Parts of Speech

By Matthew, 30 September 2008 - 6:06pm
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Understand the parts of speech: knowing if a word is a noun, an adjective, a verb and so on, is very important for studying a language.

Understanding the parts of speech is very important for studying a language. It helps you understand and talk about grammar and language. It also helps for putting language together. To be a good learner, make sure you know the parts of speech.

Part Description Examples
Noun
 A naming word: a person, place, thing, state or quality. Nouns can be the main or only part of a subject or an object. apple, China, doctor, pencil, language, Maria, method, furniture, map, twelve...
Adjective A word for describing a noun. There are 6 types: quality; quantity; number; demonstrative, interrogative; possessive. French, red, large, excellent, which, whose, this, that, these, my, your, some, all, many, new, old, twelve, nice, important...
Verb A doing word. A word that shows an action, event or state. be, say, do, look, watch, give, forget, go, come, eat...
Adverb A word for describing an action. It can modify a verb, adjective, clause, another adverb or a whole sentence. quickly, fast, hard, hardly, frankly, surprisingly, well, yesterday, slower...
Auxiliary Verb A word for giving more information about a main action. A helping verb. be, do, can, have, could, should, may, might, will, would, get, be going to, used to...
Pronoun A word which replaces a noun or a noun phrase. he, she, him, her, them, they, it, himself, I, you, we, us, mine, these, who, what, nobody...
Preposition A word used to show relationships between things.
>> Learn more 		with, in, out, up, down, to, from, at, around, about, through, on...
Conjunction A joining word. A conjunction joins two nouns, phrases or sentences. and, because, if, however, so, when, while, yet, or, that, in any case, as well as...
Determiner A word used with a noun to say "which one" and "how many". a, an, the, one, ten, a hundred, much, many, few, a little, some, this, that, these, those, which...
Interjection A word to express emotion. oh, wow, congratulations, oh god, huh, hello...

 

  1. This list is designed to help learners and teachers communicate about language and the parts of speech, specifically in English. It is modified and simplified for those purposes.
  2. Different languages use different parts of speech - this list refers to English.
  3. Traditionally there are 8 parts of speech - we include the ones used in English and divide them in ways meaningful and useful for learners and teachers.
  4. There is much controversy about the classification of words and so you might find different versions of this list and its parts.