Parts of Speech

What do you mean?

They are the categories into which every word in the language fits .
1. Nouns
2. Pronouns
3. Verbs

8 PARTS OF SPEECH 4.
5.
Adjectives (and articles)
Adverbs
6. Prepositions
7. Conjunctions
8. Interjections

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 1. Nouns
Person, place, thing, idea or emotion

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 “
You can usually check to see if something
is a noun by putting the words AN, A, THE
or MY before a noun.

*This does not apply to proper Nouns but they are Capitalized

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 Types of Nouns

▧ Proper nouns: nouns that start with capital letters. They are specific people, places,
things, or ideas such as Florida, Buddhism, Joe, and Thanksgiving.
▧ Common nouns: are regular nouns that do not start with capital letters, such as
happiness, boy, desk, and city.
▧ Concrete nouns: nouns that represent things you can see, hear, smell, taste, or feel. Most
nouns are concrete. Concrete nouns are either common or proper too. Concrete nouns
include grass, paper, perfume (you can smell it), air (you can feel it), Susie, and Golden

▧
Gate Bridge.
Abstract nouns: nouns that represent ideas or emotions; you cannot perceive them with

▧
your senses. Religion, happiness, anger, and Buddhism fall into this category.
Collective nouns: nouns that represent a group of things or people without being plural
(although they can also be made plural). Family, group, orchestra, audience, flock,
bunch, and herd fall into this category.

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 2. PRONOUNS
Pronouns take the place of nouns.

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 Mary baked Mary’s famous lasagna for “
dinner.
Mary baked her famous lasagna for dinner.
Her is a pronoun. It is used in the second sentence to take the place of Mary, so we don’t have to repeat
Mary. Doesn’t the second sentence sound better?
 ANTECEDENTS

▧
▧
An Antecedent is the word the pronoun is standing in for.
In the sentence, Mary is the antecedent of her.
▧ An antecedent can also be a pronoun. Pronouns can stand in for other pronouns, as in
the following sentence:
○ He showed the manager his report. (His and he are the same person. He is the

▧
antecedent.)
In the following sentence, there are no antecedents:
○ He showed the manager her report.
Pronouns must agree in gender and number (singular or plural) with their antecedents.

✎ Make sure that when you write, your antecedents are clear, so that you don’t confuse the
reader.

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 TYPES OF PRONOUNS
Personal Demonstrative
▧ Most commonly used pronouns. ▧ They point things out. There
Here is the complete list: are only four of them: this, that,
○ First Person: I, me, my, these, and those.
mine (singular); we, us, our, ▧ Here are some examples: This is
ours (plural) my new CD. (Once again, make
○ Second Person: you, your, sure your reader knows what
yours (both singular and this refers to!)
plural)
○ Third Person: he, him, his,
she, her, hers, it, its
(singular); they, them, their,
theirs (plural)

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 TYPES OF PRONOUNS
Interrogative Relative
▧ Are used to ask questions. There are ▧ Begin adjective clauses.
five of them: which, who, whose,
whom, and what.
▧ There are five of them: which,
whom, whose, who, and that.
▧ For example: Who is that man? ○ Notice that they are almost
What is wrong? the same as the
interrogative pronouns we
just learned about.
○ However, relative pronouns
do not ask a question, and
they do not appear at the
beginning of a sentence.
▧ Example:
You can borrow the book that I just finished.
My neighbor, who is a lawyer, just came back from Paris.

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 TYPES OF PRONOUNS
Reflexive/Intensive
▧ Personal pronouns with -self at the end: myself, ourselves, yourself,
yourselves, himself, herself, itself, and themselves Here are some
examples of how they are used.
○ Notice the difference between using them reflexively and
intensively: I wrote that poem myself. (Reflexive—myself
reflects back to I)
○ She baked the wedding cake herself. (Reflexive—herself
reflects back to she)
○ I myself wrote that poem. (Intensive—used to emphasize I) I
saw Jim himself at the wedding! (Intensive—used to emphasize
Jim)

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 TYPES OF PRONOUNS

✎ A reflexive pronoun must refer back to the subject of the

sentence.
○ For example, you cannot use myself as a reflexive
pronoun unless I is the subject of the sentence.
Likewise, you cannot use herself as a reflexive
pronoun unless she (or the noun that she represents)
is the subject of the sentence.

■ Correct: I fixed the broken fence myself.

■ Incorrect: She gave Jim and myself new books. (Myself should be me.)
Note that hisself, theirselves, and ourself are not words.

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 TYPES OF PRONOUNS

Indefinite pronouns
▧ Do not refer to a specific noun.
▧ Here are some examples of indefinite pronouns: someone, everyone,
anyone, no one, somebody, anybody, everybody, everything, something,
anything, nothing, none, few, many, several, all, and some (and there are
more).

○ They are important because you need to know which ones are singular and which
ones are plural, so you know which verb form and personal pronoun to use with
them.

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