Can a word be more than one part of speech

«The window was broken by John.»

It doesn’t seem simple to me to demonstrate that «broken» in this sentence is not simultaneously a verb and an adjective.

Participles

Participles are one of the classic areas of dispute about part-of-speech categories. I’m not qualified to give a summary of the overall state of linguistic opinion about this area, but my impression as an amateur is that the analysis of participles is still somewhat unsettled.

I’m using Björn Lundquist’s «The Category of Participles» (2013) as an important source for this answer.

In general, participles behave in some ways like adjectives, and in some ways like verbs. Lundquist quotes a definition from David Crystal (1991):

Participle: «a word derived from a verb and used as an adjective» (2)

There is another quote from Lundquist that I think is relevant:

Classifying participles as adjectives is quite pointless unless we have a theory about (lexical) categories. (6)

Overall, I think a truly satisfying answer to this question will have to be more theoretical than I can manage.

“Participial adjectives” are definitely adjectives, but they also are at least related to verbs

One type of participial words are so much like adjectives that, as far as I can tell, everyone agrees that they are adjectives. These are the “non-eventive” participles/participial adjectives.

It’s actually a bit difficult for me to think of ways in which non-eventive participles in English could be considered verbs, and I can’t recall encountering any explicit arguments in support of this position, so I won’t attempt to give much support for this. Here are just a few random ideas:

• Most obviously, they are are generally built on roots that have indisputably verbal uses: “broken” has the same root as “breaks” in “The glass breaks.”

• They can sort of take subjects, in “by” phrases or in compounds.

These arguments are kind of weak, I know, but participial adjectives are clearly more similar to verbs than most adjectives are.

Eventive participles are as far as I know classified as verbs by mainstream grammar, but it is difficult to find a definite test that distinguishes them from adjectives

It seems to me to be possible to make stronger arguments that eventive participles, which in mainstream linguistic analysis are often regarded as “verbal” participles because of the grammatical properties that they share with verbs, partake of the nature of adjectives. Lundquist in fact argues that all passive participles, both stative/resultive and eventive, are adjectives. As far as I can tell, he doesn’t classify them as being simultaneously adjectives and verbs any more than nominalizations are simultaneously nouns and verbs. But if there are strong arguments for both «participles are verbs» and «participles are adjectives», saying that they can be both seems like an obvious possible conclusion (although that solution obviously is not without complications of its own).

General ways in which participles are more like adjectives than verbs: Lundquist notes morphology and distribution. Most of the morphological points are more relevant to languages with more inflection than English (e.g. gender agreement, like in Romance languages) but there are still some possible arguments from morphology.

• Like adjectives, but unlike finite verb forms, participles are invariant for
  grammatical number and person.

• In English, at least, participles cannot inflect for absolute tense in the way that finite verbs obligatorily do. The verb in “they run” is clearly present tense, while “They ran” is past tense. But the so-called “present participle” in a phrase like “the running team members” can be used in either past or present absolute tense contexts. It’s true that it has a kind of relative-tense component, in that it refers to people who were/are/will be running at the time the narration is dealing with, but this is a different type of tense from what we see in English finite verb forms.

Distribution: Eventive participles have very similar distribution to adjectives (as I said, this point is made by Lundquist). E.g. when used predicatively, there must be a linking verb like the copula «to be». Participles seem to be able to be coordinated with adjectives e.g. «I was nervous as hell and sweating bullets» (Beasts, Bullets, and Blood, by Christiaan). Participle and adjective phrases both can be used attributively; while some recognize a distinction in possible position (that adjectives may precede nouns, and participles cannot) this isn’t a clear defining factor of adjectives, because there are words like asleep and awake that are commonly classified as adjectives but that cannot be used attributively at all, and other things aside from adjectives can come before nouns (e.g. articles, quantifiers, attributive noun phrases).

Candidate tests for differentiating adjectives and eventive participles all seem to have some flaws

There are some apparent ways in which eventive participles differ from the typical adjective. However, I don’t know of anything that eventive participles do that no adjectives do; there are a number of “weird” adjectives that show one or another of the grammatical traits usually associated with participles.

Direct Objects: participles can have them, but so can some adjectives

One of the typical ways in which participles seem to differ from adjectives is that eventive participles may (but not all do) take direct objects.

However, this is not a bright line for distinguishing participles from adjectives because many linguists recognize some types of transitive adjectives. See this Language Log post by Geoff Pullum: New transitive adjectives. “Worth” is the classic example, and the post additionally mentions “underweight,” “overweight”, “long” and “short” as adjectives that may take NP complements.

(Non) Gradability: a feature of all eventive participles, but also of some adjectives

One big thing that seems to set eventive participles apart from a “typical” adjective is the pretty much absolute grammatical impossibility of using eventive participles in a number of constructions that require “gradable” adjectives.

• No eventive participle can take the superlative suffix «-er» or comparative suffix «-est», although this is not conclusive since there are plenty of adjectives that don’t take these suffixes either, and the phonological structure of participles (most are more than one syllable) actually means it would be expected even if they are adjectives that they would not take these suffixes.

• It seems that eventive participles can sometimes be acceptably modified by the comparative adverb «more» («more sinned against than sinning», «more telling him than asking him», «the song was more shouted than sung») but this is also sometimes possible, at least colloquially, for verbs («I guess we more cried, than talked.» — «7 MONTHS BUT WHO’S COUNTING? I AM. I ALWAYS WILL BE.» — Rockstar Ronan tumblr).

  I can’t think of an example of a clearly eventive participle modified by the superlative adverb «most».

• The adverb “very”, which normally can modify adjectives and adverbs but not finite verb forms, also doesn’t seem acceptable before eventive participles. We cannot say things like “*He is very writing a book”.

• Lundquist cites a paper «Matushansky, O. 2002. Tipping the scales: the syntax of scalarity in the complement of seem. Syntax 5.3: 219–276.» that argues that gradability is also the origin of another restriction on the distribution of eventive participles: they cannot come after certain verbs such as «seem».

This prohibition is much more absolute than it is for most supposedly “ungradable” adjectives, like “perfect” or “unique”, which can in fact be used gradably because of the phenomenon of “coercion”, specifically “scalarity coercion”: basically, gradable use implies that these words should be interpreted as having a gradable meaning, even if their usual definitions are not gradable (Lundquist 4, citing Matushansky 2002).

However, there are some adjectives that seem as resistant, or at least nearly as resistant, to scalarity coercion as unambiguously eventive participles.

• the word «former», which I think needs to be classified as an adjective.

  • The former president, A former tennis champion
  • *The very former president, *A very former tennis champion

  It’s true “former” is a weird adjective, since it was formed as a comparative of “foremost”/obsolete “form(e)”. However, I don’t think it can be considered a comparative in modern English (for one thing, it can form a -ly adverb “formerly”, which I don’t think is usual for comparative adjectives).

• Some pre-posed participial adjectives:
  
  *a very running experiment
  
  *a very sleeping child
  
  *a very falling tile

  These are generally classified as adjectives because of their position preceding the noun. But we can see that they cannot be modified by “very”. This shows that adjectives can fail the “very” test. (An alternative viewpoint that also seems consistent to me would be to reject the classification of these words as adjectives. For an example of that perspective, see BillJ’s answer to Mari-Lou’s «running» question or «Another look at participles and adjectives in the English DP», by Tibor Laczkó (2001).)

• Certain adjectives are hard to use with «seem» in certain contexts. The following example is reproduced in Lundquist (4):

  (12) a. This music seems nice/*choral.
  
  b. This problem seems insoluble/*mathematical.
  (from Matushansky 2002)

  People may have different acceptability judgements of the sentences above, but it’s at least evidence that adjectives don’t always pass the gradability tests that eventive participles always fail.

Even if it turns out that no other types of adjectives are quite as ungradable as participles, it’s not clear why gradability should be considered a defining feature of adjectives.

Summary: I think it is hard to identify syntactic tests that are completely sufficient for distinguishing participles from adjectives. On the other hand, «eventive participles» clearly also act like verbs in some respects and appear to be part of verbs’ inflectional paradigms (which I think is relevant for part-of-speech classifications in some theories of grammar). Because of this, I do think the idea that these words are both adjectives and verbs has some intuitive appeal. However, a serious theory of part-of-speech classification needs to be based on a deeper level of analysis that I unfortunately cannot explain, because I am not sufficiently familiar with the science of syntax.

In grammar, a part of speech or part-of-speech (abbreviated as POS or PoS, also known as word class^[1] or grammatical category^[2]) is a category of words (or, more generally, of lexical items) that have similar grammatical properties. Words that are assigned to the same part of speech generally display similar syntactic behavior (they play similar roles within the grammatical structure of sentences), sometimes similar morphological behavior in that they undergo inflection for similar properties and even similar semantic behavior. Commonly listed English parts of speech are noun, verb, adjective, adverb, pronoun, preposition, conjunction, interjection, numeral, article, and determiner.

Other terms than part of speech—particularly in modern linguistic classifications, which often make more precise distinctions than the traditional scheme does—include word class, lexical class, and lexical category. Some authors restrict the term lexical category to refer only to a particular type of syntactic category; for them the term excludes those parts of speech that are considered to be function words, such as pronouns. The term form class is also used, although this has various conflicting definitions.^[3] Word classes may be classified as open or closed: open classes (typically including nouns, verbs and adjectives) acquire new members constantly, while closed classes (such as pronouns and conjunctions) acquire new members infrequently, if at all.

Almost all languages have the word classes noun and verb, but beyond these two there are significant variations among different languages.^[4] For example:

• Japanese has as many as three classes of adjectives, where English has one.
• Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Vietnamese have a class of nominal classifiers.
• Many languages do not distinguish between adjectives and adverbs, or between adjectives and verbs (see stative verb).

Because of such variation in the number of categories and their identifying properties, analysis of parts of speech must be done for each individual language. Nevertheless, the labels for each category are assigned on the basis of universal criteria.^[4]

History[edit]

The classification of words into lexical categories is found from the earliest moments in the history of linguistics.^[5]

India[edit]

In the Nirukta, written in the 6th or 5th century BCE, the Sanskrit grammarian Yāska defined four main categories of words:^[6]

1. नाम nāma – noun (including adjective)
2. आख्यात ākhyāta – verb
3. उपसर्ग upasarga – pre-verb or prefix
4. निपात nipāta – particle, invariant word (perhaps preposition)

These four were grouped into two larger classes: inflectable (nouns and verbs) and uninflectable (pre-verbs and particles).

The ancient work on the grammar of the Tamil language, Tolkāppiyam, argued to have been written around 2nd century CE,^[7] classifies Tamil words as peyar (பெயர்; noun), vinai (வினை; verb), idai (part of speech which modifies the relationships between verbs and nouns), and uri (word that further qualifies a noun or verb).^[8]

Western tradition[edit]

A century or two after the work of Yāska, the Greek scholar Plato wrote in his Cratylus dialogue, «sentences are, I conceive, a combination of verbs [rhêma] and nouns [ónoma]».^[9] Aristotle added another class, «conjunction» [sýndesmos], which included not only the words known today as conjunctions, but also other parts (the interpretations differ; in one interpretation it is pronouns, prepositions, and the article).^[10]

By the end of the 2nd century BCE, grammarians had expanded this classification scheme into eight categories, seen in the Art of Grammar, attributed to Dionysius Thrax:^[11]

1. ‘Name’ (ónoma) translated as «Noun«: a part of speech inflected for case, signifying a concrete or abstract entity. It includes various species like nouns, adjectives, proper nouns, appellatives, collectives, ordinals, numerals and more.^[12]
2. Verb (rhêma): a part of speech without case inflection, but inflected for tense, person and number, signifying an activity or process performed or undergone
3. Participle (metokhḗ): a part of speech sharing features of the verb and the noun
4. Article (árthron): a declinable part of speech, taken to include the definite article, but also the basic relative pronoun
5. Pronoun (antōnymíā): a part of speech substitutable for a noun and marked for a person
6. Preposition (próthesis): a part of speech placed before other words in composition and in syntax
7. Adverb (epírrhēma): a part of speech without inflection, in modification of or in addition to a verb, adjective, clause, sentence, or other adverb
8. Conjunction (sýndesmos): a part of speech binding together the discourse and filling gaps in its interpretation

It can be seen that these parts of speech are defined by morphological, syntactic and semantic criteria.

The Latin grammarian Priscian (fl. 500 CE) modified the above eightfold system, excluding «article» (since the Latin language, unlike Greek, does not have articles) but adding «interjection».^[13][14]

The Latin names for the parts of speech, from which the corresponding modern English terms derive, were nomen, verbum, participium, pronomen, praepositio, adverbium, conjunctio and interjectio. The category nomen included substantives (nomen substantivum, corresponding to what are today called nouns in English), adjectives (nomen adjectivum) and numerals (nomen numerale). This is reflected in the older English terminology noun substantive, noun adjective and noun numeral. Later^[15] the adjective became a separate class, as often did the numerals, and the English word noun came to be applied to substantives only.

Classification[edit]

Works of English grammar generally follow the pattern of the European tradition as described above, except that participles are now usually regarded as forms of verbs rather than as a separate part of speech, and numerals are often conflated with other parts of speech: nouns (cardinal numerals, e.g., «one», and collective numerals, e.g., «dozen»), adjectives (ordinal numerals, e.g., «first», and multiplier numerals, e.g., «single») and adverbs (multiplicative numerals, e.g., «once», and distributive numerals, e.g., «singly»). Eight or nine parts of speech are commonly listed:

1. noun
2. verb
3. adjective
4. adverb
5. pronoun
6. preposition
7. conjunction
8. interjection
9. article* or (more recently) determiner

Additionally, there are other parts of speech including particles (yes, no)^[a] and postpositions (ago, notwithstanding) although many fewer words are in these categories.

Some traditional classifications consider articles to be adjectives, yielding eight parts of speech rather than nine. And some modern classifications define further classes in addition to these. For discussion see the sections below.

The classification below, or slight expansions of it, is still followed in most dictionaries:

Noun (names)

a word or lexical item denoting any abstract (abstract noun: e.g. home) or concrete entity (concrete noun: e.g. house); a person (police officer, Michael), place (coastline, London), thing (necktie, television), idea (happiness), or quality (bravery). Nouns can also be classified as count nouns or non-count nouns; some can belong to either category. The most common part of speech; they are called naming words.

Pronoun (replaces or places again)

a substitute for a noun or noun phrase (them, he). Pronouns make sentences shorter and clearer since they replace nouns.

Adjective (describes, limits)

a modifier of a noun or pronoun (big, brave). Adjectives make the meaning of another word (noun) more precise.

Verb (states action or being)

a word denoting an action (walk), occurrence (happen), or state of being (be). Without a verb, a group of words cannot be a clause or sentence.

Adverb (describes, limits)

a modifier of an adjective, verb, or another adverb (very, quite). Adverbs make language more precise.

Preposition (relates)

a word that relates words to each other in a phrase or sentence and aids in syntactic context (in, of). Prepositions show the relationship between a noun or a pronoun with another word in the sentence.

Conjunction (connects)

a syntactic connector; links words, phrases, or clauses (and, but). Conjunctions connect words or group of words

Interjection (expresses feelings and emotions)

an emotional greeting or exclamation (Huzzah, Alas). Interjections express strong feelings and emotions.

Article (describes, limits)

a grammatical marker of definiteness (the) or indefiniteness (a, an). The article is not always listed among the parts of speech. It is considered by some grammarians to be a type of adjective^[16] or sometimes the term ‘determiner’ (a broader class) is used.

English words are not generally marked as belonging to one part of speech or another; this contrasts with many other European languages, which use inflection more extensively, meaning that a given word form can often be identified as belonging to a particular part of speech and having certain additional grammatical properties. In English, most words are uninflected, while the inflected endings that exist are mostly ambiguous: -ed may mark a verbal past tense, a participle or a fully adjectival form; -s may mark a plural noun, a possessive noun, or a present-tense verb form; -ing may mark a participle, gerund, or pure adjective or noun. Although -ly is a frequent adverb marker, some adverbs (e.g. tomorrow, fast, very) do not have that ending, while many adjectives do have it (e.g. friendly, ugly, lovely), as do occasional words in other parts of speech (e.g. jelly, fly, rely).

Many English words can belong to more than one part of speech. Words like neigh, break, outlaw, laser, microwave, and telephone might all be either verbs or nouns. In certain circumstances, even words with primarily grammatical functions can be used as verbs or nouns, as in, «We must look to the hows and not just the whys.» The process whereby a word comes to be used as a different part of speech is called conversion or zero derivation.

Functional classification[edit]

Linguists recognize that the above list of eight or nine word classes is drastically simplified.^[17] For example, «adverb» is to some extent a catch-all class that includes words with many different functions. Some have even argued that the most basic of category distinctions, that of nouns and verbs, is unfounded,^[18] or not applicable to certain languages.^[19][20] Modern linguists have proposed many different schemes whereby the words of English or other languages are placed into more specific categories and subcategories based on a more precise understanding of their grammatical functions.

Common lexical category set defined by function may include the following (not all of them will necessarily be applicable in a given language):

• Categories that will usually be open classes:
  • adjectives
  • adverbs
  • nouns
  • verbs (except auxiliary verbs)
  • interjections
• Categories that will usually be closed classes:
  • auxiliary verbs
  • clitics
  • coverbs
  • conjunctions
  • determiners (articles, quantifiers, demonstrative adjectives, and possessive adjectives)
  • particles
  • measure words or classifiers
  • adpositions (prepositions, postpositions, and circumpositions)
  • preverbs
  • pronouns
  • contractions
  • cardinal numbers

Within a given category, subgroups of words may be identified based on more precise grammatical properties. For example, verbs may be specified according to the number and type of objects or other complements which they take. This is called subcategorization.

Many modern descriptions of grammar include not only lexical categories or word classes, but also phrasal categories, used to classify phrases, in the sense of groups of words that form units having specific grammatical functions. Phrasal categories may include noun phrases (NP), verb phrases (VP) and so on. Lexical and phrasal categories together are called syntactic categories.

Open and closed classes[edit]

Word classes may be either open or closed. An open class is one that commonly accepts the addition of new words, while a closed class is one to which new items are very rarely added. Open classes normally contain large numbers of words, while closed classes are much smaller. Typical open classes found in English and many other languages are nouns, verbs (excluding auxiliary verbs, if these are regarded as a separate class), adjectives, adverbs and interjections. Ideophones are often an open class, though less familiar to English speakers,^[21][22][b] and are often open to nonce words. Typical closed classes are prepositions (or postpositions), determiners, conjunctions, and pronouns.^[24]

The open–closed distinction is related to the distinction between lexical and functional categories, and to that between content words and function words, and some authors consider these identical, but the connection is not strict. Open classes are generally lexical categories in the stricter sense, containing words with greater semantic content,^[25] while closed classes are normally functional categories, consisting of words that perform essentially grammatical functions. This is not universal: in many languages verbs and adjectives^[26][27][28] are closed classes, usually consisting of few members, and in Japanese the formation of new pronouns from existing nouns is relatively common, though to what extent these form a distinct word class is debated.

Words are added to open classes through such processes as compounding, derivation, coining, and borrowing. When a new word is added through some such process, it can subsequently be used grammatically in sentences in the same ways as other words in its class.^[29] A closed class may obtain new items through these same processes, but such changes are much rarer and take much more time. A closed class is normally seen as part of the core language and is not expected to change. In English, for example, new nouns, verbs, etc. are being added to the language constantly (including by the common process of verbing and other types of conversion, where an existing word comes to be used in a different part of speech). However, it is very unusual for a new pronoun, for example, to become accepted in the language, even in cases where there may be felt to be a need for one, as in the case of gender-neutral pronouns.

The open or closed status of word classes varies between languages, even assuming that corresponding word classes exist. Most conspicuously, in many languages verbs and adjectives form closed classes of content words. An extreme example is found in Jingulu, which has only three verbs, while even the modern Indo-European Persian has no more than a few hundred simple verbs, a great deal of which are archaic. (Some twenty Persian verbs are used as light verbs to form compounds; this lack of lexical verbs is shared with other Iranian languages.) Japanese is similar, having few lexical verbs.^[30] Basque verbs are also a closed class, with the vast majority of verbal senses instead expressed periphrastically.

In Japanese, verbs and adjectives are closed classes,^[31] though these are quite large, with about 700 adjectives,^[32][33] and verbs have opened slightly in recent years. Japanese adjectives are closely related to verbs (they can predicate a sentence, for instance). New verbal meanings are nearly always expressed periphrastically by appending suru (する, to do) to a noun, as in undō suru (運動する, to (do) exercise), and new adjectival meanings are nearly always expressed by adjectival nouns, using the suffix -na (〜な) when an adjectival noun modifies a noun phrase, as in hen-na ojisan (変なおじさん, strange man). The closedness of verbs has weakened in recent years, and in a few cases new verbs are created by appending -ru (〜る) to a noun or using it to replace the end of a word. This is mostly in casual speech for borrowed words, with the most well-established example being sabo-ru (サボる, cut class; play hooky), from sabotāju (サボタージュ, sabotage).^[34] This recent innovation aside, the huge contribution of Sino-Japanese vocabulary was almost entirely borrowed as nouns (often verbal nouns or adjectival nouns). Other languages where adjectives are closed class include Swahili,^[28] Bemba, and Luganda.

By contrast, Japanese pronouns are an open class and nouns become used as pronouns with some frequency; a recent example is jibun (自分, self), now used by some young men as a first-person pronoun. The status of Japanese pronouns as a distinct class is disputed,^{[by whom?]} however, with some considering it only a use of nouns, not a distinct class. The case is similar in languages of Southeast Asia, including Thai and Lao, in which, like Japanese, pronouns and terms of address vary significantly based on relative social standing and respect.^[35]

Some word classes are universally closed, however, including demonstratives and interrogative words.^[35]

See also[edit]

• Part-of-speech tagging
• Sliding window based part-of-speech tagging

Notes[edit]

References[edit]

External links[edit]

• Media related to Parts of speech at Wikimedia Commons
• The parts of speech
• Guide to Grammar and Writing
• Martin Haspelmath. 2001. «Word Classes and Parts of Speech.» In: Baltes, Paul B. & Smelser, Neil J. (eds.) International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Amsterdam: Pergamon, 16538–16545. (PDF)

Many words can function as more than one part of speech.

Nouns

For example, nouns can function as adjectives:

In the sentence above, apartment is a noun that functions as an adjective. It modifies building.

Adjectives

Similarly, adjectives can function as nouns:

In the sentence above, the adjectives strong and weak function as nouns.

Verbals

Verbals (infinitives, gerunds, and participles) often act like two different parts of speech.

An infinitive (the “to” form of a verb) can function as a noun, adjective, or adverb. Specialists often call these “nominal infinitives,” “adjectival infinitives,” and “adverbial infinitives”:

In the examples above, to err functions as a noun, to wear functions as an adjective modifying nothing, and to attend functions as an adverb modifying delighted.

Present and past participles (the -ing and -ed forms of verbs) can function as adjectives:

In the sentences above, running and chosen function as adjectives. Running modifies she, and chosen modifies the winner.

Gerunds are the -ing forms of verbs that function as nouns:

In the sentence above, running functions as a noun.

Prepositions

Prepositions can also function as other parts of speech. For example, down often functions as a preposition, but it can function in other ways.

In the sentence above, the word down forms the prepositional phrase down the hill.

In this sentence, the word down is an adverb modifying turned.

Here, the word down is an adjective modifying escalator.

In this case, the word down is a verb.

A part of speech is a term used in traditional grammar for one of the nine main categories into which words are classified according to their functions in sentences, such as nouns or verbs. Also known as word classes, these are the building blocks of grammar.

Every sentence you write or speak in English includes words that fall into some of the nine parts of speech. These include nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, articles/determiners, and interjections. (Some sources include only eight parts of speech and leave interjections in their own category.)

Learning the names of the parts of speech probably won’t make you witty, healthy, wealthy, or wise. In fact, learning just the names of the parts of speech won’t even make you a better writer. However, you will gain a basic understanding of sentence structure and the English language by familiarizing yourself with these labels.

Open and Closed Word Classes

The parts of speech are commonly divided into open classes (nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs) and closed classes (pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, articles/determiners, and interjections). The idea is that open classes can be altered and added to as language develops and closed classes are pretty much set in stone. For example, new nouns are created every day, but conjunctions never change.

In contemporary linguistics, the label part of speech has generally been discarded in favor of the term word class or syntactic category. These terms make words easier to qualify objectively based on word construction rather than context. Within word classes, there is the lexical or open class and the function or closed class.

Read about each part of speech below and get started practicing identifying each.

Noun

Nouns are a person, place, thing, or idea. They can take on a myriad of roles in a sentence, from the subject of it all to the object of an action. They are capitalized when they’re the official name of something or someone, called proper nouns in these cases. Examples: pirate, Caribbean, ship, freedom, Captain Jack Sparrow.

Pronoun

Pronouns stand in for nouns in a sentence. They are more generic versions of nouns that refer only to people. Examples:​ I, you, he, she, it, ours, them, who, which, anybody, ourselves.

Verb

Verbs are action words that tell what happens in a sentence. They can also show a sentence subject’s state of being (is, was). Verbs change form based on tense (present, past) and count distinction (singular or plural). Examples: sing, dance, believes, seemed, finish, eat, drink, be, became

Adjective

Adjectives describe nouns and pronouns. They specify which one, how much, what kind, and more. Adjectives allow readers and listeners to use their senses to imagine something more clearly. Examples: hot, lazy, funny, unique, bright, beautiful, poor, smooth.

Adverb

Adverbs describe verbs, adjectives, and even other adverbs. They specify when, where, how, and why something happened and to what extent or how often. Examples: softly, lazily, often, only, hopefully, softly, sometimes.

Preposition

Prepositions show spacial, temporal, and role relations between a noun or pronoun and the other words in a sentence. They come at the start of a prepositional phrase, which contains a preposition and its object. Examples: up, over, against, by, for, into, close to, out of, apart from.

Conjunction

Conjunctions join words, phrases, and clauses in a sentence. There are coordinating, subordinating, and correlative conjunctions. Examples: and, but, or, so, yet, with.

Articles and Determiners

Articles and determiners function like adjectives by modifying nouns, but they are different than adjectives in that they are necessary for a sentence to have proper syntax. Articles and determiners specify and identify nouns, and there are indefinite and definite articles. Examples: articles: a, an, the; determiners: these, that, those, enough, much, few, which, what.

Some traditional grammars have treated articles as a distinct part of speech. Modern grammars, however, more often include articles in the category of determiners, which identify or quantify a noun. Even though they modify nouns like adjectives, articles are different in that they are essential to the proper syntax of a sentence, just as determiners are necessary to convey the meaning of a sentence, while adjectives are optional.

Interjection

Interjections are expressions that can stand on their own or be contained within sentences. These words and phrases often carry strong emotions and convey reactions. Examples: ah, whoops, ouch, yabba dabba do!

How to Determine the Part of Speech

Only interjections (Hooray!) have a habit of standing alone; every other part of speech must be contained within a sentence and some are even required in sentences (nouns and verbs). Other parts of speech come in many varieties and may appear just about anywhere in a sentence.

To know for sure what part of speech a word falls into, look not only at the word itself but also at its meaning, position, and use in a sentence.

For example, in the first sentence below, work functions as a noun; in the second sentence, a verb; and in the third sentence, an adjective:

• Bosco showed up for work two hours late.
  • The noun work is the thing Bosco shows up for.
• He will have to work until midnight.
  • The verb work is the action he must perform.
• His work permit expires next month.
  • The attributive noun [or converted adjective] work modifies the noun permit.

Learning the names and uses of the basic parts of speech is just one way to understand how sentences are constructed.

Dissecting Basic Sentences

To form a basic complete sentence, you only need two elements: a noun (or pronoun standing in for a noun) and a verb. The noun acts as a subject and the verb, by telling what action the subject is taking, acts as the predicate. 

• Birds fly.

In the short sentence above, birds is the noun and fly is the verb. The sentence makes sense and gets the point across.

You can have a sentence with just one word without breaking any sentence formation rules. The short sentence below is complete because it’s a command to an understood «you».

• Go!

Here, the pronoun, standing in for a noun, is implied and acts as the subject. The sentence is really saying, «(You) go!»

Constructing More Complex Sentences

Use more parts of speech to add additional information about what’s happening in a sentence to make it more complex. Take the first sentence from above, for example, and incorporate more information about how and why birds fly.

• Birds fly when migrating before winter.

Birds and fly remain the noun and the verb, but now there is more description. 

When is an adverb that modifies the verb fly. The word before is a little tricky because it can be either a conjunction, preposition, or adverb depending on the context. In this case, it’s a preposition because it’s followed by a noun. This preposition begins an adverbial phrase of time (before winter) that answers the question of when the birds migrate. Before is not a conjunction because it does not connect two clauses.