ENGLISH LANGUAGE

GRAMMAR
LESSON ONE
PARTS OF SPEECH
 OBJECTIVES

Upon successful completion of this lesson, the learner will be able to

1. identify the eight parts of speech in simple sentences.

2. explain the function of each part of speech.

 LESSON ONE
PARTS OF SPEECH
Introduction
Parts of speech
a class or category to which a word is assigned in accordance with its
grammatical function. The study of parts of speech helps us to
understand the use or function of words and how they are put
together to make meaningful communication.
The idea of putting things together into classes or categories is a first
step in understanding parts of speech.
We use parts of speech as a way to make it easier to talk about
language.
 Some examples of categories.
COUNTRIES BIRDS VEHICLES MAMMALS

Ghana parrot van whale

Nigeria dove truck human
Liberia eagle car elephant
Sierra Leone sparrow bus monkey
Gambia seagull motorcycle dog
Countries, birds, vehicles and mammals are categories or
classification. If I tell you that seagull is a bird, you would understand
exactly what seagull is. If we did not have the class or category bird, it
would be hard to explain what is meant by the word seagull. It is very
convenient to have classes or categories to talk about similar things.
 PARTS OF SPEECH

The example below shows how helpful it is to know about the parts of
speech. Look at the sentence:
 The man surreptitiously (secretly) entered the room.
You probably don't know the meaning of the word surreptitiously, but if
you know about parts of speech, you will recognize that it is an
adverb and that it tells you something about how the man entered
the room.
When you look up a word in a dictionary, you will find not only the
meaning of the word but also what part of speech it is. This
information is very helpful in understanding the full meaning of the
word and knowing how to use it.
 PARTS OF SPEECH
WHAT ARE THE PARTS OF SPEECH?
Every word in English can be placed into at least one of eight groups, or
classifications. The system of classifying words based on their
function is known as the parts of speech

The 8 parts of speech that are used to describe English words are:
 Nouns
 Verbs
 Adjectives
 Adverbs
 Pronouns
 Prepositions
 Conjunction
 Interjection
In some books articles are added to the parts of speech
 Articles (classified under adjectives)
 PARTS OF SPEECH
Understanding the eight parts of speech will help a learner understand
the grammatical explanations of some of the mistakes you make and
figure out how to correct them.
Some words can be classified under more than one part of speech. In
order to identify what part of speech a word is, you have to look at
what the word is doing in a specific sentence before you can classify
it (name its part of speech). For example, look at these sentences.
 He ran fast so he wouldn’t be late. (describes how he ran...fast is an
adverb)
 They will fast to raise money for UNICEF. (tells about an
action...here fast is a verb)
 Their fast lasted for three days. (names a thing...fast is a noun)
 PARTS OF SPEECH
NOUNS
Words that name people, places , things and ideas are called nouns.
The following table lists a variety of nouns.
Examples of Nouns
PEOPLE: cashier Carol boys Obama
PLACES: province Freetown lake church mosque
THINGS:
ANIMALS: cat camel bug dog lizard bird
OBJECTS: fork television car book phone
SUBSTANCES: iron air gold
ACTIONS: (a) race (the) dance (the) hits
MEASURES: kilogram centimetre day month
QUALITIES: happiness honesty beauty
 PARTS OF SPEECH
Nouns
Nouns can be found anywhere in a sentence, and most sentences
contain several nouns. Nouns can easily be identified by looking for
a, an, the (articles). The naming word that comes after them is
usually a noun. Sometimes nouns appear without these (articles),
but you can usually insert them without changing the meaning of the
sentence.
Kofi and his sons visited the continent of Australia and saw some
kangaroos.
Kofi is a noun that names a person.
Sons name people
continent names a place
Australia names a place
lions names a thing (animal).
 PARTS OF SPEECH
PRONOUNS
A pronoun is a word used in place of one or more nouns.
We use pronouns to:
 Refer to a noun (called its antecedent) that usually comes before the
pronoun
 Make our writing clearer, smoother, and less awkward
In the sentence, “Buari feels that he can win the race,” he is the
pronoun, and Buari is the antecedent.
In the sentence, “Lisette and Heidi know that they are best friends,”
they is the pronoun, and Lisette and Heidi are the noun antecedents.
Examine the sentences below. For each pronoun printed in bold type,
think of a noun it could replace.
He took it when they saw it.
(e.g. Kofi saw the football when the boys saw the dog.)
Everybody was glad when it was over.
 PARTS OF SPEECH
VERBS
VERBS
A verb is a word (run) or a phrase (run out of) which expresses the
existence of a state (love, seem) or the doing of an action (take, play).
The verb is perhaps the most important part of the sentence. The verb or
compound verb is the critical element of the predicate of a sentence.
Here are some hints that may help you locate verbs.
 A sentence is not a sentence without at least one verb except in the
case of one- worded sentences. (one word sentence: sit, stop, why
etc)
 Verbs usually tell about an action.
 Verbs are often found in the middle of sentences.
 Verbs may consist of one word.
 Verb phrases may have up to five words.
 Verb phrases can be interrupted by adverbs like not, never, always.
 PARTS OF SPEECH
VERBS
Verbs change their form to tell about actions taking place at
different times.
For example,
We walked to the store yesterday can be changed to show the action
happening in the future. We will walk to the store tomorrow. The
word walked became will walk; therefore, they are verbs
Here are some sentences that show verbs at work. Notice that some
verbs have more than one word and are sometimes interrupted by
small words that are not part of the verb.

 The driver drove the car to the house.

 The mobile phone fell the bag.
 The police was secretly tailing the suspect.
 The cat was chasing the mouse.
 PARTS OF SPEECH
VERBS
Helping or auxiliary verbs are verbs that do not show any action. They
precede the main verb. All of the following verbs may be helping
verbs:
be, am, is, are, was, were, being, been, has, have, had, do, does,
did, can, will, shall, should, could, would, may, might, and must
My sister is a nurse; I am a teacher; Our father was a doctor.
Sometimes helping verbs are used to show how a person is feeling or
to describe a quality.
 Kofi and Ama were unhappy with their performance.
 She is beautiful and intelligent.
 They were always late.
 Martin had walked quickly to the bus stop to avoid being late.
 Martin must have walked quickly to the bus stop to avoid being late.
 PARTS OF SPEECH
ADJECTIVES
Nouns name a person, place or thing. To describe nouns adjectives are
used in order to give a reader a clearer picture of a noun. This is
done by adding “detail” words like tall, ten, green and cute in front of
the noun.
An adjective is a word which describes or modifies a noun or
pronoun. They tell what kind, which one or how many. A modifier is a
word that limits, changes, or alters the meaning of another word. An
adjective limits, changes, or alters the meaning of a noun or
pronoun. Adjectives are usually placed before the noun.
 The dark, puffy clouds
 A happy, carefree child
 Some tall, stately trees
 A rich dark chocolate layer cake
 Five huge leafy bushes
 PARTS OF SPEECH
ADVERBS
You have just learned that adjectives modify nouns and pronouns. Another
type of describing word or modifier is the adverb. Adverbs also limit,
change, or alter the words they modify.
Adverbs modify verbs (She danced gracefully), other adverbs (The lawyer
spoke very quickly), whole sentences (Thankfully, the game ended
before it started raining), and even noun phrases (Therefore, the
lawyer rested), an adjective (The lawyer was extremely busy), and
pronouns (Almost everyone showed up)
An adverb answers four specific questions about the word it modifies:
where? (here, inside, there, across, out), when? (never, tomorrow,
afterward, before, while), how? (irritatingly, swiftly, suspiciously,
fervently), and to what extent? (so, very, too, extremely, really).
Memorizing these questions will help you identify adverbs. You can also
look for words that end in -ly, as long as you remember that not all such
words are adverbs. For example, friendly, neighborly, costly, ugly, burly,
lovely, lonely, motherly, and cowardly are adjectives, not adverbs.
 PARTS OF SPEECH
PREPOSITIONS
Preposition are joining words, sometimes called connectives, which are
used to show a time, place, ownership or relation between two
nouns/pronouns or a noun and a verb. Prepositions and the
nouns/pronouns that follow them are always grouped together and
treated as a single grammar unit, called prepositional phrases.
preposition + noun or pronoun = prepositional phrase
Time: after + the party = (after the party)
Place: under + the table = (under the table)
Ownership: of + our town = (of our town)
Prepositions are always the first word in a prepositional phrase.
Prepositional phrases are used to add more detail to a sentence. The
following sentence gives no details about the person or her actions:
The girl walked.
Where did the girl walk? Perhaps she walked around the building:
The girl walked around the building.
 PARTS OF SPEECH
PREPOSITIONS
The word around is a preposition which tells the relationship between the
girl walked and the building. Other prepositions show different
relationships between the girl walked and the building: Consider these
prepositions.
The girl walked through the building.
The girl walked into the building.
The girl walked behind the building.
The girl walked to the building.
The girl walked beside the building.
The girl walked near the building.
In each sentence above, the prepositional phrases give more information
about the verb “walked” by telling where she walked. Adverb phrases
can also be used to tell how, in what way, when. Anything that
modifies a verb is an adverb; therefore, these prepositional phrases,
telling where she walked, are called prepositional adverb phrases.
 PARTS OF SPEECH
PREPOSITIONS
Here are some common prepositions:

about beyond out

above by outside
across down over
after during past
against except since
along for through
among from toward
at in under
before inside until
below into up
beneath of with
beside off without
between on within
 PARTS OF SPEECH
INTERJECTIONS
Perhaps the easiest part of speech to find is the interjection. An
interjection is a word or group of words used to express strong
feeling or emotion. It can be an actual word, or merely a sound and
is followed by an exclamation mark (!) or a comma.
Unlike all the other parts of speech, the interjection is not linked in any
way to any other word in the sentence.
The following are some examples of interjections:
Wow! Oh!
Oh, no! Ouch!
Never! Fabulous!
Fantastic! Ah!
No! Wow!
 PARTS OF SPEECH
INTERJECTIONS

Interjections are uncommon in formal academic prose, except in direct

quotations.
The highlighted words in the following sentences are interjections:
 Ouch, that hurt!
 Oh no, I forgot that the exam was today.
 Hey! Put that down!
 I heard one guy say to another guy, "He has a new car, eh?"
 I don’t know about you but, good lord, I think taxes are too high!
 Wow! I never knew that.
 Oh, did I do that?
 PARTS OF SPEECH
CONJUNCTIONS
Conjunctions, like prepositions, are also joining words or connectives.
Conjunctions are used to join words, phrases, or clauses. Conjunctions
can be found in any position in a sentence except the very end.
We can use the elimination method to find conjunctions. It works like
this: identify all the words you can in a sentence, those that are left
over are probably conjunctions. Look at these examples.

When lightning struck the old barn, it burnt quickly

? noun verb adj adj noun pronoun verb adv
The word when looks like it might be an adverb, but does it tell you at
what time?
No, the word itself doesn’t add any new information. What it does do is
introduce a group of words that tells specifically when something
happened.
 PARTS OF SPEECH
CONJUNCTIONS
You can use a conjunction to link words, phrases, and clauses.
You use a coordinating conjunction (and, but, or, nor, for, so, yet) to join
individual words, phrases, and independent clauses.
A subordinating conjunction introduces a dependent clause and
indicates the nature of the relationship among the independent
clause(s) and the dependent clause(s). The most common
subordinating conjunctions are: after, although, as, because, before,
how, if, once, since, than, that, though, until, when, where, whether, and
while.
Correlative conjunctions always appear in pairs -- you use them to link
equivalent sentence elements. The most common correlative
conjunctions are: both...and, either...or, neither...nor, not only...but also,
so...as, and whether...or.