THE THIRD SUN ENGLISH CLASS

Glossary Of Grammatical Terms

Active Voice
In the active voice, the subject of the verb does the action (eg They killed the
President). See also Passive Voice.
Adjective
A word like big, red, easy, French etc. An adjective describes a noun or pronoun.
Adverb
A word like slowly, quietly, well, often etc. An adverb modifies a verb.
Article
The "indefinite" articles are a and an. The "definite article" is the.
Auxiliary Verb
A verb that is used with a main verb. Be, do and have are auxiliary verbs. Can, may,
must etc are modal auxiliary verbs.
Clause
A group of words containing a subject and its verb (for example: It was late when he
arrived).
Conjunction
A word used to connect words, phrases and clauses (for example: and, but, if).
Infinitive
The basic form of a verb as in to work or work.
Interjection
An exclamation inserted into an utterance without grammatical connection (for
example: oh!, ah!, ouch!, well!).
Modal Verb
An auxiliary verb like can, may, must etc that modifies the main verb and expresses
possibility, probability etc. It is also called "modal auxiliary verb".
Noun
A word like table, dog, teacher, America etc. A noun is the name of an object, concept,
person or place. A "concrete noun" is something you can see or touch like a person or
car. An "abstract noun" is something that you cannot see or touch like a decision or
happiness. A "countable noun" is something that you can count (for example: bottle,
song, dollar). An "uncountable noun" is something that you cannot count (for example:
water, music, money).
Object
In the active voice, a noun or its equivalent that receives the action of the verb. In the
passive voice, a noun or its equivalent that does the action of the verb.
Participle
The -ing and -ed forms of verbs. The -ing form is called the "present participle". The
-ed form is called the "past participle" (for irregular verbs, this is column 3).
Part Of Speech
One of the eight classes of word in English - noun, verb, adjective, adverb, pronoun,
preposition, conjunction and interjection.
Passive Voice
In the passive voice, the subject receives the action of the verb (eg The President was
killed). See also Active Voice.
Phrase
A group of words not containing a subject and its verb (eg on the table, the girl in a
red dress).
Predicate
Each sentence contains (or implies) two parts: a subject and a predicate. The
predicate is what is said about the subject.
Preposition
A word like at, to, in, over etc. Prepositions usually come before a noun and give
information about things like time, place and direction.
Pronoun
A word like I, me, you, he, him, it etc. A pronoun replaces a noun.
Sentence
A group of words that express a thought. A sentence conveys a statement, question,
THE THIRD SUN ENGLISH CLASS
exclamation or command. A sentence contains or implies a subject and a predicate. In
simple terms, a sentence must contain a verb and (usually) a subject. A sentence
starts with a capital letter and ends with a full stop (.), question mark (?) or
exclamation mark (!).
Subject
Every sentence contains (or implies) two parts: a subject and a predicate. The subject
is the main noun (or equivalent) in a sentence about which something is said.
Tense
The form of a verb that shows us when the action or state happens (past, present or
future). Note that the name of a tense is not always a guide to when the action
happens. The "present continuous tense", for example, can be used to talk about the
present or the future.
Verb
A word like (to) work, (to) love, (to) begin. A verb describes an action or state.

Parts of Speech
There are thousands of words in any language. But not all words have the same
job. For example, some words express "action". Other words express a "thing".
Other words "join" one word to another word. These are the "building blocks" of
the language. Think of them like the parts of a house. When we want to build a
house, we use concrete to make the foundations or base. We use bricks to
make the walls. We use window frames to make the windows, and door frames
to make the doorways. And we use cement to join them all together. Each part
of the house has its own job. And when we want to build a sentence, we use
the different types of word. Each type of word has its own job.
We can categorize English words into 8 basic types or classes. These classes
are called "parts of speech".
It's quite important to recognize parts of speech. This helps you to analyze
sentences and understand them. It also helps you to construct good sentences.
In this lesson, we look at:
 A table of the 8 Parts of Speech
 Some example sentences
 Words that do more than one job

Table of Parts of Speech

Part of Function or "Job" Example Words Example
Speech Sentences

Verb State or action (to) be, have, do, like, work, “El Sr. Zancudo” is
sing, can, must a web site.
I like English class.

Noun Thing or person pen, dog, work, music, This is my dog.

town, London, teacher, John

Adjective Describes a noun a/an, the, 69, some, good, My dog is big.
big, red, well, interesting I like big dogs.

Adverb Describes a verb quickly, silently, well, badly My dog eats

quickly.
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Pronoun Replaces a noun I, you, he, she, some Tara is Indian. She
is beautiful.

Preposition Links a noun to another word to, at, after, on, but We went to school
on Monday.

Conjunction Joins clauses or sentences or and, but, when I like dogs and I
words like cats.
I like cats and
dogs,
I like dogs but I
don't like cats.

Interjection Short exclamation, sometimes oh!, ouch!, hi!, well Ouch! That hurts!
inserted into a sentence Hi! How are you?
Well, I don't know.

Example Sentences
Here are some sentences made with different parts of speech:
verb noun verb noun verb verb

Stop! John works. John is working.

pronoun verb noun noun verb adjective noun

She loves animals. Animals like kind people.

noun verb noun adverb noun verb adjective noun

Tara speaks English well. Tara speaks good English.

pronoun verb preposition adjective noun adverb

She ran to the station quickly.

Here is a sentence that contains every part of speech:
interjection pronoun conjunction adjective noun verb preposition noun adverb

Well, she and young John walk to school slowly.

Words with more than One Job

Here are some examples:
Word Part of Speech Example

work noun My work is easy.

verb I work in London.

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but conjunction John came but Mary didn't come.

preposition Everyone came but Mary.

well adjective Are you well?

adverb She speaks well.

interjection Well! That's expensive!

afternoon noun We ate in the afternoon.

noun acting as adjective We had afternoon tea.

These are just a few examples. Of course, there are more, even for some of the words above. In
fact, if you look in a good dictionary you will see that the word "but" has six jobs to do:
 verb, noun, adverb, pronoun, preposition and conjuction!