, we prefer Bills arrived. Hes in the lounge. Or a person called for you; better
would be someone called for you. There are several other words which fall into this class; for
example (the) one(s), when used to replace dishes in the example: pass me the dishes the ones on the
top shelf.

The conjunction
It would be very unusual for anyone to either speak or write completely in simple sentences; instead
we tend to use a mixture of simple, compound and complex sentences. One way to create longer,
more complicated sentences is to use conjunctions. As we have already noted in the section on types
of clause, conjunctions serve to connect two or more clauses, phrases or words together to make
longer constructions. In the following examples, the conjunction is in bold:

The coffee was strong, but sweet.


We can go to the match or watch it on TV.
She has a dog and two cats.
When I arrived home, they had already eaten.
I had to stop driving because the rain was so bad.
Can I have a word with you, if youve got the time?
Although he cant swim, he goes sailing.
There are two types of conjunction. The first is the coordinating conjunction; examples of this can be
seen in sentences a to c above. This type is always used to connect elements that share the same
grammatical status, that is, main clause to main clause, verb to verb, noun to noun, adjective to
adjective and so on. In sentence a two adjectives, strong and sweet, are conjoined, in b two
verbs, go and watch and c two nouns, dog and cats.
The second type is the subordinating conjunction, which most often joins two or more unequal
clauses to one another. Typically a main clause will be connected to a subordinate clause as we saw in
the section on clause types. So in sentences d to g above, the subordinate clause (which you will
remember cannot stand on its own, but needs another more important clause to complete the
meaning) begins with a conjunction, here when, because, if and although.

Word class membership


Although the description above may give the impression that any one word within a single meaning
belongs exclusively to one word class, you should note that this is not the case. Study the words in
bold in the following examples:
I couldnt give her an immediate answer .
I was surprised when he answered my letter.
Do not write on the front of the answer sheet.

In the first sentence, answer is being used as a noun note the attributive
adjectiveimmediate and the word an, both indicative of a following noun.
In the second, answer is a verb the subject he and the ending ed show this.
While in the third, answer tells you what kind of sheet is being talked about and is, therefore,
an adjective.
This flexibility in word class membership is a peculiar feature of English among the European
languages, many of which would require different endings to show the class of the word.

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