Parts of Speech

To recognize parts of speech of words, it is essential to first understand the function of a word in a sentence and recognize its form, since many words can act as more than one part of speech. There are, however, a few words that have only one classification, such as notify (verb), sleepy (adjective), and practically (adverb).

Words are grouped into the following eight classes: noun, verb, pronoun, adjective, adverb, preposition, conjunction, and interjection. Of those classes, nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs make up more than 99% of all words in the dictionary. Only prepositions, conjunction, and interjections never change their form. As an example, the following sentence is broken down word by word and classified accordingly.

Watchful kittens typically pounce at bugs.

Word	Form	Function	Part of Speech
Watchful	-ful ending	Modifier	Adjective
Kittens	-s (plural)	Subject	Noun
Typically	-ly ending	Modifier	Adverb
Pounced	-ed (past tense)	Werb of predicate	Verb
At	Invariable	Connector	Preposition
Bugs	-s (plural)	Object of the preposition	Noun

 

Try It!

1. Classify each word in these sentences.
   a. He met the woman in the park on a Saturday afternoon.
   b. Gladys wrote three poems last week.
   c. Jason writes computer programs for his company.
   d. The two boys bought flowers for Stacy.
   e. The vagrant lives on 21st Street.
2. Select a word and write sentences using it in as many different parts of speech as possible.

To learn more about English grammar, please take April Michelle Davis’s Grammar 101, a comprehensive course covering parts of speech, clauses, phrases, parallel structure, comparisons, double negatives, modifiers, punctuation, and spelling.