parts of speech

PARTS OF SPEECH

• NOUN: These name persons, things, places, ideas -- can be concrete or abstract. EX: Stephanie, door, biology, honor.
• PRONOUN: These substitute for nouns but act in the same way. They can be individual (I, you, he) or collective (everyone, each). EX: they, who, which, she.
• ADJECTIVE: These describe or modify nouns. EX: slow, quiet, useful, blue, much.
• VERB: These state an action or a state of being. EX: kick, call, create, is, will be. Verbs can be transitive, meaning that they act on something else, or intransitive, meaning that they don't. EX: Transitive: Walter kicked the football. Intransitive: I was asleep. Verbs can also be linking verbs, meaning that they connect a subject to a word or group of words which describe or complete its meaning. EX: The car was blue and full of bullet holes.

When a verb is in its present participle ("ing") form, it can operate as a noun (called a gerund). EX: Walking, throwing a football, going downtown.

• ADVERB: These modify several things: verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs. Adverbs are often made from adjectives (careful -- carefully). They answer these questions about an action: where? when? why? how? in what way? how much? EX: tomorrow, next, quietly, honorably, very.
• CONJUNCTION: These join words, phrases and clauses. There are three kinds of conjuctions:
1. Coordinating Conjunctions: these are single words that join words, phrases, and clauses of equal grammatical importance in the sentence. EX: and, but, or, so.
2. Coorelative Conjunctions: these are pairs of words that join equally important words, phrases, and clauses. EX: either...or, both...and, not only...but also.
3. Subordinating Conjuctions: these begin clauses that cannot stand on their own and tell you how that clause relates to the rest of the sentence. These words help you create sentences with increasingly complicated ideas and relationships between those ideas. EX (not a complete list): if, because, although, when, where, unless, until, since.
• PREPOSITIONS: These words or phrases relate nouns or pronouns to other words in a sentence, and often indicate some sort of positional relationship. EX: of, in, about, to, around, next to, on top of.