Sentences are made up of words that can be combined in many different ways. How this is done is called grammar. Each word in a sentence is used in a particular way, which means it belongs to a particular class of words. These classes of words are called parts of speech.
| CLASS | SUBCLASS | DEFINITION | EXAMPLE |
|---|---|---|---|
| Noun | name of a person, place or thing (including ideas) |
||
| common noun | written with lower case unless beginning a sentence | woman, house, dog, tree, love | |
| proper noun | particular person, place or thing - always capitalized | Maureen, Cold Lake, Canada Post | |
| Pronoun | stands for or takes the place of a noun | The boys were hungry, so they made lunch. | |
| Verb | talks about an action or a state of being | ||
| simple or main verbs | walk, eats, typed, is, are, was, were | ||
| helper or auxiliary verbs | used to help a main verb or form other tenses | is walking, was eating, will have typed | |
| verb tense tells when (present past or future) | |||
| Adverb | adverbial | tells how or how much an action is done, or when or where it takes place | She ran quickly. He is coming now. It is here. He is much bigger. |
| modifier | can also be used to describe an adjective or introduce a sentence | a fairly good throw; Honestly, I can’t help it. | |
| often ends in ly | |||
| Adjective | describes a noun; specifies size, colour, quantity, characteristics | tall man, fresh green salad, small black kitten | |
| Preposition | tells about position or movement | ||
| modifier | shows how a noun or pronoun is related to the rest of the sentence | on the road, beside the girl, towards the front | |
| prepositional adverb | used with a noun, can do the work of an adverb | I found him there. I found him near the gate. | |
| prepositional verb | used with a verb to give a different meaning than the verb alone | laugh at, look into | |
| Conjunction | connects two (or more) words or phrases or clauses | ||
| coordinating | connects two things of the same value like single words, phrases, or clauses | or, for, nor, and, so, but, yet | |
| subordinating | joins independent and dependent clauses; places a condition on the sentence | though, since, because, although, until, while | |
| Interjection | an exclamation | Oh! Egad! Bah! Yecch! | |
| Determiner | definite (the) and indefinite (a, an) articles and possessives; can be difficult for some ESL learners | the boot, a tree, an apple, my pencil, Mary’s chair |
English, I. (n.d.). Parts of speech. Workshop handout. Used with permission.
Handout 12.19