By Linas
We will be learning some most important grammatical terms in this course. We will be using English so these terms work definitely for English but they also work for some other languages.
We will be learning parts of speech today.
I will try to tell you some simple ways to distinguish all the parts of the speech. These are not bulletproof. They just work most of the time, all of the time, alright? Clear.
Here’s an example sentence:
Three little dogs like to jump fervently on the big table, which belonged to Matt, before he went crazy.
You can find some parts of speech in this sentence if you know a few basic rules.
NOUNS
Let’s start with nouns. The word noun comes from the Latin nomen ‘name’ which is because nouns are used to name things. Here’s how you can distinguish nouns from other words:
Any word that you can put the in front of when the word is on its own is a noun.
Names of things, places and people are nouns too.
In fact, the word noun itself is a noun because you can say the noun.
Nouns are words you call things and people by.
‘Cat’ is a noun. ‘Airplane’ is a noun. ‘Margaret’ is a noun. Michigan is one as well.
So, what about that last sentence? Let’s do the test. We highlight the word if the it’s a name or you can put the in front of it:
Three little dogs like to jump fervently on the big table, which belonged to Matt, before he went crazy.
Any doubts? Can I say: the dogs? Yup. The table? Yeah. The Matt? No but Matt is a name so it also qualifies.
Next, I could say the crazy but not in the sense its used in this sentence. I could say the crazy which would mean crazy people but in this sentence the word is used to mean simply crazy (not crazy people) so it doesn’t qualify.
So, we have three nouns: little dogs, table and Matt.
VERBS
What about verbs? Well, verbs are words which describe action.
Here is a general rule to find the verbs:
Verbs are words which you can put I in front of.
Let’s try to see these words in our sentence:
Three little dogs like to jump fervently on the big table, which belonged to Matt, before he went crazy.
Let’s check: I like, I jump, I belonged, I went. Good.
But there are words like are which are also verbs and you can’t put I in front of are. Well, that’s just because are is just a form of the word be which has another form am which you can put I in front of. The same is with, say, sees – it is just a form of see and you can say I see that’s why it’s a verb.
ADJECTIVES
Let’s move on. Adjectives.
Adjectives are words which describe nouns.
If you can put house after a word, it’s an adjective!
The word adjective comes from Latin nomen adjectivum which is a translation of Greek onoma epitheton ‘attributive name.’ The idea is that it attributes a quality to a noun.
Let’s try to see these words in our sentence:
Three little dogs like to jump fervently on the big table, which belonged to Matt, before he went crazy.
Little house? Big house? Crazy house? Check, check, check.
So, these are the two adjectives.
ADVERBS
Next. Adverbs. Adverbs are words that modify the meaning of verbs. It is easy to remember because the word adverb is actually ad (Latin for “to”) + verb.
For example, all the words that have ly in the end are adverbs. You can say to swim or to swim badly and badly adds something for that to swim thus it modifies it.
Anyway, let’s learn our rule to distinguish adverbs:
Adverbs are words which make sense put at the end of the sentence: you can do it …
So, let’s see our sentence again:
Three little dogs like to jump fervently on the big table, which belonged to Matt, before he went crazy.
You can say you can do it fervently. You can’t say it any other way. Thus, fervently is an adverb.
There is, however, one thing to remember.
Words like where are also adverbs. This is because you can say you can do it where but in English you simply have to say where can you do it: it’s just a matter of word order but the sentence still makes sense so where is an adverb.
Words like how, when, etc. are also adverbs because they make sense in that sentence you can do it …. So are (of course) words like here, tomorrow, nohow, etc.
PRONOUNS
Alright, so we have tackled nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs. Let’s do pronouns.
Pronouns are words that can stand in place of nouns.
Actually, the name pronoun itself suggests it because it means pro (Latin “for”) + noun.
A word is a pronoun if it could be replaced by some other noun to make the sentence more precise.
Let’s look at the sentence.
Three little dogs like to jump fervently on the big table, which belonged to Matt, before he went crazy.
Which = the table (the word which is used to avoid repeating the word table, you are actually saying: … on the big table. The table belonged…), and he = Matt.
So, these pronouns just stand for words. Same way, it is a pronoun because it can simply mean “this thing”.
Words like everbody and nobody are pronouns too. Everbody because it means “Jack, James, Matt and Judy” (or be it: all the world) and nobody because it means “no person”.
PREPOSITIONS
Moving on, there are also prepositions which are words that come before a noun or a pronoun and show how it is related to other things (inside of them, outside of them, near them, etc.). So, prepositions are all about relation. Let’s see our rule:
Prepositions are words which you can put the socks after and they make sense.
Try this on the sentence:
Three little dogs like to jump fervently on the big table, which belonged to Matt before he went crazy.
To the socks, on the socks, before the socks. They all make sense so they are all prepositions.
Finally, let’s learn conjunctions. The word conjunction consists of con (Latin for “with”) and junction – join.
CONJUNCTIONS
Conjunctions are words used to connect two sentences together.
A word is a conjunction if it fits in the sentence “I liked the blue one … I liked the yellow one”.
Three little dogs like to jump fervently on the big table, which belonged to Matt, before he went crazy.
You can say: “I liked the blue one before I liked the yellow one” so “before” is a conjunction.
Other conjunctions are words like “and”, “if”, “while”, “because” and “but”.
These were all major parts of speech.