The Parts of Speech:
|
An overview of nouns:
NOUN: any word which names a person, place, thing, idea, animal, quality, or action
- Count Nouns: anything which can be counted; singular & plural
Example: car - cars
- Mass Nouns: entities which cannot be counted; no plural form
Example: money
- Collective Nouns: groups of people or things; sing. & pl.
Example: herd - herds
- Possessive Nouns: express ownership by adding an apostrophe
Examples: (sing.) Kelly's anger (pl.) birds' feathers
|
An overview of pronouns:
PRONOUN: a word which takes the place of a noun (called "the antecedent")
- Personal: refer to person/people speaking, spoken to or spoken about
Examples: I, me, you, he, him, she, her, it, we, us, they
- Possessive: function independently; show possession
Examples: my, mine, your, yours, our, ours, his, her, hers
- Indefinite: have no specific antecedents
Examples: another, both, everything, nothing
- Reflexive: shows the subject performs actions to/for itself
Examples: myself, yourself, itself, ourselves, themselves
- Intensive: refer back to a noun/pronoun to add emphasis to it
Examples: (same forms as reflexive pronouns)
- Reciprocal: show a mutual action or relationship
Examples: each other, one another
- Interrogative: used to ask a question
Examples: who, which, what
- Relative: used to introduce a relative clause
Examples: who, which, that
- Demonstrative: substitutes for specific nouns
Examples: this, that, these, those
|
An overview of verbs:
VERB: expresses action or state of being
- Transitive: action verb; passes action on to a direct object
Example: We bought a car.
- Intransitive: do not indicate a transfer of action;no D.O.
Example: The eagle soared.
- Linking: joins subject with a word that renames/describes it
Example: The sky is blue.
- Main: indicates the primary activity
- Auxiliary: "helps" the main verb
- Modal: indicates ability, obligation, permission, possibility
Examples: can, may, must, should, could, might, ought, would
- Finite: describes a definite and limited action or condition
- Non-finite/Verbal: shows an unfinished action or condition
- Infinitives: to + verb; act as nouns, adjectives, adverbs
- Participles: past or present; always act as adjectives
- Gerunds: present participle form; act as nouns
|
An overview of adjectives:
ADJECTIVE: modifies nouns and pronouns
- Descriptive: name a quality of the noun
- Attributive: Ex. The brown cow.
- Predicate: Ex. It was a brown cow.
- Limiting: limit a noun
- Definite/Indefinite Articles: Ex. the, a, an
- Possessive: Ex. his, her, its, their
- Demonstrative: Ex. this, that, these, those
- Indefinite: Ex. several, few, less, many, more
- Interrogative: Ex. what, which, whose
- Cardinal: Ex. one, two, four
- Ordinal: Ex. third, fourth, fiftieth
- Nouns: Ex. the milk cow
- Proper: Ex. the German cow
|
An overview of adverbs:
ADVERB: modifies verbs, adjectives, adverbs, sentences
Examples: sang loudly, ran swiftly
|
An overview of prepositions:
PREPOSITION: links a noun or a pronoun (the object of the preposition) with some other word or expression
Examples: about, below, in, over, until
|
An overview of conjunctions:
CONJUNCTION: links sentence elements, ie. words, phrases,
clauses
- Coordinating: join sentence parts of equal grammatical status
Examples: and, but, for, nor, or, so, yet
- Correlative: coordinating conjunctions that work in pairs;
join words, phrases, clauses, sentences
Examples: both...and, either...or, neither...nor
- Subordinating: connect clauses of unequal status
Examples: after, because, that, though
|
An overview of interjections:
INTERJECTION: used in speech to indicate emotion, or transition
Examples: yuk, ouch, eh
|
|
Parts of Speech Review
By clicking on a bubble, identify the highlighted part of speech.
If your response shows as "Incorrect" in the status bar, you can click
on the other answers to find the correct one (which will give you
"Correct" in the status bar).
|
