Parts of speech

Linguistic category of words

Parts of speech [1] are types of word in

grammar. There are many different word
categories: they are called 'lexical
categories'. The most common are
these:[2]
 Part of Example Example
Function Notes
Speech Words Sentence(s)

Identifies an (to) be, have,

London is a big city.
Verb action or do, like, work,
I like London.
state. sing, can, must

Identifies a pen, dog, work,

person, music, town, New York City is
Noun
place or London, very beautiful.
thing. teacher, John

a/an, the, 2
(two), some,
Describes a The cat is black and A/an, the, some, many are
Adjective good, big, red,
noun. white. known as determiners.[3]
well,
interesting

Describes a quickly, The giraffe eats Slowly describes the verb eat,
verb, silently, well, slowly, but when he very describes the adjective
Adverb
adjective or badly, very, is very hungry, he hungry and really describes
adverb. really eats really quickly. the adverb quickly.

Replaces a I, you, he, she, She is very good at

Pronoun
noun. some, it playing the piano.

The dog is under the Under links the noun dog to

Links a noun
to, at, after, on, table. the noun table.
Preposition to another
but The man ran over Over links the verb ran to the
word.
the bridge. noun bridge.

Joins
I like apples and
clauses, and, but, when,
Conjunction oranges, but I don't
sentences or or
like grapes.
words.

Short oh!, ouch!, hi!, Ouch! That really

Interjection
exclamation. well hurt!
Verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and
interjections are called open classes
because they are parts of speech that can
easily add new words. On the other hand,
pronouns, prepositions, and conjunctions
are closed classes because new words
cannot be added easily. For example, since
pronouns are a closed class, there are
fairly few pronouns: I, me, my, mine,
myself, you, you, your, yours, yourself, he,
him, his, his, himself, she, her, her, hers,
herself, it, it, its, its, itself, we, us, our, ours,
ourselves, they, them, their, theirs,
themselves. Since pronouns are used to
replace whole noun phrases, there is no
need to have many kinds of pronouns.
Instead of saying "The Earl of Sandwich
introduced the Earl of Sandwich's favorite
food, the sandwich", one uses the pronoun
"his" to replace "the Earl of Sandwich's" to
make the sentence not repeat itself when
it doesn't have to, thus the sentence
becomes "The Earl of Sandwich
introduced his favorite food, the
sandwich". New nouns, on the other hand,
can easily be made, and are constantly
being added into the English language.

References
1. also called a word class, lexical class or
lexical category.
2. "Parts of Speech" . English Club.
Retrieved 12 December 2013.
3. "Determiners" . English Club. Retrieved
12 December 2013.

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