Master the Eight Parts of Speech

Overview of the Eight Parts of Speech

• There are eight parts of speech in English: noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, conjunction, and interjection.
• Each part of speech indicates how a word functions in meaning and grammar within a sentence.
• Nouns are words for people, places, things, or ideas and can be singular or plural, concrete or abstract, and show possession by adding 's.
• Pronouns are words used in place of nouns and are further defined by type, such as personal, possessive, reflexive, relative, and demonstrative.
• Verbs express action or being and can have one or more helping verbs, must agree with their subject in number, and take different forms to express tense.
• Adjectives modify or describe nouns or pronouns and answer questions of which one, what kind, or how many.
• Adverbs modify or describe verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs and answer questions of when, where, how, why, under what conditions, or to what degree.
• Prepositions are words placed before nouns or pronouns to form a phrase modifying another word in the sentence, and almost always function as an adjective or adverb.
• Conjunctions join words, phrases, or clauses and can be coordinating or subordinating.
• Coordinating conjunctions connect grammatically equal elements, while subordinating conjunctions connect clauses that are not equal.
• Interjections are words used to express emotion and are not grammatically related to the rest of the sentence.
• Understanding parts of speech is essential for determining the correct definition of a word when using the dictionary and for proper sentence construction.