Parts of speech

Parts of speech make the base of english language. They have to be learnt, understood and practised in order to speak the language correctly. Parts of speech help in understanding the sentence structure and also in constructing proper sentences.

There are 8 parts of speech in general and they are as follows:

Noun, Pronoun, Verb, Adverb, Adjective, preposition, conjunction and interjections.

In this article we will discuss each part of speech briefly.

Noun

Noun in general terms the name of a person, place, animal and thing. There are various types of nouns which i will not get into because i have other parts of speech to discuss. So, for now the basic definition of a Noun is name of a person, place, animal or a thing. For Example: Siti is a noun, England is a noun, Monkey is a noun and Clock is a noun. In sentences it is easy to identify a noun for example : Siti Salbiah is going to Indonesia. In this sentence there are two nouns, 1- Siti Salbiah and 2- Indonesia.

Pronoun

Pronoun is a word that is used in place of a Noun. In sentences it doesn't look good or sound good if you keep repeating the name of a person or a thing, so our great english developers introduced this new part of speech called 'pronoun' to make our life easier. Let's see how it is used in a sentence: Siti Salbiah is going to Indonesia, she is going to stay there for a couple of days. In the sentence the nouns are easy to recognize and so the word that is used in the second part of the sentence in place of the noun is 'she'. Isn't that easy?

Verb

A word that talks about any action or any action word is called a Verb. Examples are eating, cooking, bathing, e.t.c. So in short verb is used in a sentence when an action is being performed. In an example: Zubaidah is playing Handball. In this sentence the action is playing and so the verb is also playing. Any action word in a sentence is the Verb.

Adjective

Adjective is a word that describes the quality of a 'noun'. Examples for persons can be tall, short, smart, handsome, e.t.c. In a sentence it is used to describe the noun. For Example : Aiman is a tall boy. In this sentence 'tall' is the quality of Aiman, therefore it is the adjective in the sentence.

Adverb

A word that describes the verb is called adverb. This is not necassarily a part of evey sentence, only when it is requires that it appears in the sentence. In a sentence : Kama is riding his bike too fast. In this sentence 'too fast' is the adverb as it is telling us about the verb 'riding'.

Preposition

A Prepostion is a word that tells us the position of a noun. This means the position of a noun in a sentence. Examples are over, under, atop, bottom, front, behind, e.t.c. In a sentence : Yatie was hiding under the bed. The word 'under' is telling us where the noun 'yatie' was hiding. So, therefore it tells us the position of a noun (Subject).

Conjunction

A word that joins two phrases or sentences is called conjunction. Words like 'and', 'or' are examples of this part of speech. In a sentence: He has to go to the office and then come back home. In this sentence 'and' is joining two incomplete sentences and making it one sentence.

Interjection

A word that depicts emotions in a sentence is called 'interjection'. Examples are '!'. In a sentence: "Wow! what a beautiful scenery". We can clearly see the speaker is quite amazed at the scenery he was seeing. So, he showed his emotion that is amazement through an interjection 'WOW!'.