Parts of Speech

Overview

A noun is a word that stands for a person, place, thing, or idea. It can represent both tangible and intangible things, like activities and concepts. It can be made plural or possessive. The noun is usually the subject discussed by the sentence. It may also be the object: that which receives the sentence’s action. 

Common Noun

A common (or generic) noun conventionally names something by its category or refers to an idea. For example, a person may be called an individual, but never specifically by name. For nouns that are specific, see the “Proper Noun” heading. 

Below are examples of common nouns, each one in bold:

• His mother made his bed for him.

• The doctor gasped; the girl was growing antlers.

• Cars were sliding uncontrollably across the ice.

Entire phrases can act collectively like a noun. The bold below is one such noun phrase:

• The individual who usually greets us at the counter must be absent today.
  
  

Proper Noun

Unlike common nouns, which are generic, proper nouns are specific. Where a “person” refers to any person, “Eugene” refers to one specific person. Proper nouns are capitalized. Proper nouns include specific individuals, locations, and things (like movies or companies). Here are some examples with the proper nouns in bold:

• Marticio watched Iron Man 2 with his family in California.

• Eustice’s mother sprayed his bed with Smell-A-Way fabric cleaner.

• Dr. Eliza gasped; Marina was growing antlers.

• The Tree Co. truck slid on the ice towards Pleasant Ave.
  
  

Pronoun

Pronouns refer to nouns or take the place of nouns. They aren’t nouns themselves. The noun a pronoun refers to is its antecedent. Pronouns can imply nouns that aren’t stated.

Pronouns are generic (“it” can refer to nearly anything), so to avoid uncertainty, be clear about what they refer to. On the plus side, they reduce repetition by referring to nouns briefly and diversifying the language. Here’s an example:

Repetitive: Isiah took Isiah’s keys and used Isiah’s keys to unlock Isiah’s car.

Better:  Isiah took his keys and used them to unlock his car.

Here are more examples of pronouns, each one in bold:

• His mother made his bed for him.

• She gasped; the antlers sure had a shine to them.

• He veered the car left and it slid on the ice. He was unharmed.

Utility

A sentence will almost always be considered incomplete without a noun or pronoun to establish the subject being discussed. There are some exceptions: when the subject is clearly implied without stating it—such as in command statements or dialogue, and in quick expressions of emotion (interjections). Here are examples:

• Hello! Sorry, please come back later. Thanks for understanding.

• Yikes! Please be careful, alright? Gotta stay safe.

A verb is a word that can show tense, often describing actions, occurrences, or states. The tenses of verbs help to indicate when actions, occurrences, or states take place. Past, present, and future tenses are indicated in two ways: by a change in verb form—inflection—and when other words—auxiliary (helping) verbs—are added. Auxiliary verbs form the future tense and influence the past and present tense. 

For instance, let’s look at the base form verb “to laugh.” With inflection we may indicate the simple past tense with the suffix -ed: laughed. We now know the laugh occurred in the past. We may add further context by placing the auxiliary verb had before it: had laughed. This is the past perfect form, which indicates something has happened before another past event: “I had laughed heartily, then shared a joke of my own.”

For verb tense, the time divisions in English are past, present, and future. These can be further separated into simple, continuous, perfect, and perfect continuous aspects, which add context.

Simple tenses are true to their name. They do not add any additional context to when an action takes place. For instance, a word in the past simple, like “cooked” simply happened in the past. No more context is needed.

Continuous tenses indicate continuity of the action, whether they continued for a span of time in the past, present, or future. So, “will be cooking” indicates that, for a span of time, food will be cooked in the future. They are inflected with -ing.

Perfect tenses tend to compare moments in time. For instance, “had cooked” would usually be used in a sentence in comparison to another, later, past moment: “I had cooked several dishes before I realized we had way too much food!”

Perfect continuous tenses combine the perfect and continuous to emphasize continuity in comparison to another moment in time. “I will have been cooking by the time you arrive,” for instance, emphasizes a duration of time in comparison to an event that will take place afterwards.

Overview

A modifier is an adjective or adverb: a word that modifies the meaning of other words. They are fundamentally descriptive. Adjectives are associated with nouns while adverbs are associated with other words, and even whole phrases or sentences. Determiners are similar to adjectives, but limit nouns rather than describe them.

Adjective

Adjectives are words that describe the qualities or characteristics of nouns1. For instance, something may be described as unique, vibrant, or beautiful. Adjectives (like adverbs) can be coupled with the comparative suffixes –er and –est. For longer words, you will typically see the words more and most before the adjective instead.

Here are some examples of adjectives, each one in bold:

• The lazy boy’s mother fixed his messy bed.

• The doctor—who is often calm—gasped; the girl was growing huge antlers.

• Unprepared cars were sliding uncontrollably across the glassy ice.

Adverb

An adverb modifies or describes words, but unlike an adjective it modifies verbs2, adjectives, other adverbs, and sentences rather than nouns. They can be coupled with –er and rarely –est to establish comparison, like adjectives. The suffix –ly is seen regularly in adverbs. 

In these examples, bolded adverbs modify their highlighted partners, or other adverbs:

• He cautiously tread through the dark passage, then happily shared his story.

• She ran quickly and easily won the race! She ran very carefully.

• It was woefully cold out, but the winter wear was always exceptionally stylish. 

Determiner

A determiner is a word that comes before a noun and specifies something about the noun’s quantity, ownership, or identity. For instance, while it may be vague to only say “there are pizzas,” adding determiners can provide context: there are three pizzas, they are her pizzas, they are those pizzas. The core difference between determiners and adjectives is that determiners are not descriptive. They—reduce—which group, quantity, or state the noun belongs to rather than—add—description (resultantly, they are not always considered modifiers).

Here are some other examples with determiners in bold:

• Samuel’s mother spent her time cleaning his room.

• The doctor gasped; this girl was growing two large antlers.

• Each and every car slid across that ice. These roads must be salted.

Article

An article is a type of determiner. It marks a noun as generic or specific. For example, when one says “the application should be submitted to the office at the university” you know that “the” is referring to one paper returned to a specific university and office. Using “the” shows that the noun is referring to a single thing.

If you instead use “a” or “an” the outcome is different: “an application should be submitted to an office at a university.” Here, the noun could be any number of universities, offices, or applications because a and an generalize the nouns. Use an instead of a when the modified words starts with the—sound—of a vowel

Here are more examples, with articles marked in bold:

• The mother made the bed for the boy.

• The doctor gasped; the girl was growing an antler.

• A car slid uncontrollably across an ice patch. 

Overview

Parts of speech such as prepositions and conjunctions serve to connect and establish relationships between words. Prepositions tend to connect nouns while conjunctions connect words, phrases, and clauses.

Prepositions

Prepositions mainly serve to establish the “when and where” relationships between nouns or pronouns and other parts of the sentence, often relating to time, direction, or location.

A preposition may lead into a noun (its “object”) to create a prepositional phrase: “under the bed.” Prepositional phrases can be added to sentences without additional punctuation.

Below are examples of prepositions, each one in bold:

• His mother went to his room and cleaned under the bed.

• The doctor gasped at the girl; she was growing antlers on her head!

• Cars slid on the ice after the storm.

Conjunctions

Conjunctions often tell us how clauses relate. Coordinating conjunctions tell us when the parts of the sentence are of equal weight. These conjunctions can be easily memorized by utilizing the acronym F. A. N. B. O. Y. S.: 

For And Nor But Or Yet So

Below are examples with coordinating conjunctions in bold:

• The mother cleaned her son’s bed and closet, but not his desk or dresser.

• The doctor gasped, for the girl was growing antlers yet did not mind.

• The cars had summer tires, so they resisted sliding on neither the ice nor the snow.

Subordinating conjunctions tell us when clauses are not equal in structure, establishing contrast, sequence, cause and effect, etc. While coordinating conjunctions tend to appear in the middle of sentences, subordinating conjunctions can come at the beginning.

Subordinating conjunctions used in sentences:

• The mother cleaned her son’s bed since it was so unbelievably messy.

• The doctor gasped after the girl came in growing antlers. Whereas everyone else was baffled, she did not mind them.

• Although the cars had new tires, they still slid on the ice because they drove so fast.