Lesson 1; Parts of Speech
There are hundreds of thousands of words in all languages. However, all the words do not perform the same job. Some of them express ‘action’ some denote a ‘thing’; some qualify a thing and so on. These words act as building blocks of a language including English. For an example: Well, he and little Tony walk to shop quickly.
In the above-mentioned sentence, you may notice that each of the words has its own job. Each of them explains how a word is used, not what a word is. These words can be categorized in different classes or types. These classes are known as “Parts of Speech”. There are eight Parts of Speech in traditional grammar and these are:
1. Noun
2. Pronoun
3. Adjective
4. Adverb
5. Preposition
6. Verb
7. Conjunction
8. Interjection
Below, we will discuss basics of each of the Parts of Speech.
1. Noun – Noun denotes a name to some thing or person; like,
Richard saw tigers in the zoo.
Here, Richard denotes name of a person, tigers denote name of a thing (animal); and zoo denotes name of a thing (place). Richard, tigers and zoo are nouns, in this sentence.
2. Pronoun – Pronoun is the word used instead of Noun; like,
I told Richard that tigers which he saw in the zoo would do no harm to him, as they are behind bars.
Here, I is used for the speaker; he and him denote ‘Richard’; and which and they are used for tigers. All these italics words are pronouns.
3. Adjective – Adjective qualifies a noun or a pronoun; like,
A brave man killed a ferocious bear.
Here, brave expresses the quality of ‘man’, and ferocious shows the quality of the ‘bear’. So, brave and ferocious are adjectives.
4. Adverb – Adverb qualifies meaning of an Adjective, Verb or Adverb; like,
An almost white cat jumped very quickly through the window.
Here, almost qualifies the adjective ‘white’; very qualifies the adverb ‘quickly’; and quickly qualifies the verb ‘jumped’. All these italics words are adverbs.
5. Preposition – Preposition is a word that placed before noun or pronoun to show what a thing or a person has to do with another thing or person; like,
The cat is sitting on the table.
Here, without the word ‘on’, the sentence ‘The cat is sitting the table’, makes no sense. The cat might also sit under the table or above the table. What the cat has to do with the table is not known until a preposition is positioned between them.
6. Verb – Verb expresses an action. In other word, we can say that a verb is used to say something about a person or a thing; like,
The boy fell from top of a building.
Here, the word ‘fell’ denotes the action of the boy or we can say something about the boy by the word ‘fell’. ‘Fell’ is the verb in this sentence.
7. Conjunction – Conjunction is used to join one word to another; or a sentence to another; like,
Tom and his sister came to the school before I reached.
Here, the noun ‘Tom’ is joined to the noun ‘sister’ by the word ‘and’. ‘And’ is the conjunction here. Similarly, the second sentence ‘I reached’ is joined to the first sentence ‘Tom and his sister came’ by the word ‘before’. The word ‘before’ is also a conjunction.
8. Interjection – Interjection expresses feelings of the mind; like,
Oops! I missed the train.
Hurray! We have won the match.
In the first sentence, ‘Oops’ expresses the feeling of regret; and, in the second sentence, ‘Hurray’ expresses the feeling of joy. Both of them are interjections.
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