Quezi

This home-made grammar game was used made by a home-school student learning the parts of speech. Photo by Jimmiehomeschoolmom CC-BY.

“Parts of speech” refers to categories that are used by grammarians to describe how words are used in sentences. English has traditionally been viewed as having eight parts of speech, as follows:

• Nouns are words that represent persons, places, things or ideas. In the sentence “Life is good,” “life” is a noun.
• Pronouns are words that substitute for nouns, usually so a noun doesn’t have to be repeated. In “She is beautiful,” “she” is a pronoun.
• Verbs are words that represent actions, existence or states of being. In “The girl ran,” “ran” is the verb.
• Adjectives are words that describe nouns (and sometimes pronouns) or limit their meaning in some way. In the sentence “I have a new computer,” “new” is an adjective. An example of an adjective that limits rather than describes is “those” in the phrase “those cars.”
• Adverbs are words that describe or limit adjectives, verbs, other adverbs or entire sentences. In “He sang softly,” “softly” is an adverb. An example of an adverb that limits rather than describes is “never” in “They never eat pork.” An example of an adverb describing an entire sentence is “unfortunately” in “Unfortunately, the car crashed.”
• Prepositions are a type of linking word that is used to refer describe the relationship of the noun (or pronoun) that follows to another word in a sentence. In “We went to the mall,” “to” is a preposition.
• Conjunctions are used to connect words and phrases in a sentence. In the preceding sentence, “and” is a conjunction.
• Interjections are exclamations that can stand alone (although they are sometimes inserted in sentences), usually to indicate an emotional reaction as in “Ouch!” or “Wow!” An example of an interjection within a sentence is “oh” in “Oh, I see.”

Although the division of English into eight parts of speech is traditional, other ways of dividing can be used. Sometimes limiting adjectives such as “the” and “that” are classified as determiners, for example, rather than as adjectives (and “the” is sometimes classified as an article). Also, sometimes words such as “up” in the phrase “cough up” or “down” in “lie down” are classified as particles rather than as adverbs, or “cough up” and “lie down” can be viewed as phrasal verbs rather than viewing “up” and “down” as adverbs or particles. A word such as “grammar” in “grammar book” is considered by some to be an adjective, while others consider it to be an attributive noun.

The same parts of speech are frequently used to classify words in other Indo-European languages, although there can be differences as well. German, for example, has some postpositions, words that are used similarly to prepositions but come after the noun, and Spanish past participles are sometimes seen as a separate part of speech because they can function as adjectives and verbs simultaneously.