Assignment

The

eight

basic

parts

of

speech

are

simple.

They

are

verbs,

nouns,

pronouns,

adjectives,

adverbs,

prepositions,

conjunctions,

and

interjections.

All

English

words

fit

into

one

of

these

grammatical

categories.

Many

English

words

function

as

more

than

one

part

of

speech. Take the word fly for example. When you fly in a plane, it is a

verb; when you swat a fly, it is a noun; and when you wear fly shades, it

is a slang adjective. English can be confusing because words can mean

more than one thing, but if you know your eight parts of speech, you will

avoid confusion.

Verbs are words used to express action, condition, or a state of being.

They are used in speech to move the meanings of sentences along. An

action verb expresses an action. Words such as throw

, create, and draw

express physical action. Mental actions can be expressed by words such

as believe, desire, and visualize. Verbs such as be and feel are used to

show states of being. Helping verbs, or auxiliary verbs, are used to help

the main verb express action or create verb phrases. Some examples of

auxiliary verbs are would, might and am.

Nouns

are

words

that

name

a

person,

place,

thing

or

idea.

A

few

examples of nouns are person, place, thing and idea. Proper nouns name

specific

things

such

as

Jeff,

California,

and

English.

To

change

a

noun

from singular form to plural form an s or es must be added to the end of

the word. Two examples are thing/things and dish/dishes. Some nouns

have irregular plural forms and are a little harder to spell sometimes. A

couple

of

these

nouns

are

man/men,

and

reality/realities.

To

show

ownership, one must add an apostrophe s to the end of a singular noun,

or just an apostrophe to a plural noun. Examples of the possessive form

are Jeff’s possession and fools’ wisdom.

Pronouns are words used in place of nouns to shorten a repeated noun

that has already been mentioned. The noun that the pronoun replaces is

called the antecedent of the pronoun. My girlfriend goes shopping a lot.

She spends a bunch of money on garbage. In these last

two sentences,

she

is

the

pronoun,

and

girlfriend

is

the

antecedent.

There

are

many

forms

of

pronouns,

such

as

personal,

possessive,

reflexive,

intensive,

indefinite, demonstrative, interrogative, relative and reciprocal.

Adjectives are very useful words.

They add information to sentences by

telling

us

more

about

nouns

and

pronouns,

usually

by

describing,

identifying, or quantifying those words. Adjectives usually come before

the words they modify, but sometimes follow linking verbs. Here are two

examples.

She

is

a

nice

woman.

That

woman

is

nice.

Quantifying

adjectives

come

in

the

form

of

articles

and

numbers

such

as

an,

and

twenty- one.

An adverb is defined as a word that gives more information about a verb,

adjective

or

other

adverbs.

In

the

sentence:

She

runs

slow,

slow

describes how sue performs the adjective, runs. In the sentence She runs

very slow

, very describes the adverb slow, and tells how slow she runs.

Most, but not all adverbs end in ly, but not all words that end in ly are

adverbs. Ugly is an adjective. Supply can be a noun. Quickly and not are

both adverbs.

A preposition is a word, which shows relationships between other words

in the sentence. Relationships between words can be in the form of time

or

space.

She

went

to

the

mall

again.

To

is

a

preposition

that

shows

direction or space. She will find more clothes than you could imagine in

thirty

minutes.

In

is

the

preposition

that

shows

time.

A

preposition

always goes with a noun or pronoun, which is called the object of the

preposition.

The preposition is almost always before the noun or pronoun and that is

why

it

is

called

a

preposition.

The

preposition

and

the

object

of

the

preposition together are called a prepositional phrase. In the sentence

She went to the mall, to the mall is the prepositional phrase

A conjunction is a word that connects words, or groups of words, to tell

something about the relationship between these words. In the sentence

she

and

I

are

friends,

and

connects

two

pronouns,

she

and

I.

Coordinating

conjunctions

are

conjunctions,

which

connect

two

equal

parts of a sentence. The most common ones are and, or

, but, and so. She

is

small

but

strong.

But

is

used

as

a

coordinating

conjunction.

Subordinating conjunctions connect two parts of a sentence that are not