Parts of Speech

Let’s use the different parts of speech to build a sentence word by word to help us answer the questions above... As a word gets added to the sentence you will get an over-all view of the different parts of speech. You may want to try answering a quiz at the end.

You will also begin to learn how you can use each part of speech in sentences of your own. In the growing sentence below, carefully watch what new thing each word adds to the sentence.

1) Eat
This is an action word. Action words are verbs. A few other words such as am, is, are, was, were, etc. which tell us about being are also called verbs.

2) John eats.
John is a name. Names are called nouns.

John eats mangoes.
The word ‘mangoes’ is another type of name. It is also a noun.

3) John eats ripe mangoes.
The word ‘ripe’ is a description for the noun ‘mangoes.’ Words that describe nouns are called adjectives.

4) He eats ripe mangoes.
The word ‘he’ is a substitute word for ‘John.’ Words which are used as substitutes for nouns are called pronouns.

5) Let’s learn about adverbs. Three different kinds of words are called adverbs.

• He quickly eats ripe mangoes.
  The word ‘quickly’ adds meaning to the verb ‘eats’. A word which describes a verb is called an adverb.

• He quickly eats fully ripe mangoes.
  The word ‘fully’ adds meaning to the Adjective ‘ripe’. A word which describes an adjective is called an adverb.

• He very quickly eats fully ripe mangoes. The word ‘very’ adds meaning to the adverb ‘quickly’. Words which thus describe adverbs are themselves adverbs.

A preposition is...

• a word placed before a noun (or pronoun) and...

• relates such a noun to some other word in the sentence. (More details about this second point on the page on prepositions as this site develops.)

7) He very quickly eats very ripe mangoes and pears at home in the morning.

The word ‘and’ joins two words--mangoes, pears-in this sentence. Words like ‘and, but, or, either…or, not only…but also, because, therefore,' etc. join together sentences and sometimes words.

E.g. Mohan came here but Rekha sat at home. [The conjunction 'but' joins two sentences in this example].

Words which join sentences or words together are called conjunctions.

8) My goodness! He and she eat ripe mangoes! The words ‘my goodness!’ are words expressing sudden feeling. Such words are called interjections.

Interjections are important more as expressions of emotion than for any grammatical relationship with other words.

To sum up...

English words belong to one or more of eight parts of speech. They are:

• Verbs
• Nouns
• Pronouns
• Adjectives
• Adverbs
• Prepositions
• Conjunctions
• Interjections

See this...

The word 'milk' is a different part of speech each time.

• I don't like milk. (noun)
• So, you will have to milk the cow.(verb)
• I like milk chocolate. (adjective)

So, what will you answer if someone asks you what part of speech a particular word is?You should wisely answer: "I don't know." It is not always safe to talk about the part of speech of a word unless you get it in a sentence.

These parts of speech are the groups a dictionary normally divides words into. There are other more sophisticated divisions.

You shoud not get confused if you see other types of groupings. If you go step by step in exploring this site you will become an expert at these things.

I recommend that you do some exercises, simple or difficult as you wish, to deepen your understanding of the Parts of Speech and how they fit together in a sentence. [The exercises will be coming soon at the Exercises page.] Here is a grammar quiz for you. Have fun!

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