8 parts of speech grammar 101. what are parts of speech? the parts of speech explain not what the...

8 PART

S OF

SPEECH

GR

AM

MA

R 1

01

WHAT ARE PARTS OF SPEECH?

 The Parts of Speech explain not what the word is, but how the word is used

 The same word can be a noun in one sentence and a verb or adjective in the next.

a word's part of speech can change from one sentence to the next

WHAT ARE THEY?

1. Verb

2. Noun

3. Pronoun

4. Adjective

5. Adverb

6. Preposition

7. Conjunction

8. Interjection

WHAT IS A VERB?

Tell me what you did yesterday without

using verbs….

VERBS

The verb is perhaps the most important part of the sentence. A verb or compound verb asserts something about the subject of the sentence and expresses actions, events, or states of being. The verb or compound verb is the critical element of the predicate of a sentence.

Dracula bites his victims on the neck.

In early October, Giselle will plant twenty tulip bulbs.

My first teacher was Miss Crawford, but I remember the janitor Mr. Weatherbee more

vividly.

Karl Creelman bicycled around the world in 1899, but his diaries and his bicycle were

destroyed.

NOUNS

A noun is a word used to name a person, animal, place, thing, and abstract idea.

Nouns are usually the first words which small children learn.

NOUNS

1. Late last year our neighbors bought a goat.

2. Portia White was an opera singer.

3. The bus inspector looked at all the passengers' passes.

4. According to Plutarch, the library at Alexandria was destroyed in 48 B.C.

5. Philosophy is of little comfort to the starving.

ADJECTIVE

An adjective modifies a noun or a pronoun

by describing, identifying, or quantifying

words. An adjective usually precedes the

noun or the pronoun which it modifies.

ADJECTIVE

Adjectives answer

What kind is it?

How many are there?

Which one is it?

An adjective can be a single word, a phrase, or a clause.

1. The truck-shaped balloon floated over the treetops.

2. Mrs. Morrison papered her kitchen walls with hideous wall paper.

3. The small boat foundered on the wine dark sea.

4. The coal mines are dark and dank.

5. Many stores have already begun to play irritating Christmas music.

6. A battered music box sat on the mahogany sideboard.

7. The back room was filled with large, yellow rain boots.

WHAT KIND IS IT?

Dan decided that the fuzzy green bread would make an unappetizing sandwich.

What kind of bread? Fuzzy and green! What kind of sandwich? 

A friend with a fat wallet will never want for weekend shopping partners.

What kind of friend? 

A towel that is still warm from the dryer is more comforting than a hot fudge sundae.

What kind of towel? 

HOW MANY ARE THERE?

Seven hungry space aliens slithered into the diner and ordered vanilla milkshakes.

How many hungry space aliens? 

The students, five freshmen and six sophomores, braved Dr. Ribley's killer calculus exam.

How many students? 

The disorganized pile of books, which contained seventeen overdue volumes from the library and five unread class texts, blocked the doorway in Eli's dorm room.

How many books? 

WHICH ONE IS IT?

The most unhealthy item from the cafeteria is the steak sub, which will slime your hands with grease.

Which item from the cafeteria?

The cockroach eyeing your cookie has started to crawl this way.

Which cockroach?

The students who neglected to prepare for Mrs. Mauzy's English class hide in the cafeteria rather than risk their instructor's wrath.

Which students?

An adjective can be modified by an adverb, or by a phrase or clause

functioning as an adverb.

My husband knits intricately patterned mittens.

for example, the adverb "intricately" modifies the adjective "patterned."

Some nouns, many pronouns, and many participle phrases can also act as adjectives.

Eleanor listened to the muffled sounds of the radio hidden under her pillow.

 both highlighted adjectives are past participles.

ADVERBS

Adverbs answer one of these four questions:

How? When? Where? and Why?

Adverbs tweak the meaning of verbs, adjectives, other adverbs, and clauses.

ADVERBS

Our basset hound Bailey sleeps peacefully on the living room floor.

Lenora rudely grabbed the last chocolate cookie.

Tyler stumbled in the completely dark kitchen.

Roxanne very happily accepted the ten-point late penalty to work on her research essay one more day.

Surprisingly, the restroom stalls had toilet paper.

ADVERBS

Many single-word adverbs end in ly. In the examples above, you saw peacefully, rudely, completely, happily, and surprisingly.

Not all ly words are adverbs, however. Lively, lonely, and lovely are adjectives instead, answering the questions What kind? or Which one?

ADVERBS

Adverbs can also be multi-word phrases and clauses. 

At 2 a.m., a bat flew through Deidre's open bedroom window.

With a fork, George thrashed the raw eggs until they foamed.

Sylvia emptied the carton of milk into the sink because the expiration date had long passed.

PREPOSITION

A preposition links nouns, pronouns and 

phrases to other words in a sentence.

Prepositions are the words that indicate location. Usually, prepositions show this location in the physical world.

PREPOSITION

Think of a box…..

PREPOSITION

Prepositions can also show location in time.

At midnight, Jill craved mashed potatoes with grape jelly.

In the spring, I always vow to plant tomatoes but end up buying them at the supermarket.

During the marathon, Iggy's legs complained with sharp pains shooting up his thighs.

INTERJECTION

To capture short bursts of emotion, you can use an interjection, which is a single word, phrase, or short clause that communicates the facial expression and body language that the sentence itself will sometimes neglect.

My colleague in the physics lab shouted, "Hooray! They made the right decision!" 

CONJUNCTION

And, but, for, nor, or, so, and yet—these are the seven coordinating conjunctions. To remember all seven, you might want to learn one of these acronym: FANBOYS

Coordinating conjunctions connect words, phrases, and clauses.

CONJUNCTIONS

Rocky, my orange tomcat, loves having his head scratched but hates getting his claws trimmed.

Rocky terrorizes the poodles next door yet adores the German shepherd across the street.

Rocky refuses to eat dry cat food, nor will he touch a saucer of squid eyeball stew.

I hate to waste a single drop of squid eyeball stew, for it is expensive and time-consuming to make.