A part of speech is a phrase employed in t grammar for one of the nine primary types into which words are classified according to their roles in sentences, such as nouns or verbs. Known as word classes, these are the foundations of grammar.

Introducing Parts of Speech

• nouns
• pronouns
• verbs
• adjectives
• adverbs
• prepositions
• conjunctions
• articles/determiners
• interjections
• Words can be deemed more than one part of speech based on context and usage.
• Interjections can form sentences on their own.

The 9 Parts of Speech

Read about each part of the speech below and start practicing recognizing each.

Noun

Nouns can be a person, place, thing, or idea. They can take on myriad roles in a sentence, after the subject of it all to the purpose of an action.

Pronoun

Pronouns tend to stand in for nouns in a sentence. They are generic versions of nouns that refer only to people.

Verb

Verbs are action words that tell what occurs in a sentence. They can also exhibit a sentence subject’s state of being.

Adjective

Adjectives describe nouns and pronouns. They identify which one, how much, what kind, and more.

Adverb

Adverbs explain verbs, adjectives, and even other adverbs. They identify when, where, how, and why something occurred and to what extent or how often.

Preposition

Prepositions show spatial, temporal, and role relations between a noun or pronoun and words in a sentence.

Conjunction

Conjunctions connect words, phrases, and clauses.

Articles and Determiners

Articles and determiners act like adjectives by altering nouns, but they are different from adjectives because they are required for a sentence to have proper syntax.

Interjection

Interjections are statements that can stand on their own two feet or be contained within sentences.

Dissecting Basic Sentences

To form a complete sentence, you need two elements: a noun and a verb. The noun behaves as a subject, and the verb, by describing the action the issue takes, serves as the predicate.

• Birds fly.

In the short sentence above, birds are the noun, and fly is the verb. The ruling makes sense and gets the point across.

You can have a sentence with one word without breaking sentence formation rules. For example, the short sentence below is comprehensive because it’s a command to an identified “you.”

• Go!

Here, standing in for a noun, the pronoun is implied and acts as the subject. So the sentence is really saying, “(You) go!”

Constructing More Complex Sentences

Employ more parts of speech to add more information about what’s occurring in a sentence to make it more complicated. Take the first sentence above, for instance, and integrate more info about how and why birds fly.

• Birds fly when migrating before winter.

Birds and fly stay the noun and the verb, but now this info is more descriptive.

When is an adverb that alters the verb fly. The word before is tricky because it can be either conjunction, preposition, or adverb, which depends on the context. In this case, it’s a preposition because a noun comes after it. This preposition starts an adverbial phrase of time that answers the question of when the birds migrate. On the other hand, before is not considered a conjunction because it does not attach two clauses.