The Parts of Speech

What is a Verb?

The verb is perhaps the most important part of the sentence. A verb or compound verb asserts something about the subject of the sentence and express actions, events, or states of being. The verb or compound verb is the critical element of the predicate of a sentence.

What is a Noun?

A noun is a word used to name a person, animal, place, thing, and abstract idea. Nouns are usually the first words which small children learn. The highlighted words in the following sentences are all nouns:

Types of Nouns

There are many different types of nouns. As you know, you capitalise some nouns, such as "New Zealand" or "Louise," and do not capitalise others, such as "badger" or "tree" (unless they appear at the beginning of a sentence).

What Is A Pronoun?

A pronoun can replace a noun or another pronoun. You use pronouns like "he," "which," "none," and "you" to make your sentences less cumbersome and less repetitive.

What Is An Adjective?

An adjective modifies a noun or a pronoun by describing, identifying, or quantifying words. An adjective usually precedes the noun or the pronoun which it modifies.

What is an Adverb?

An adverb can modify a verb, an adjective, another adverb, a phrase, or a clause. An adverb indicates manner, time, place, cause, or degree and answers questions such as "how," "when," "where," "how much".

What is a Preposition?

A preposition links nouns, pronouns and phrases to other words in a sentence. The word or phrase that the preposition introduces is called the object of the preposition.

What is a Conjunction?

You can use a conjunction to link words, phrases, and clauses, as in the following example:

What is an Interjection?

An interjection is a word added to a sentence to convey emotion. It is not grammatically related to any other part of the sentence.

Word Formation

The basic part of any word is the root; to it, you can add a prefix at the beginning and/or a suffix at the end to change the meaning.