Parts of Speech

On the second day of my Technical Writing class, my professor asked us if anyone knew the parts of speech.  I remembered most of them, but I should know all of them.  This served as a reminder that one should always recall the basics.  This is true in almost any case, not just with writing.  For example, some people may need to take refresher courses or receive more training on a computer program utilized at work.  The individual may use, say, a spreadsheet application every day, but does he or she know or remember how to create a graph?  It may be a breeze for some, but consider what can happen if the individual doesn't use this feature very often, even if he or she learned it once before.  It's easy to forget even the most basic methods.

I will discuss the parts of speech in more detail in a later post.  For now, I will define all eight in very simple terms the best I can.  (I don't mean to cause any confusion, but there are various takes on the parts of speech that one academic institution will state that there are eight while another will claim there are twelve.  The eight parts I listed below are frequently, if not always, considered as the parts of speech.)


1. Noun: a person, place, or thing
For example, "Ned wants to visit San Francisco to ride a trolley."  "Ned" is a person, "San Francisco" is a place, and "trolley"is a thing.

2. Pronoun: a word that substitutes for a noun
For example, the sentence "Rita is going to study chemistry with Lee and Chris" can be changed so that all the nouns are replaced with pronouns.  The resulting sentence is "She is going to study it with them."

3. Verb: a word used for an action or a condition
For example, "Cathy ran a half-marathon yesterday" and "Cathy is ready for the half-marathon."  Both "ran" (an action) and "is" (a condition or state) are verbs.

4. Adjective: describes or modifies a noun
For example, "Even though the dog is very loud, it is very cute."  Notice there are two adjectives: "loud" and "cute."  Though "loud" describes "dog" and "cute" describes "it," both adjectives describe the same dog.


5. Adverb: describes or modifies a verb or an adjective
For example, "The puzzle piece fits perfectly" and "Her house is extremely expensive."  In the first sentence, "perfectly" describes how the puzzle piece fits ("fits" is the verb).  In the second sentence, the house is described as "expensive," and "extremely" describes how expensive it is.

6. Preposition: a word used to relate a noun or pronoun with the other surrounding words
For example, in the sentence "She is taking a nap on the bed against the wall," "on" and "against" are the prepositions.  "She" is not below or next to the bed; "She" is "on" the bed.  The "bed" is not next to a window or centered in the room; it is "against" the wall.

7. Conjunction: connects two clauses, sentences, phrases, or words
For example, "Tod tries to meet his cousin for lunch, but his cousin is always busy."  This sentence can be divided into two sentences that can each stand alone as "Tod tried to meet his cousin for lunch" and "His cousin is always busy."  In the example, the two are joined by "but" (a conjunction).


8. Article: a word that is placed before a noun
For example, "I asked him to buy a table and an orange vase at the new furniture store."  There are three articles in this sentence: "a," "an," and "the."

Another part of speech is an interjection, which is, simply, an exclamation.  Examples of interjections include "Yikes!," "Oh," and "Sh!"  Note that interjections are not always followed by an exclamation point, such as in the sentences "Hello, I am Martha" and "Well, I think that's true."  Whether "Hello" and "Well" are followed by an exclamation point depended on how strongly they are spoken.  There is a difference between "Hello!  I am Martha!" and "Hello, I am Martha."



Note: I have been very busy moving to a new place.  Thus, this post is appearing many, many weeks after my last, but my plans for this blog are beginning to evolve a bit.  One step is to post more frequently, possibly on a biweekly basis instead of the usual once-a-month-or-less.  Keep an eye out for new material!