noun
A noun is the name of a person, place, thing, or idea. Whatever exists, we assume, can be named, and that name is a noun. A proper noun, which names a specific person, place, or thing (Carlos, Queen Marguerite, Middle East, Jerusalem, Malaysia, Presbyterianism, God, Spanish, Buddhism, the Republican Party), is almost always capitalized. A proper noun used as an addressed person's name is called a noun of address. Common nouns name everything else, things that usually are not capitalized.
A group of related words can act as a single noun-like entity within a sentence. A Noun Clause contains a subject and verb and can do anything that a noun can do:
What he does for this town is a blessing.A Noun Phrase, frequently a noun accompanied by modifiers, is a group of related words acting as a noun: the oil depletion allowance; the abnormal, hideously enlarged nose.
There is a separate section on word combinations that become Compound Nouns — such as daughter-in-law, half-moon, and stick-in-the-mud.
Categories of Nouns
Click on "Noun School" to read and hear Lynn Ahren's "A Noun is a Person Place or Thing" (from Scholastic Rock, 1973).
Schoolhouse Rock® and its characters andother elements are trademarks and service marks of American Broadcasting Companies, Inc. Used with permission.Nouns can be classified further as count nouns, which name anything that can be counted (four books, two continents, a few dishes, a dozen buildings); mass nouns(or non-count nouns), which name something that can't be counted (water, air, energy, blood); and collective nouns, which can take a singular form but are composed of more than one individual person or items (jury, team, class, committee, herd). We should note that some words can be either a count noun or a non-count noun depending on how they're being used in a sentence:
Some texts will include the category of abstract nouns, by which we mean the kind of word that is not tangible, such as warmth, justice, grief, and peace. Abstract nouns are sometimes troublesome for non-native writers because they can appear with determiners or without: "Peace settled over the countryside." "The skirmish disruptedthe peace that had settled over the countryside." See the section on Plurals for additional help with collective nouns, words that can be singular or plural, depending on context.
pronouns
pronoun is a word or form that substitutes for a noun or noun phrase.Generally (but not always) pronouns stand for (pro + noun) or refer to a noun, an individual or individuals or thing or things (the pronoun's antecedent) whose identity is made clear earlier in the text. For instance, we are bewildered by writers who claim something like
KINDS OF PRONOUNS: Personal || Demonstrative || Indefinite || Relative ||
Reflexive || Intensive || Interrogative || Reciprocal
verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word (part of speech) that in syntax conveys an action (bring, read,walk, run, learn), an occurrence (happen, become), or a state of being (be, exist, stand). In the usual description ofEnglish, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive. In many languages, verbs are inflected (modified in form) to encode tense, aspect, mood, and voice. A verb may also agree with the person, gender, and/or number of some of its arguments, such as its subject, or object. In many languages, verbs have a present tense, to indicate that an action is being carried out; a past tense, to indicate that an action has been done; and a future tense, to indicate that an action will be done.
Verb types
Verbs vary by type, and each type is determined by the kinds of words that follow it and the relationship those words have with the verb itself. There are six types: intransitive, transitive, infinitives, to-be verbs, and two-place transitive (Vg- verb give), and two-place transitive (Vc- verb consider).
Intransitive verbs.
An intransitive verb is one that does not have a direct object. Intransitive verbs may be followed by an adverb (a word that addresses how, where, when, and how often) or end a sentence. For example: "The woman spoke softly." "The athlete ran faster than the official." "The boy wept."
Linking verbs
A linking verb cannot be followed by an adverb or end a sentence but instead must be followed by a noun or adjective, whether in a single word or phrase. Common linking verbs include seem,become, appear, look, and remain. For example: "His mother looked worried." "Josh remained a reliable friend." Therefore, linking verbs 'link' the adjective or noun to the subject.
Adjectives that come after linking verbs are predicate adjectives, and nouns that come after linking verbs are predicate nouns.
Transitive verbs
A transitive verb is followed by a noun or noun phrase. These noun phrases are not called predicate nouns but are instead called direct objects because they refer to the object that is being acted upon. For example: "My friend read the newspaper." "The teenager earned a speeding ticket."
A way to identify a transitive verb is to invert the sentence, making it passive. For example: "The newspaper was read by my friend." "A speeding ticket was earned by the teenager."
Adverb
adverb is a word that changes or qualifies the meaning of a verb, adjective, other adverb, clause, sentence or any other word or phrase, except that it does not include the adjectives and determiners that directly modify nouns. Adverbs are traditionally regarded as one of the parts of speech, although the wide variety of the functions performed by words classed as adverbs means that it is hard to treat them as a single uniform category.
Adverbs typically answer questions such as how?, in what way?, when?, where?, and to what extent?. This function is called theadverbial function, and is realized not just by single words (i.e., adverbs) but by adverbial phrases and adverbial clauses.
As we will see, adverbs often tell when, where, why, or under what conditions something happens or happened. Adverbs frequently end in -ly; however, many words and phrases not ending in -ly serve an adverbial function and an -ly ending is not a guarantee that a word is an adverb. The words lovely, lonely, motherly, friendly, neighborly, for instance, are adjectives:
Comparison of adjectivesMain articles: Comparison (grammar) and Comparative
In many languages, some adjectives are comparable. For example, a person may be "polite", but another person may be "more polite", and a third person may be the "most polite" of the three. The word "more" here modifies the adjective "polite" to indicate a comparison is being made, and "most" modifies the adjective to indicate an absolute comparison (a superlative).
Many adjectives do not lend themselves to comparison, however. For example, it does not make sense to speak of something that is "more here" than another, or of something "most here". Such adjectives are called non-comparable.
Comparable adjectives are also known as gradable adjectives, because they tend to allow grading adverbs such as "very", "rather", and so on.
Among languages that allow adjectives to be compared, different means are used to indicate the comparison. Many languages do not distinguish comparative from superlative forms.
In English, there are three different means to indicate comparison: most simple adjectives take the suffixes "-er" and "-est", as
"big", "bigger", "biggest";a very few adjectives are irregular:
"good", "better", "best","bad", "worse", "worst","old", "elder", "eldest" (in certain contexts only; the adjective is usually regular)"far", "farther/further", "farthest/furthest""many", "more", "most" (usually regarded as an adverb or determiner)"little", "less", "least";all others are compared by means of the words "more" and "most". There is no simple rule to decide which means is correct for any given adjective, however. The general tendency is for simpler adjectives, and those from Anglo-Saxon to take the suffixes, while longer adjectives and those from French, Latin, Greek do not—but sometimes sound of the word is the deciding factor.
Even most non-comparable English adjectives may however sometimes be compared; for example, one might say that a language about which nothing is known is "more extinct" than a well-documented language with surviving literature but no speakers, or say that in an egalitarian society, some people are "more equal" than others. These cases may be viewed as statements about the degree to which the subject fits the adjective's definition, rather than the degree of intensity of the adjective.
Conjunction
conjunction (abbreviated conj or cnj) is a part of speech that connects two words, sentences, phrases or clauses.
A conjunction is a joiner, a word that connects (conjoins) parts of a sentence.
Coordinating conjunctions, also called coordinators, are conjunctions that join, or coordinate, two or more items (such as words, main clauses, or sentences) of equal syntactic importance. In English, the mnemonic acronym FANBOYS can be used to remember the coordinators for, and, nor, but, or, yet, and so.[3][4] These are not the only coordinating conjunctions; various others are used, including[5]:ch. 9[6]:p. 171 "and nor" (British), "but nor" (British), "or nor" (British), "neither" ("They don't gamble; neither do they smoke"), "no more" ("They don't gamble; no more do they smoke"), and "only" ("I would go, only I don't have time").
for presents an explanation ("He is gambling with his health, for he has been smoking far too long.")
and presents non-contrasting item(s) or idea(s) ("They gamble and they smoke.")
nor presents a non-contrasting negative idea ("They do not gamble nor do they smoke.")
but presents a contrast or exception ("They gamble, but they don't smoke.")or presents an alternative item or idea ("Every day they gamble or they smoke.")
yet presents a contrast or exception ("They gamble, yet they don't smoke.")so presents a consequence ("He gambled well last night so he smoked a cigar to celebrateSubordinating conjunctions, also called subordinators, are conjunctions that join an independent clause and a dependent clause. The most common subordinating conjunctions in the English language include after, although, as, as far as, as if, as long as, as soon as, as though, because, before, if, in order that, since, so, so that, than, though, unless, until, when, whenever, where,whereas, wherever, and while. Complementizers can be considered to be special subordinating conjunctions that introduce complement clauses: e.g. "I wonder whether he'll be late. I hope thathe'll be on time". Some subordinating conjunctions (until and while), when used to introduce a phrase instead of a full clause, become prepositions with identical meanings.
Interjections
Interjections are words or phrases used to exclaim or protest or command. They sometimes stand by themselves, but they are often contained within larger structures.
preposition describes a relationship between other words in a sentence. In itself, a word like "in" or "after" is rather meaningless and hard to define in mere words. For instance, when you do try to define a preposition like "in" or "between" or "on," you invariably use your hands to show how something is situated in relationship to something else. Prepositions are nearly always combined with other words in structures called prepositional phrases. Prepositional phrases can be made up of a million different words, but they tend to be built the same: a preposition followed by a determiner and an adjective or two, followed by a pronoun or noun (called the object of the preposition).
Prepositions of Time: at, on, and inWe use at to designate specific times.
The train is due at 12:15 p.m.
We use on to designate days and dates.
My brother is coming on Monday.
We're having a party on the Fourth of July.
We use in for nonspecific times during a day, a month, a season, or a year.
She likes to jog in the morning.
It's too cold in winter to run outside.
He started the job in 1971.
He's going to quit in August.
A noun is the name of a person, place, thing, or idea. Whatever exists, we assume, can be named, and that name is a noun. A proper noun, which names a specific person, place, or thing (Carlos, Queen Marguerite, Middle East, Jerusalem, Malaysia, Presbyterianism, God, Spanish, Buddhism, the Republican Party), is almost always capitalized. A proper noun used as an addressed person's name is called a noun of address. Common nouns name everything else, things that usually are not capitalized.
A group of related words can act as a single noun-like entity within a sentence. A Noun Clause contains a subject and verb and can do anything that a noun can do:
What he does for this town is a blessing.A Noun Phrase, frequently a noun accompanied by modifiers, is a group of related words acting as a noun: the oil depletion allowance; the abnormal, hideously enlarged nose.
There is a separate section on word combinations that become Compound Nouns — such as daughter-in-law, half-moon, and stick-in-the-mud.
Categories of Nouns
Click on "Noun School" to read and hear Lynn Ahren's "A Noun is a Person Place or Thing" (from Scholastic Rock, 1973).
Schoolhouse Rock® and its characters andother elements are trademarks and service marks of American Broadcasting Companies, Inc. Used with permission.Nouns can be classified further as count nouns, which name anything that can be counted (four books, two continents, a few dishes, a dozen buildings); mass nouns(or non-count nouns), which name something that can't be counted (water, air, energy, blood); and collective nouns, which can take a singular form but are composed of more than one individual person or items (jury, team, class, committee, herd). We should note that some words can be either a count noun or a non-count noun depending on how they're being used in a sentence:
- He got into trouble. (non-count)
- He had many troubles. (countable)
- Experience (non-count) is the best teacher.
- We had many exciting experiences (countable) in college.
Some texts will include the category of abstract nouns, by which we mean the kind of word that is not tangible, such as warmth, justice, grief, and peace. Abstract nouns are sometimes troublesome for non-native writers because they can appear with determiners or without: "Peace settled over the countryside." "The skirmish disruptedthe peace that had settled over the countryside." See the section on Plurals for additional help with collective nouns, words that can be singular or plural, depending on context.
pronouns
pronoun is a word or form that substitutes for a noun or noun phrase.Generally (but not always) pronouns stand for (pro + noun) or refer to a noun, an individual or individuals or thing or things (the pronoun's antecedent) whose identity is made clear earlier in the text. For instance, we are bewildered by writers who claim something like
KINDS OF PRONOUNS: Personal || Demonstrative || Indefinite || Relative ||
Reflexive || Intensive || Interrogative || Reciprocal
- Personal pronouns denote an entity of a specific grammatical person: first person (as in the case of I, me, we, etc.), second person (as in the case ofyou), or third person (he, she, they, etc.)
- Subject pronouns are used when the person or thing is the subject of the sentence or clause. English example: I like to eat chips, but she does not.
- Second person formal and informal pronouns (T-V distinction). For example, vous and tu in French. There is no distinction in modern English though Elizabethan English marked the distinction with "thou" (singular informal) and "you" (plural or singular formal).
- Inclusive and exclusive "we" pronouns indicate whether the audience is included. There is no distinction in English.
- Intensive pronouns, also known as emphatic pronouns, re-emphasize a noun or pronoun that has already been mentioned. English uses the same forms as the reflexive pronouns; for example: I did it myself (contrast reflexive use, I did it to myself).
- Object pronouns are used when the person or thing is the object of the sentence or clause. English example: John likes me but not her.
- Direct and indirect object pronouns. English uses the same oblique form for both; for example: Mary loves him (direct object); Mary sent hima letter (indirect object).
- Reflexive pronouns are used when a person or thing acts on itself. English example: John cut himself.
- Reciprocal pronouns refer to a reciprocal relationship. English example: They do not like each other.
- Prepositional pronouns come after a preposition. No distinct forms exist in English; for example: Anna and Maria looked at him.
- Disjunctive pronouns are used in isolation or in certain other special grammatical contexts. No distinct forms exist in English; for example: Who does this belong to? Me.
- Dummy pronouns are used when grammatical rules require a noun (or pronoun), but none is semantically required. English example: It is raining.
- Weak pronouns.
- Subject pronouns are used when the person or thing is the subject of the sentence or clause. English example: I like to eat chips, but she does not.
- Possessive pronouns are used to indicate possession or ownership.
- In a strict sense, the possessive pronouns are only those that act syntactically as nouns. English example: Those clothes are mine.
- Often, though, the term "possessive pronoun" is also applied to the so-called possessive determiners (or possessive adjectives). For example, in English: I lost my wallet. They are not strictly speaking pronouns[citation needed] because they do not substitute for a noun or noun phrase, and as such, some grammarians classify these terms in a separate lexical category called determiners (they have a syntactic role close to that of adjectives, always qualifying a noun).
- Demonstrative pronouns distinguish the particular objects or people that are referred to from other possible candidates. English example: I'll take these.
- Indefinite pronouns refer to general categories of people or things. English example: Anyone can do that.
- Distributive pronouns are used to refer to members of a group separately rather than collectively. English example: To each his own.
- Negative pronouns indicate the non-existence of people or things. English example: Nobody thinks that.
- Relative pronouns refer back to people or things previously mentioned. English example: People who smoke should quit now.
- Indefinite relative pronouns have some of the properties of both relative pronouns and indefinite pronouns. They have a sense of "referring back", but the person or thing to which they refer has not previously been explicitly named. English example: I know what I like.
- Interrogative pronouns ask which person or thing is meant. English example: Who did that?
- In many languages (e.g., Czech, English, French, Interlingua, and Russian), the sets of relative and interrogative pronouns are nearly identical. Compare English: Who is that?(interrogative) to I know who that is.
verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word (part of speech) that in syntax conveys an action (bring, read,walk, run, learn), an occurrence (happen, become), or a state of being (be, exist, stand). In the usual description ofEnglish, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive. In many languages, verbs are inflected (modified in form) to encode tense, aspect, mood, and voice. A verb may also agree with the person, gender, and/or number of some of its arguments, such as its subject, or object. In many languages, verbs have a present tense, to indicate that an action is being carried out; a past tense, to indicate that an action has been done; and a future tense, to indicate that an action will be done.
Verb types
Verbs vary by type, and each type is determined by the kinds of words that follow it and the relationship those words have with the verb itself. There are six types: intransitive, transitive, infinitives, to-be verbs, and two-place transitive (Vg- verb give), and two-place transitive (Vc- verb consider).
Intransitive verbs.
An intransitive verb is one that does not have a direct object. Intransitive verbs may be followed by an adverb (a word that addresses how, where, when, and how often) or end a sentence. For example: "The woman spoke softly." "The athlete ran faster than the official." "The boy wept."
Linking verbs
A linking verb cannot be followed by an adverb or end a sentence but instead must be followed by a noun or adjective, whether in a single word or phrase. Common linking verbs include seem,become, appear, look, and remain. For example: "His mother looked worried." "Josh remained a reliable friend." Therefore, linking verbs 'link' the adjective or noun to the subject.
Adjectives that come after linking verbs are predicate adjectives, and nouns that come after linking verbs are predicate nouns.
Transitive verbs
A transitive verb is followed by a noun or noun phrase. These noun phrases are not called predicate nouns but are instead called direct objects because they refer to the object that is being acted upon. For example: "My friend read the newspaper." "The teenager earned a speeding ticket."
A way to identify a transitive verb is to invert the sentence, making it passive. For example: "The newspaper was read by my friend." "A speeding ticket was earned by the teenager."
Adverb
adverb is a word that changes or qualifies the meaning of a verb, adjective, other adverb, clause, sentence or any other word or phrase, except that it does not include the adjectives and determiners that directly modify nouns. Adverbs are traditionally regarded as one of the parts of speech, although the wide variety of the functions performed by words classed as adverbs means that it is hard to treat them as a single uniform category.
Adverbs typically answer questions such as how?, in what way?, when?, where?, and to what extent?. This function is called theadverbial function, and is realized not just by single words (i.e., adverbs) but by adverbial phrases and adverbial clauses.
As we will see, adverbs often tell when, where, why, or under what conditions something happens or happened. Adverbs frequently end in -ly; however, many words and phrases not ending in -ly serve an adverbial function and an -ly ending is not a guarantee that a word is an adverb. The words lovely, lonely, motherly, friendly, neighborly, for instance, are adjectives:
- That lovely woman lives in a friendly neighborhood.
- When this class is over, we're going to the movies.
- He went to the movies.
- She works on holidays.
- They lived in Canada during the war.
Comparison of adjectivesMain articles: Comparison (grammar) and Comparative
In many languages, some adjectives are comparable. For example, a person may be "polite", but another person may be "more polite", and a third person may be the "most polite" of the three. The word "more" here modifies the adjective "polite" to indicate a comparison is being made, and "most" modifies the adjective to indicate an absolute comparison (a superlative).
Many adjectives do not lend themselves to comparison, however. For example, it does not make sense to speak of something that is "more here" than another, or of something "most here". Such adjectives are called non-comparable.
Comparable adjectives are also known as gradable adjectives, because they tend to allow grading adverbs such as "very", "rather", and so on.
Among languages that allow adjectives to be compared, different means are used to indicate the comparison. Many languages do not distinguish comparative from superlative forms.
In English, there are three different means to indicate comparison: most simple adjectives take the suffixes "-er" and "-est", as
"big", "bigger", "biggest";a very few adjectives are irregular:
"good", "better", "best","bad", "worse", "worst","old", "elder", "eldest" (in certain contexts only; the adjective is usually regular)"far", "farther/further", "farthest/furthest""many", "more", "most" (usually regarded as an adverb or determiner)"little", "less", "least";all others are compared by means of the words "more" and "most". There is no simple rule to decide which means is correct for any given adjective, however. The general tendency is for simpler adjectives, and those from Anglo-Saxon to take the suffixes, while longer adjectives and those from French, Latin, Greek do not—but sometimes sound of the word is the deciding factor.
Even most non-comparable English adjectives may however sometimes be compared; for example, one might say that a language about which nothing is known is "more extinct" than a well-documented language with surviving literature but no speakers, or say that in an egalitarian society, some people are "more equal" than others. These cases may be viewed as statements about the degree to which the subject fits the adjective's definition, rather than the degree of intensity of the adjective.
Conjunction
conjunction (abbreviated conj or cnj) is a part of speech that connects two words, sentences, phrases or clauses.
A conjunction is a joiner, a word that connects (conjoins) parts of a sentence.
Coordinating conjunctions, also called coordinators, are conjunctions that join, or coordinate, two or more items (such as words, main clauses, or sentences) of equal syntactic importance. In English, the mnemonic acronym FANBOYS can be used to remember the coordinators for, and, nor, but, or, yet, and so.[3][4] These are not the only coordinating conjunctions; various others are used, including[5]:ch. 9[6]:p. 171 "and nor" (British), "but nor" (British), "or nor" (British), "neither" ("They don't gamble; neither do they smoke"), "no more" ("They don't gamble; no more do they smoke"), and "only" ("I would go, only I don't have time").
for presents an explanation ("He is gambling with his health, for he has been smoking far too long.")
and presents non-contrasting item(s) or idea(s) ("They gamble and they smoke.")
nor presents a non-contrasting negative idea ("They do not gamble nor do they smoke.")
but presents a contrast or exception ("They gamble, but they don't smoke.")or presents an alternative item or idea ("Every day they gamble or they smoke.")
yet presents a contrast or exception ("They gamble, yet they don't smoke.")so presents a consequence ("He gambled well last night so he smoked a cigar to celebrateSubordinating conjunctions, also called subordinators, are conjunctions that join an independent clause and a dependent clause. The most common subordinating conjunctions in the English language include after, although, as, as far as, as if, as long as, as soon as, as though, because, before, if, in order that, since, so, so that, than, though, unless, until, when, whenever, where,whereas, wherever, and while. Complementizers can be considered to be special subordinating conjunctions that introduce complement clauses: e.g. "I wonder whether he'll be late. I hope thathe'll be on time". Some subordinating conjunctions (until and while), when used to introduce a phrase instead of a full clause, become prepositions with identical meanings.
Interjections
Interjections are words or phrases used to exclaim or protest or command. They sometimes stand by themselves, but they are often contained within larger structures.
- Wow! I won the lottery!
- Oh, I don't know about that.
- I don't know what the heck you're talking about.
- No, you shouldn't have done that.
preposition describes a relationship between other words in a sentence. In itself, a word like "in" or "after" is rather meaningless and hard to define in mere words. For instance, when you do try to define a preposition like "in" or "between" or "on," you invariably use your hands to show how something is situated in relationship to something else. Prepositions are nearly always combined with other words in structures called prepositional phrases. Prepositional phrases can be made up of a million different words, but they tend to be built the same: a preposition followed by a determiner and an adjective or two, followed by a pronoun or noun (called the object of the preposition).
Prepositions of Time: at, on, and inWe use at to designate specific times.
The train is due at 12:15 p.m.
We use on to designate days and dates.
My brother is coming on Monday.
We're having a party on the Fourth of July.
We use in for nonspecific times during a day, a month, a season, or a year.
She likes to jog in the morning.
It's too cold in winter to run outside.
He started the job in 1971.
He's going to quit in August.