Parts of Speech

Parts of Speech


There are thousands of words in any language. But not all words have the same job. For example, some words express "action". Other words express a "thing". Other words "join" one word to another word. These are the "building blocks" of the language. Think of them like the parts of a house. When we want to build a house, we use concrete to make the foundations or base. We use bricks to make the walls. We use window frames to make the windows, and door frames to make the doorways. And we use cement to join them all together. Each part of the house has its own job. And when we want to build a sentence, we use the different types of word. Each type of word has its own job.

We can categorize English words into 8 basic types or classes. These classes are called "parts of speech".

Some grammar books categorize English into 9 or 10 parts of speech. At EnglishClub, we use the traditional categorization of 8 parts of speech (see table for more details).

It's quite important to recognize parts of speech. This helps you to analyze sentences and understand them. It also helps you to construct good sentences.

In this lesson, we have an overview of the eight parts of speech, followed by a quiz to check your understanding:

• Parts of Speech Table

• Parts of Speech Examples

• Words with More than One Job

Parts of Speech Table

This is a summary of the 8 parts of speech*. You can find more detail if you click on each part of speech.

part of speech function or "job" example words example sentences

Verb

action or state (to) be, have, do, like, work, sing, can, must EnglishClub.com is a web site. I like EnglishClub.com.

Noun

thing or person pen, dog, work, music, town, London, teacher, John This is my dog. He lives in my house. We live in London.

Adjective

describes a noun a/an, the, 69, some, good, big, red, well, interesting My dog is big. I like big dogs.

Adverb

describes a verb, adjective or adverb quickly, silently, well, badly, very, really My dog eats quickly. When he is very hungry, he eats really quickly.

Pronoun

replaces a noun I, you, he, she, some Tara is Indian. She is beautiful.

Preposition

links a noun to another word to, at, after, on, but We went to school on Monday.

Conjunction

joins clauses or sentences or words and, but, when I like dogs and I like cats. I like cats and dogs. I like dogs but I don't like cats.

Interjection

short exclamation, sometimes inserted into a sentence oh!, ouch!, hi!, well Ouch! That hurts! Hi! How are you? Well, I don't know.

* Some grammar sources categorize English into 9 or 10 parts of speech. At EnglishClub.com, we use the traditional categorization of 8 parts of speech. Examples of other categorizations are:

• Verbs may be treated as two different parts of speech:

o Lexical Verbs (work, like, run)

o Auxiliary Verbs (be, have, must)

• Determiners may be treated as a separate part of speech, instead of being categorized under Adjectives

• Parts of Speech Examples

• Here are some sentences made with different English parts of speech:

verb

Stop!

noun verb

John works.

noun verb verb

John is working.



•

pronoun verb noun

She loves animals.

noun verb adjective noun

Animals like kind people.



•

noun verb noun adverb

Tara speaks English well.

noun verb adjective noun

Tara speaks good English.



•

pronoun verb preposition adjective noun adverb

She ran to the station quickly.

•

pron. verb adj. noun conjunction pron. verb pron.

She likes big snakes but I hate them.

• Here is a sentence that contains every part of speech:

interjection pron. conj. adj. noun verb prep. noun adverb

Well, she and young John walk to school slowly.

Words with More than One Job

Many words in English can have more than one job, or be more than one part of speech. For example, "work" can be a verb and a noun; "but" can be a conjunction and a preposition; "well" can be an adjective, an adverb and an interjection. In addition, many nouns can act as adjectives.

To analyze the part of speech, ask yourself: "What job is this word doing in this sentence?"

In the table below you can see a few examples. Of course, there are more, even for some of the words in the table. In fact, if you look in a good dictionary you will see that the word "but" has six jobs to do:

• verb, noun, adverb, pronoun, preposition and conjuction!

word part of speech example

work noun My work is easy.

verb I work in London.

but conjunction John came but Mary didn't come.

preposition Everyone came but Mary.

well adjective Are you well?

adverb She speaks well.

interjection Well! That's expensive!

afternoon noun We ate in the afternoon.

noun acting as adjective We had afternoon tea.