Parts of Speech

Traditional grammar generally distinguishes eight ‘parts of

speech’, or ‘word classes’: noun, pronoun, verb, adjective,
adverb, preposition, conjunction and interjection. There is much
in this classification that is correct, but there is also much that
can be improved.
According to modern grammar, interjections have little
significant role to play in the grammar of English. They include
emotive expressions (ouch, oh, phew, etc.), swear words (shit,
damn, etc.), greetings (hi, bye, etc.) and certain ‘discourse
particles’ (yeah, OK, well, etc.). Interjections are better handled
in the context of a discussion of spoken discourse.
Another point is that the differences between nouns and
pronouns are not sufficient to treat them as separate primary
classes rather modern grammar regards pronouns as being a
subclass of nouns.
Modern grammar has replaced the traditional class of
conjunctions with two primary classes:
a) subordinators (traditional grammar called it subordinating
conjunctions)
b) coordinators (traditional grammar called it coordinating
conjunctions)
Note also that determinatives are more commonly referred to as
‘determiners’ in modern grammars. In this book, the term
‘determinative’ is used for a grammatical class and ‘determiner’
for the grammatical function associated with that class.
Subordinating conjunctions: a conjunction that introduces a subordinate clause, e.g. although, because.

Coordinating conjunctions: A coordinating conjunction is a conjunction that connects words,

phrases, and clauses that are equal to each other. There are seven coordinating conjunctions: for,
and, nor, but, or, yet, so. They can be remembered using the acronym FANBOYS.
A determiner is a word that modifies, describes, or introduces a noun. Determiners can be used
to clarify what a noun refers to (e.g., your car) and to indicate quantity or number (e.g., four
wheels)

Eight primary classes

Modern Grammar distinguishes eight primary classes, out of
which four are open classes (noun, verb, adjective, adverb) and
four are closed classes (preposition, subordinator, coordinator,
determinative). The two largest classes nouns and verbs are the
most important as the most basic type of clause contains at least
one noun and one verb as subject and predicate (as in Dogs
bark).
(i) Noun (N) Many people own yachts in Monaco.
(ii) Verb (V) She has already organised the farewell
party.
(iii) Adjective (Adj) The red apples are more expensive.
(iv) Adverb (Adv) You should never treat us rudely.
(v) Preposition (Prep) Bill is in trouble over his decision.
(vi) Subordinator (Subord) He says that he’ll leave when
he’s ready.
(vii) Coordinator (Coord) The class was difficult, but
everyone ended up receiving a passing grade.
 (viii) Determinative (Dv) The poor woman has suffered a
tragic loss.

A number of general points may be made about this

classification:
• Subsidiary role of semantics:
The classification is based on distinctions of grammatical
behavior, with semantic considerations playing a merely
subsidiary role. Thus, for example, explode and explosion are
very similar in the meanings that they express, but we regard
them as belonging to the verb and noun classes respectively on
the basis of the way they behave in the structure of clauses and
their morphological form.
• Multiple class membership: Words may belong to more than
one word class.
Down may be a:
 noun (My quilt is filled with down)
 verb (Watch him down this glass of coke/his slice of pizza)
 adjective (She’s feeling very down today)
 preposition (She ran down the road)
 adverb (She fell down)
Normally, a sentence will provide enough context to indicate
which part of speech is involved, but occasionally ambiguities
can occur, as in She looked down, where down could be
interpreted either as the adjective (‘She looked sad’) or the
adverb (‘She looked downwards’). In such cases the only way to
determine which class a word belongs to is to consider the
context.
Subclasses:
The eight parts of speech are ‘primary’ classes. For many of the
eight primary classes there are subclasses for example, common
vs. proper nouns, transitive vs. intransitive verbs, and attributive
vs. predicative adjectives.
• Open vs. closed classes: The eight word classes may be
subdivided broadly into open classes and closed classes.
• The open classes (noun, verb, adjective, adverb) have a
comparatively large membership, one that is open to add new
items. New members may be formed by means of the processes
of lexical morphology (as with the verb prioritise, which is
derived from the noun priority by suffixation), or by borrowing
from another language (as with the noun restaurant, from
French).
Open class words are sometimes referred to as ‘lexical’ or
‘content’ words, for example, nouns denote entities, verbs
denote activities and states, and adjectives show properties.
• The closed classes (preposition, subordinator, coordinator,
determinative) are, by contrast, relatively fixed in their
membership; for example, the demonstratives ‘this, that, these
and those’, a subclass of determinatives. Closed class words are
sometimes referred to as ‘grammatical’ or ‘function’ words.
An important point to note here is that it is not just the primary
word classes that may be classified as open or closed, but also
subclasses of them. For instance, the three subclasses of nouns,
common nouns, proper nouns and pronouns, are, respectively,
open, open and closed; verbs are classifiable into the open
subclass of main verbs and the closed subclass of auxiliaries.