The building blocks of any language are the words. We can organise different English words according to their different functions: we call these different categories the 'parts of speech'. Below are listed ten different parts of speech. The grammar section of English Toolkit is organised around these.
Knowing the parts of speech gives us the terminology to talk about the English language and how it works.
- Nouns – Nouns name things (e.g., fence, pasta, fireman...), so nouns indicate the 'participants' in any sentence.
- Pronouns – Pronouns are used instead of nouns (e.g. he, she, it...myself, whoever).
- Verbs – Verbs are words that describe actions, happenings, states of being (e.g. ran, happened, am...), so verbs indicate what actions or processes apply to the nouns, the participants.
- Adjectives – Adjectives tell us what qualities are associated with nouns so we say that they qualify nouns (e.g. heavy load, straw hat, daring rescue...).
- Adverbs – Adverbs modify verbs, adjectives, other adverbs (e.g. coughed continually, really clever idea, walked very quickly...).
- Prepositions – Prepositions are placed before nouns and pronouns to introduce phrases (e.g. in the house, on the roof, over the fence...).
- Conjunctions – Conjunctions join similar grammatical elements together:
- a. Co-ordinating conjunctions join the same sorts of grammatical items (e.g and, but, or...).
- b. Subordinating conjunctions join adverbial clauses to other clauses (e.g. because, when, until, while, although....). Clauses that begin with such conjunctions are not the main clause; they are lower in the order of importance (hence, subordinate).
- Interjections – Interjections are expressions that are 'thrown into' language, e.g. exclamations such as 'Wow!', 'Bother!', 'Ouch!' or commands such as 'Shh!', 'Stop!'
- Determiners – The term 'determiners' is quite a recent term. The ninth part of speech was once limited to articles (See below). However, modern grammarians see some adjectives and pronouns as acting in the same way because they define or 'determine' how a noun is introduced and placed in context. They are like signposts that give us a heads-up about which noun we are talking about: a path, the path, that path, his idea, those ideas.
- a. Articles – the definite article the introduces something specific (the movie that we saw) as opposed to the indefinite articles a and an, where an indefinite item is introduced (We went to see a movie; I ate an apple).
- b. Possessive and demonstrative adjectives and pronouns (my book, that car) and interrogative words, i.e questioning words (which movie? whose belongings?) - such words define or 'determine' how a noun is introduced and placed in context.
- Participles – See next page. (This one is tricky!)