PAPAVINC-Parts of Speech

The word “PAPAVINC” is a mnemonic - a way of remembering different kinds of words, also known as “parts of speech”. Not all languages have words falling into all these categories and some languages have extra words. For instance, quite a few languages have no prepositions, many don’t distinguish between adjectives and nouns, and some others have other parts of speech such as articles (“the” and “a/an” in English) or numerical coefficients. However, since traditional grammar is based on Latin and Greek in the West, this can be illustrated using those languages along with English.

If the following is not clear, the table afterwards may help.

Pronoun - A word which stands in place of a noun.Adjective - A word which describes a noun. Not clearly separate from nouns in Latin or Greek.Preposition - A word figuratively or metaphorically expressing a position with respect to another. Not all languages have these at all, others have postpositions instead and still more have words either side of a word. True prepositions occur before the relevant word, hence “pre-".Adverb - Said to be a word which adds to a verb and which often describes the way in which something is done, often ending in “-ly" in English. In fact, this is really a dustbin category for words which fit in nowhere else.Verb - A “doing" or action word. This doesn’t work for all verbs, for instance “be" or “have".Interjection - A word whose meaning cannot be expressed as a dictionary definition but has some other role.Noun - A word which names an item, real, abstract or imaginary.Conjunction - a word, sometimes a sequence of words, joining together two phrases or words.

EXAMPLES

Part of Speech

Greek example

Latin example

English example

Pronoun Eγω - I Ego - I IAdjective Λευκος -

white, brightAlbus - white White

Preposition Εν - in In - in InAdverb βουστροφηδόν

- in the manner of an ox ploughing a field

Nunc - now Slowly

Verb Κλεπτειν - steal

Amare - love Steal

Interjection ω - oh! Ave - hello HelloNoun (‘Ο) κοσμος -

UniverseAqua - water Duck

Conjunction Και - and Et (&) - and And

Note: The word “βουστροφηδόν” is used to describe an early way of writing Greek and Latin where alternate lines were written in opposite directions and the letters were written the opposite way round, like an ox ploughing a field back and forth.

Familiar words from the above: Egoism, leukocyte, enthusiasm, boustrophedon, kleptomania, (same word), Cosmos, triskaidekaphobia – fear of the number thirteen;Albino, intellect, amarous, aqueous, the ampersand (a stylised form of the letters “ET” as in “&”, for example).