The following comes from our top-selling grammar book, Abrams’ Guide to Grammar.
If I were to ask you how many parts of speech we have in the English language, I’m sure you would say “eight” and rattle them off: noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, conjunction, and interjection. So I won’t ask.
Remember those horrible vocabulary assignments given to you by your 7th-grade English teacher: “Look up twenty-five words and write the definition, the part of speech, and a sentence.” By the time you got to the end of the list, you were just happy to be done. You probably had no idea what any of the words meant or how they should really be used. The truth is, no word is a part of speech until it’s used in a sentence.
I’ll give you six sentences using the word down, and each time I use it, it will be a different part of speech.
- Eric fell down. (In this sentence down is an adverb because it is modifying the verb fell.)
- Eric fell down the stairs. (In this sentence down is a preposition.)
- The quilt is made of eider down. (In this sentence down is a noun because it names a thing.)
- The down elevator was broken. (In this sentence down is an adjective because it modifies a noun.)
- She downed the ball on the fifty-yard line. (In this sentence down is a verb because it is the action of the sentence.)
- Down! (Okay, so I cheated a bit here. In this sentence down is acting like an interjection, but I guess we would agree that it is really an adverb as it is modifying the understood word get as in “Get down!”)
- As a word person, you may not be asked often to label the part of speech of words, but when you are editing and proofreading, it’s a good idea to have the ammunition to support your changes. In a later module, we will be discussing the difference between adjectives and adverbs to avoid errors such as “I feel badly.”
The Parts of Speech: Definitions
Noun: Names a person, place, or thing. A noun can be a common noun, such as friend, monument, river, and street, or a proper noun, such as Ellen, Washington Monument, Hudson River, and Main Street. A noun can name something concrete, such as a chair, computer, dog, or desk, or something abstract, such as love, justice, honor, or friendship. Possessive nouns are adjectives because they modify nouns: Susan’s bike, Alfonso’s idea, Jacob’s car, and Hasim’s music.
Pronoun: Takes the place of a noun. Pronouns include personal pronouns, such as I, she, we, and they. Pronouns also include words such as this, that, these, those, who, whom, some, most, many, all. Possessive pronouns such as his, hers, ours, and mine can stand alone (This is his). Possessive pronouns such as his, her, our, and my modify nouns and are considered adjectives (This is his book).
Adjective: Describes a noun or a pronoun. Adjectives include words such as large, one, the, a, funny, and happy.
Verb: Expresses an action or a state of being. Verbs include overt actions, such as run, laugh, write, and sing. Verbs also include mental actions, such as think, decide, review, and love. State of being verbs include words such as is, are, was, will be.
Adverb: Describes a verb, an adjective, or another adverb. Adverbs answer the following questions: How? Why? When? Where? To what degree? The following words can function as adverbs: quickly, very, quite, somewhat, intelligently, there.
Conjunction: Connects two words or phrases or clauses. Conjunctions include simple coordinating conjunctions: for, and, nor, but, or, yet. Conjunctions also include subordinating conjunctions (if, until, unless, when, where, because) and correlative conjunctions (either/or, neither/nor).
Preposition: Stands before a noun and together with the noun becomes a phrase modifying something else in the sentence. The following words are examples of prepositions: in, for, to, under, around, above.
Interjection: Expresses an exclamation in the middle of a sentence without grammatical connection to other words. The following words are interjections: ouch, ah, oh, oops.