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 | adsolo.blogspot.com is a web site. Ilike adsolo.blogspot.com. |
Noun | thing or person | pen, dog, work, music, town, London, teacher, John | This is my birds. He lives in myhouse. We live in Solo. |
Adjective | describes a noun | a/an, the, 2, some, good, big, red, well, interesting | I have two cats. My cats are big. I like big cats. |
Adverb | describes a verb, adjective or adverb | quickly, silently, well, badly, very, really | My cat eats quickly. When he isvery hungry, he eats reallyquickly. |
Pronoun | replaces a noun | I, you, he, she, some | Nita is Indonesian. 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 birds and I like cats. I like cats and birds. I like birds 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 adsolo.blogspot.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:
- Lexical Verbs (work, like, run)
- Auxiliary Verbs (be, have, must)
- Determiners may be treated as a separate part of speech, instead of being categorized under Adjectives