Word categories parts of speech

The terms «part of speech», «word class» and «word category» are typically used interchangeably. For a recent, brief and accessible discussion by an eminent linguist, see this paper by David Denison. Each individual word has its own part of speech.

Subject and object are grammatical relations. Grammatical relations are different from parts of speech, because parts of speech do not depend on the role of the word in the sentence, whereas grammatical relations do. For instance, in the sentence Cats like mice, the words cats and mice are both nouns, but Cats is the subject whereas mice is the direct object. In the sentence Mice like cats, it is the other way round: mice is the subject whereas cats is the direct object.

An important difference between parts of speech and grammatical relations is that phrases can bear grammatical relations, but only words can bear parts of speech. In the sentence The cats like the mice, the subject is the whole phrase The cats. The word cats is a noun, and The is an article or a determiner.

If you want to find out more about these notions, I’d recommend the book Introducing English Grammar by Börjars and Burridge (2010). It’s what we use at Manchester to teach first-year Linguistics and English Language undergraduates.

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)

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Classifications
in general may be based either on one criterion (such classifications
are called homogeneous), or on a combination of several criteria
(such classifications are called heterogeneous). The traditional
classification of parts of speech is heterogeneous;
it is based on the combination of all the three criteria mentioned
above: ‘meaning
– form – function’.

1.
By meaning we understand not an
individual meaning of each separate word which is its lexical meaning
but the meaning common to all the words of the given class and
constituting the essence of this meaning.

In the
noun, for
example, taken as a class of words its generalized meaning is that of
substantivity, in the verb
as a part of speech its meaning is that of process or action. The
adjective
as a part of speech expresses names of qualities or properties and so
on.

2. Form
is considered to be the
morphological characteristics of a type of words, i.e. grammatical
categories which are typical of this or that part of speech. A
grammatical category is a dialectical unity of generalized
grammatical meaning and certain grammatical forms serving to express
this meaning. The noun, for instance, possesses grammatical
categories of case and number, plurality being expressed by the
inflexion -es, e.g. box — boxes, map — maps. etc.

By a
grammatical form we understand the formal linguistic means with the
help of which this or that generalized grammatical meaning is
expressed. Each grammatical category must be represented at least by
two grammatical forms. There are no languages in which there is only
one grammatical person or a grammatical case. It’s necessary to take
into consideration the fact that one and the same grammatical form of
the word may express different grammatical categories, for example,
the form takes expresses
tense, mood, voice, aspect, number, and person.

At the same
time it is impossible to have one and the same form for the
expression of two cases or two numbers or two persons. In this case
we always deal with the opposition of forms. In any opposition all
the forms are divided into marked forms and non-marked forms.

Any
part of speech is characterized either by a whole system of different
grammatical categories (nouns, verbs, adjectives) or by absence of
grammatical categories (prepositions, conjunctions, articles).

3. By
function we mean the syntactical
characteristics of this or that part of speech. These characteristics
may be subdivided into two items:

1)
the ability of a word to combine with other words of different types
or of the same type and this ability is termed as a combinability of
a word.

2) the
function in which this or that part of speech may be found in a
sentence.

The noun,
for example, combines with other nouns (a girl’s book), with verbs
(the sun shines), with adjectives (a handsome boy), with prepositions
and articles. As to the syntactical functions of a noun in a sentence
it is those of a subject, a predicative, an object, an attribute, and
some adverbial modifiers.

Traditionally,
all parts of speech are subdivided on the upper level of
classification into notional
words and
functional
words.
Notional
words,
which traditionally include nouns,
verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns and numerals,
have complete nominative meanings, are in most cases changeable and
fulfill self-dependent syntactic functions in the sentence. The noun,
for example, as a part of speech, is traditionally characterized by
1) the categorial meaning of substance (“thingness”), 2) a
specific set of word-building affixes, the grammatical categories of
number, case and article determination, prepositional connections and
modification by an adjective, and 3) the substantive functions of
subject, object or predicative in the sentence. In the same way, all
the other notional parts of speech are described. Functional
words,
which include conjunctions,
prepositions, articles, interjections, particles, and modal words,
have incomplete nominative value, are unchangeable and fulfill
mediatory, constructional syntactic functions.

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Every word is a part of speech, each playing a specific role in a sentence. There are 8 different parts of speech including noun, verb, adjective, adverb, pronoun, preposition, conjunction, and interjection. Each word in a sentence plays a vital role in conveying the meaning and intent of the sentence.

What is Part of Speech?

The English language has thousands of words and every word has some function to perform. Some words are there to show action, some to join, and some to name something. And together, all the functions performed by words in the English language fall under Parts of speech.           
 

Parts of Speech Definition

The parts of speech are the “traditional grammatical categories to which words are assigned in accordance with their syntactic functions, such as noun, verb, adjective, adverb, and so on.” In other words, they refer to the different roles that words can play in a sentence and how they relate to one another based on grammar and syntax.

Parts of Speech Table

Types	Function	Examples	Sentences
Noun	Refers Things or person	Pen, Chair, Ram, Honesty	Cars are expensive. This chair is of wood. Ram is a topper. Honesty is the best policy.
Pronoun	Replaces a noun	I, you, he, she, it, they	They are expensive. It is of wood. He is a topper. It is the best policy
Adjective	Describes a noun	Super, Red, Our, Big, Great class	Super cars are expensive Red chair is for kids Ram is a class topper. Great things take time.
Verb	Describes action or state	Play, be, work, love, like	I play football I will be a doctor I like to work I love writing poem.
Adverb	Describes a verb, adjective or adverb	Silently, too, very	I love reading silently. It is too tough to handle. He can speak very fast.
Preposition	Links a noun to another word	at, in, of, after, under,	The ball is under the table. I am at a restaurant. she is in trouble. I am going after her. It is so nice of him
Conjunction	Joins clauses and sentences	and, but, though, after	First, I will go to college and then I may go to fest. I don’t have a car but I know how to drive. She failed the exam though she worked hard. He will come after he finish his match.
Interjection	Shows exclamation	oh!, wow!, alas! Hurray!	Oh! I got fail again. Wow! I got the job. Alas! She is no more. Hurray! we are going to party.

Parts of Speech Examples with Sentences

Noun

Examples: Luggage, Cattle.

Sentence:  Never leave your luggage unattended.

In some places, cattle are fed barely.

Pronoun

Examples: who, either, themselves

Sentence: I know a man who plays the guitar very well.

Either of the two cars is for sale.

They enjoyed themselves at the party.

Adjective

Examples: kind, moving, wounder.

Sentence: 

She is a kind person.

Boarding a moving bus can be dangerous.

Never poke a wounded animal.

Verb

Examples: Praise, Hate, Punish

Sentence: She always praises her friends.

I don’t hate anybody.

The boy has been punished by his teacher

Adverb

Examples: Always, enough, immediately

Sentence: we should always help each other.

We should be wise enough to understand what is good for us.

We should leave bad habits immediately.

Preposition

Examples: Off, Below, From. to

Sentence: 

He plunged off the cliff

I live below the 9th floor.

I travel daily from Delhi to Noida.

Conjunction

Examples: whereas, as well as, so, 

Sentence: The new software is fairly simple whereas the old one was a bit complicated.

The finance company is not performing well as well as some of its competitors.

He was ready so he may come. 

Interjection

Examples: oops! whoa! phew! 

Sentence: Oops! I forgot to mention her name.

Whoa! you drive fast. 

Phew! That was close call, we had a narrow escape.

Parts of Speech Quiz

Choose the correct Parts of Speech of the BOLD word from the following questions.

1. Let us play, Shall We?

       a. Conjunction

       b. Pronoun

       c. Verb

2.  It is a good practice to arrange books on shelves.

      a. Verb

      b. Noun

      c. Adjective

3. Whose books are these?

      a. Pronoun

     b. Preposition

     c. verb

4.  Father, please get me that toy. 

     a. Pronoun

     b. Adverb

     c. Adjective

5.  His mentality is rather obnoxious.

     a. Adverb

     b. Adjective

     c. Noun

6.  He is the guy whose money got stolen.

      a. Pronoun

      b. Conjunction

      c. Adjective

7. I will have finished my semester by the end of this year.

      a. Interjection

      b. Conjunction

      c. Preposition

8. Bingo! That’s the one I have been looking for

    a. Interjection

     b. Conjunction

     c. Preposition

Quiz Answers

1. c,  2. b,  3. a,  4. c,  5. a,  6. b,  7. c,  8. a

FAQs on Parts of Speech

Q1. What are Parts of Speech?

Ans. A word is assigned to a category as per its function, and those categories are together known as Parts of Speech.

Q2. What are the 8 Parts of Speech?

Ans. Noun, Pronoun, Adjective, Verb, Adverb, Preposition, Conjunction, Interjection.

Q3. How many Parts of Speech are there?

Ans. There are a total of 8 parts of Speech.

Q4. What Part of Speech is “our”?

Ans. Adjective. Eg. Our car.

Q5. What Part of Speech is “Quickly”?

Ans. Adverb. let us understand it with this example – Milk sours quickly in warm weather.