Parts of Speech
Parts of speech are what make up the English language. They have different functions. Some of the essential parts of speech would be the following: Nouns, Verbs, Adjectives, Adverbs, Pronouns, Articles, and Interjections. These all provide content for the sentence. Some parts of speech are used to connect either sentences to each other, or parts of sentences to each other. These are known as prepositions and conjunctions.
There are over 170,000 words in the English language. Believe it or not, every word in English can be put into one of 8 different categories called “parts of speech”, which helps make analyzing sentences a lot easier. In today’s video, we’ll go over each of these different parts of speech and explore examples to help us identify them. Let’s get started.
The Foundation of Language
There are 8 different parts of speech: nouns, verbs, adjectives, pronouns, articles, interjections, prepositions, and conjunctions.
- Nouns
- Verbs
- Adjectives
- Pronouns
- Articles
- Interjections
- Prepositions
- Conjunctions
Let’s go over each one individually.
Nouns are words that represent people, places, things, or ideas. Some examples would be pencil, fish, love, office, and John. These are all people, places, things, or ideas. Let’s look at one of these in a sentence:
The fish swam around the large rock.
In this example, there are two nouns: fish and rock. In this case, these are both “things”.
Just like nouns, pronouns are another part of speech that represent a person, place, thing, or idea. The difference with pronouns is that they are words that replace the specific name of that person, place, thing, or idea. For example, instead of saying “John, Suzy, and Mark went outside to play,” you could say they went outside to play. Other examples of pronouns include she, it, I, and we.
| Pronouns | |||
| He | She | They | You |
| Him | Her | Them | I |
| Us | Me | It | we |
Our third part of speech is verbs. Verbs are words that describe an action or state of being. For example, run, sleep, hide, and reach are all verbs because they describe an action taking place. Is, are, and am are examples of state-of-being verbs. Can you spot the verb in this sentence?
Wash the dishes and feed the cat before 6 o’clock.
There are actually 2 verbs in this sentence. Wash and feed are both verbs because they are actions being done to something.
Is that chair green or gray?
In this sentence, the verb is the word is. It’s a state-of-being verb because it is helping express what state the chair is in, green or gray.
Green and gray are both examples of our next part of speech: Adjectives. Adjectives are words that describe or modify a noun. Examples include words like cute, purple, kind, and fascinating. Let’s identify the adjectives in this sentence:
The beautiful, scarlet flowers swayed in the gentle breeze.
This example is full of adjectives. Beautiful and scarlet describe what the flowers looked like, while gentle describes how the breeze felt. Articles, a, an, and the, are adjectives that are used to define if something is specific or not. For example:
Pick the card.
In this sentence, the article lets us know that the card was likely mentioned earlier by the speaker, meaning this is a specific card. What if we change the article to a?
Pick a card.
In this example, the card could just be any card, not a specific one that the article the implies.
Our next part of speech is the interjection. Interjections are words that show excitement or other displays of emotions. Examples include: Phew!, Wow!, and Ugh!
“Ugh! Another email from my boss.”
Here the interjection Ugh! shows the speaker isn’t very happy about getting this email.
Our next part of speech is the preposition. Prepositions are words that link one noun or pronoun to another noun or pronoun in the sentence. The relationship is usually about the space, time, or a place. Here are some examples of prepositions in a sentence.
He went to the store.
In this example, the preposition to links the pronoun he with the noun store. Here are a few more sentences with the prepositions highlighted.
The cup is on the counter.
They’ve been gone since 12pm.
She ran by the tree.
Another part of speech that connects words together is the conjunction. Conjunctions are parts of speech that connect two or more words, phrases, or clauses together. A way to memorize common conjunctions is to remember the acronym FANBOYS – for, and, nor, but, or, yet, and so. Let’s look at some example sentences:
I went outside and washed the car.
Here, the conjunction and links a phrase and a clause to be one compound sentence. How about this one?
I was really sleepy, but I still stayed at work late.
In this sentence, but is the conjunction because it combines the two clauses I was really sleepy and I still stayed at work late.
Okay, now that we’ve covered parts of speech, let’s see what you remember:
What part of speech is the highlighted word in this sentence?
“Ouch! That had to have hurt!”
- Conjunction
- Interjection
- Noun
- Adjective
What part of speech are the highlighted words in this sentence?
“Rachel ran to the store and bought some eggs.”
- Action Verb
- Preposition
- Conjunction
- State-of-being Verb
Which word in the following sentence is a preposition?
“The beautiful forest sat just below the mountain.”
- Beautiful
- Just
- Below
- The
I hope this review was helpful! Thanks for watching, and happy studying!
