English Grammar: Parts of Speech

English Word Classes

• English has four large word classes: nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs
• Nouns represent animate and inanimate objects, and can be subjects or objects in sentences (e.g., beauty, cat, leaf, niece, nonsense, water)
• Verbs represent actions, events, or states, and hold a pivotal position in sentences (e.g., break, decide, fall, have, keep, love)
• Adjectives occur before nouns as descriptive words or after verbs like "be" with a similar function (e.g., feeble, gigantic, lazy, new, rough, vain)
• Adverbs are a diverse class, representing circumstantial information, modifying adjectives or other adverbs, and forming connections between sentences (e.g., again, always, sometimes, soon, clearly, efficiently, quickly, tentatively)

Smaller Word Classes

• Pronouns stand for nouns and their accompanying words (noun phrases) to avoid unnecessary repetition (e.g., personal pronouns: I, you, he, she, it, we, they; possessive pronouns: mine, yours, hers)
• Pronouns also include reflexive pronouns (e.g., myself, yourself, themselves), relative pronouns (e.g., who, whose, which), and indefinite pronouns (e.g., someone, nobody, anything)

English Vowels and Diphthongs

• In British English, there are five long vowels: /i:/ (as in sheep), /ɜ:/ (as in fur), /ɔ:/ (as in four), /ɑ:/ (as in car), and /u:/ (as in boot)
• Diphthongs are sequences of two vowels realized as one sound in pronunciation; examples include /eɪ/ (as in day), /ɔɪ/ (as in boy), /aɪ/ (as in my), and others

English Sounds (Phonemes)

• Vowels: /i:/, /ɪ/, /e/, /ɜ:/, /æ/, /ʌ/, /ɔ:/, /ʊ/
• Diphthongs: /ʊə/, /eɪ/, /ɔɪ/, /aʊ/, /ɪə/, and others
• Triphthongs: /aʊə/, /ɔɪǝ/, /aɪə/, /eɪǝ/, and others
• Consonants: /p/, /b/, /t/, /d/, /k/, /g/, /f/, /v/, /θ/, /ð/, /s/, /z/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /ʧ/, /ʤ/, /m/, /n/, /ŋ/, /r/, /l/, /j/, /w/, /h/

Morphology

• Word classes, also known as parts of speech, include nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs
• Content words refer to objects, events, and abstract concepts, whereas function words have little or no meaning, such as determiners, pronouns, conjunctions, and certain verbs
• Examples of content words include nouns (baby, bargain), verbs (read, sleep), adjectives (peaceful), and adverbs (carefully)
• Examples of function words include determiners (the, an, a), pronouns (I, him, our), conjunctions, and certain verbs (am, was, should)

Parts of Speech

• Terms such as "adjective" and "noun" are used to label forms in the language as parts of speech or word classes
• Examples of parts of speech include articles, adjectives, nouns, verbs, prepositions, and adverbs