Parts of SpeechA review

The 8 basic parts of speech:1. nouns2. verbs3. adjectives4. adverbs5. pronouns6. prepositions7. conjunctions8. interjections

Nouns• People, places, things, qualities

or ideals• People

– Mary, Fred, mother, sister• Places

– Charlottetown, Colonel Gray High School, the classroom, out west

• Things– Dog, cat, chair, desk, pencil

• Qualities/Ideals– Love, hate, war, peace

– Fran babysits for the Gunn family every Saturday night.

Identify the nouns in the following sentences:

• Sarah swept the floor.

• On the way to school, the bus broke down.

• Charlottetown is a beautiful city.

• The movie was about a woman and her trip to Egypt.

• Hate is a terrible thing.

Verbs• Action or “doing” words• Action

– ran, jumped, hit, slid, burped• Linking

– is, are, was• Helping

– had, did, will, would, should, can

– Robin scanned the room for a friendly face.

– He is miserable without you.

Identify the verbs in the following sentences:

• Ben went to the fridge to get a snack.

• I overslept this morning.

• Mary was upset after she broke up with her boyfriend.

• The kids ate popcorn while they watched a movie.

Adjectives• Describe or modify nouns and

pronouns– funny, sweet, mean, bossy,

beautiful, red, the, a, awesome, colourful, big, tiny, four

– The miserable old lady didn’t give candy on Halloween.

– Four children, who were very chubby and grubby, came to our door on Halloween night.

Identify the adjectives in the following sentences:

• The extravagant package was wrapped in beautiful pink tissue paper.

• Sam is a seriously unhappy man.

• Two boats tossed on the dangerous waves out at sea.

Adverbs• Describe or modify verbs• Often end in – ly

– quickly, sourly, noisily, unfortunately

– The bus slowly came to a halt at the stop sign.

– She wrote vigorously.

Other parts of speech…

• Although you can construct complete sentences using only nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, your writing would be tiresome to read if these were the only parts of speech you used.

• There are four other parts of speech that help to make sentences more varied and interesting: pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions and interjections.

Pronouns• A pronoun takes the place of a noun.

-- He would hear them mumbling about him, but in the morning, nobody made a big deal about it.

• Using pronouns allows the writer to avoid the needless repetition found in the following sentence:– Mike would hear Mike’s parents

mumbling about Mike, but in the morning, neither Mike’s parents nor Mike made a big deal about Mike’s nightmare.

Several types of Pronouns, including:

• Personal pronouns– I, me, you, your, he, him, she, it, its, we, us, our, their, them

• Indefinite pronouns– all, another, both, each, anybody, many, mush, few, every, nothing, one,

someone, somebody

• Reflexive pronouns– myself, yourself, himself, itself, ourselves, themselves

• Relative pronouns– who, whom, whose, which, that

• Demonstrative pronouns– this, that, these, those

• Interrogative pronouns– what, which, who, whom, whose

Identify the pronouns in the following sentences…

• She spoke to her principal about several scholarship opportunities.

• Ellen said she never saw anything quite like it before

• Do you know what time it is?

The dreaded antecedent

• a word, phrase, or clause that is replaced by a pronoun or other substitute later, or occasionally earlier, in the same or in another, usually subsequent, sentence.

In Jane lost a glove and she can't find it, Jane is the antecedent of she and glove is the antecedent of it.

Students sometime run into trouble with pronoun antecedent agreement because the number or gender does not match.

pronoun antecedent examples• The student lost his homework.

• The dog chased its tail.

• The teachers couldn’t find their workbooks, so the students took the day off.

• If a student cannot find his/her homework, he/she will not get credit for the work.

Prepositions• A preposition shows the relationship

between two words in a sentence.

• Usually, the word or phrase following a preposition (known as the object of the preposition) is a noun (phrase) or pronoun. Below, the prepositions are underlined, and their objects are in italic.

– It was home to a few thousand people, many of them attached to the air force base at the landward end of the peninsula.

More prepositions• However, a preposition can

also be followed by a verb to form the infinitive (to be), by an adjective (from bad to worse), or by and adverb (from before).

• Some other frequently used prepositions:– with, by, from, in, on,

under, over, across, along, before, after, between, and through

Identify the prepositions and their objects in the following sentences…

• She went to the dance with him.

• The cat chased the mouse around the house, through the tunnel, and over the hill.

• It was home to a bird which hid beneath the leaves in its nest.

Conjunctions• A conjunction connects words, phrases, or clauses.

• Coordinating conjunctions: and, but, nor, or

– Join two or more words – • Mike and his mother sat in the darkening

kitchen.– Join two or more phrases –

• Sheet lightning played across the muscles of his back and down into his thighs.

– Complete sentences – • Mike nodded a lot, but he didn’t hear most of it.

More Conjunctions

• Subordinating conjunctions: as, although, because, before, since, unless, which, while

– Join only clauses, and one of these clauses depends on the other.

– Appear at the beginning or middle of a sentence.

• When he tuned to the emergency channel, depressed the talk switch and said, “Mayday, mayday,” CFB Comox came right back.

• Your father volunteered to stay in the boat until they came back for him.

Identify the conjunctions in the following sentences…

• Because she was small, she could not go on the carnival ride.

• He was tall and handsome.

• She could not read or write a word.

• The teacher waited patiently while her students completed their quizzes.

Interjections• An interjection

indicates strong feeling or sudden emotion.

• Examples: hey, wow, huh, gosh

– Hey, that was my sandwich!

– You can somersault – wow, that’s cool!

Identify the Interjections in the following sentences…

• Oh, can I help you with that?

• You won the lottery– whoopee!!

• Gosh, I didn’t realize I hurt your feelings.

Review• Pronouns – take the place of

nouns.

• Prepositions – show the relationship between two or more words in a sentence.

• Conjunctions – connect words, phrases, or clauses.

• Interjections – indicate strong feeling or sudden emotion.

Identify whether the underlined words are pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, or interjections.

• He would kick and yell his way out of dreams where the bear was after him, his chest cold and sweat-slick, breath bellowing.

• At fifteen, he didn’t want his parents coming to his rescue – well, maybe he wanted it a little, but it would have bent his self-image.

• He’d been having the bear dream for as long as he could recall, although it didn’t start out as a bear.

• It would come for him every five or six months; not that he could count on it to keep a schedule, so sometimes it could be twice in the same week.

• That was the worst part: it seemed to enlarge itself toward him, like a dark balloon swelling across his field of vision, or as if he were a lost spacewalker falling toward a vast dark planet.

• Whatever he might be doing, Mike stopped and looked up when the planes went over.

• If a fisherman abandoned a burning boat, the Lab would hover in the air so that Dad could jump into the cold sea, put a harness around the man before hypothermia killed him, and wait in the water while the victim was winched in safety, and they lowered the cable again to retrieve the SARtech.

Parts of Speech Poem

Every name is called a nounAs 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 or bridal ring;

The verb means action, something done To read and write, to jump and 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.