Parts of Speech

By

Piret Lehiste

Parts of Speech

Morphology is a field of linguistics focused on the study of the forms and formation of words in a language.

In Greek: ‘morph’ (shape, form) + ‘logos’ (study)

Morphology deals with the internal structure of words.

A part of speech is a linguistic category of words sharing syntactic or morphological behaviour and semantic properties (such as a noun or a verb).

Parts of speech describe the job a word does in a sentence.

Nouns A noun is a word that names a person, place, a thing, or an idea.

Examples: Person: uncle, baby, John

Thing: car, door, book

Idea: truth, beauty

Verbs A verb is a word that expresses action or a state of being.

Examples: The students did their homework.

Studying grammar rocks :) I live in Tallinn.

Adjectives

An adjective is a word that modifies a noun by limiting its meaning.

Examples: romantic story

many ideas

Scottish wool

Adverbs

An adverb is a word that modifies a verb, an adjective, or another adverb by making its meaning more specific. Adverbs modify by answering the questions “when”, “where”, “how”.

Examples: She often drinks tea with milk.

Jack carefully polished his car.

Pronouns

A pronoun is a word that can take the place of a noun.

Examples: I, me, their, myself,

these, each other

Prepositions

A preposition is a word that shows the relationship of a noun or pronoun to some other word in a sentence.

Examples: above, behind, during, from, since, through, without

Conjunctions

A conjunction is a word that joins single words or groups of words.

Examples:

or, but, because, while, although

Interjections

An interjection is a word or phrase that expresses emotion or exclamation.

Examples:

wow, ouch, hey, hello, oops

Articles

Articles are used to indicate nouns and to specify their application.

Examples:

a / an – indefinite article

the – definite article

I bought myself a guitar.

He can play the guitar very well.

Numerals

A numeral is a word that represents a number or shows the order of objects through counting.

Examples: three, one hundred, fifth

A POEM

Every name is called a noun, As field and fountain, street and town; In place of noun the pronoun stands As he and she can clap their hands;

The adjective describes a thing, As magic wand and bridal ring;

The verb means action, something done - To read, to write, to jump, to run;

How things are done, the adverbs tell, As quickly, slowly, badly, well;

The preposition shows relation, As in the street, or at the station; Conjunctions join, in many ways,

Sentences, words, or phrase and phrase; The interjection cries out, ‘Hark!

I need an exclamation mark!‘

Through poetry, we learn how each

Of these make up the parts of speech

Parts of Speech

Identify all the parts of speech in the following sentence:

Yesterday we went to the cinema because John had luckily received two free tickets.

Match the parts of speech with their examples in the word cloud.

Key 1 yesterday - adverb

we - pronoun

went - verb

to - preposition

the - article

cinema - noun

because - conjunction

John - noun

had - verb

luckily - adverb

received - verb

two - numeral

free - adjective

tickets - noun

Key 2

Noun: cloud, interest

Verb: irritate, organise

Adjective: strong, funny

Adverb: seriously, angrily

Preposition: under, during

Conjunction: although, if

Interjection: wow, hello

Numeral: thirty, fourth

Pronoun: herself

Article: the