Parts of Speech

PARTS OF SPEECH:
“Parts of speech” are the basic types of words that English has.
It is important to be able to recognize and identify the different types of words in English, so that you can understand grammar explanations and use the right word form in the right place. Here is a brief explanation of what the parts of speech are:

Noun
A noun is a naming word. It names a person, place, thing, idea, living creature, quality, or action.
Examples: cowboy, theatre, box, thought, tree, kindness, arrival
Verb
A verb is a word which describes an action (doing something) or a state (being something).
Examples: walk, talk, think, believe, live, like, want
Adjective
An adjective is a word that describes a noun. It tells you something about the noun.
Examples: big, yellow, thin, amazing, beautiful, quick, important
Adverb
An adverb is a word which usually describes a verb. It tells you how something is done. It may also tell you when or where something happened.
Examples: slowly, intelligently, well, yesterday, tomorrow, here, everywhere
Pronoun
A pronoun is used instead of a noun, to avoid repeating the noun.
Examples: I, you, he, she, it, we, they
Conjunction
A conjunction joins two words, phrases or sentences together.
Examples: but, so, and, because, or
Preposition
A preposition usually comes before a noun, pronoun or noun phrase. It joins the noun to some other part of the sentence.
Examples: on, in, by, with, under, through, at
Interjection
An interjection is an unusual kind of word, because it often stands alone. Interjections are words which express emotion or surprise, and they are usually followed by exclamation marks.
Examples: Ouch!, Hello!, Hurray!, Oh no!, Ha!
Article
An article is used to introduce a noun.
Examples: the, a, an

Defining a Clause
Words and phrases are the parts of language that make up clauses. Clauses are units of grammar that contain at least one predicate (verb) and a subject. A clause, therefore, contains a single verb group.
A clause is different than a phrase. A clause is a group of words with a verb and a subject. A phrase does not have a verb and subject.
A simple sentence contains only one clause. Here are some examples of simple sentences that are each comprised of a single clause: * Jamie cooked the dinner. * Jennifer has been dreaming during class.
A verb group can consist of a single word (such as played, cooked, and swam) or combine multiple words (as in will excel and has been dreaming). The essential component of a clause is the verb; and a clause only contains one verb or verb group.
Clause Functions
There are two main types of clauses: Independent and Dependent
Independent Clauses
An independent clause could be a sentence by itself or could be combined with other clauses.
Here are some examples of independent clauses (provided by Capital Community College) The independent clauses are italicized.: * Glaciers often leave behind holes in the ground. * These holes are called kettles, and they look just like scooped-out pots. * Dependent Clauses
A dependent clause cannot be a sentence by itself. If it was by itself it would be a sentence fragment. It needs to be combined with an independent clause to be a full sentence.
Here are some examples of independent clauses (provided by Capital Community College) The independent clauses are italicized and the dependent clauses are underlined.: * Kettle holes result when a large block of ice is left behind the glacier and then melts away, leaving a large depression.
Importance of Clauses
By using clauses correctly you can quickly and easily improve the quality of your writing and your ability to communicate with your reader. With a clause you can direct the attention of the reader so that your sentence is understood. You will also avoid incorrectly using dependent clauses as sentence fragments.

SIMPLE SENTENCE
A simple sentence, also called an independent clause, contains a subject and a verb, and it expresses a complete thought.
A. Some students like to study in the mornings.
B. Juan and Arturo play football every afternoon.
C. Alicia goes to the library and studies every day.
The three examples above are all simple sentences. Note that sentence B contains a compound subject, and sentence C contains a compound verb. Simple sentences, therefore, contain a subject and verb and express a complete thought, but they can also contain a compound subjects or verbs.
COMPOUND SENTENCE
A compound sentence contains two independent clauses joined by a coordinator. The coordinators are as follows: for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so.Except for very short sentences, coordinators are always preceded by a comma.
A. I tried to speak Spanish, and my friend tried to speak English.
B. Alejandro played football, so Maria went shopping.
C. Alejandro played football, for Maria went shopping.
The above three sentences are compound sentences. Each sentence contains two independent clauses, and they are joined by a coordinator with a comma preceding it. Note how the conscious use of coordinators can change the relationship between the clauses. Sentences B and C, for example, are identical except for the coordinators. In sentence B, which action occurred first? Obviously, "Alejandro played football" first, and as a consequence, "Maria went shopping. In sentence C, "Maria went shopping" first. In sentence C, "Alejandro played football" because, possibly, he didn't have anything else to do, for or because "Maria went shopping." How can the use of other coordinators change the relationship between the two clauses? What implications would the use of "yet" or "but" have on the meaning of the sentence?
COMPLEX SENTENCE
A complex sentence has an independent clause joined by one or more dependent clauses. A complex sentence always has a subordinator such as because, since, after, although, or when or a relative pronoun such as that, who, or which.
A. When he handed in his homework, he forgot to give the teacher the last page.
B. The teacher returned the homework after she noticed the error.
C. The students are studying because they have a test tomorrow.
D. After they finished studying, Juan and Maria went to the movies.
E. Juan and Maria went to the movies after they finished studying.
When a complex sentence begins with a subordinator such as sentences A and D, a comma is required at the end of the dependent clause. When the independent clause begins the sentence with subordinators in the middle as in sentences B, C, and E, no comma is required. If a comma is placed before the subordinators in sentences B, C, and E, it is wrong.
Note that sentences D and E are the same except sentence D begins with the dependent clause which is followed by a comma, and sentence E begins with the independent clause which contains no comma. The comma after the dependent clause in sentence D is required, and experienced listeners of English will often hear a slight pause there. In sentence E, however, there will be no pause when the independent clause begins the sentence.

COMPLEX SENTENCES / ADJECTIVE CLAUSES
Finally, sentences containing adjective clauses (or dependent clauses) are also complex because they contain an independent clause and a dependent clause. The subjects, verbs, and subordinators are marked the same as in the previous sentences, and in these sentences, the independent clauses are also underlined.
A. The woman who(m) my mom talked to sells cosmetics.
B. The book that Jonathan read is on the shelf.
C. The house which AbrahAM Lincoln was born in is still standing.
D. The town where I grew up is in the United States.
Adjective Clauses are studied in this site separately, but for now it is important to know that sentences containing adjective clauses are complex.

Phonology
Phonology is the study of the sound system of languages. It is a huge area of language theory and it is difficult to do more on a general language course than have an outlineknowledge of what it includes. In an exam, you may be asked to comment on a text that you are seeing for the first time in terms of various language descriptions, of which phonology may be one. At one extreme, phonology is concerned with anatomy andphysiology - the organs of speech and how we learn to use them. At another extreme, phonology shades into socio-linguistics as we consider social attitudes to features of sound such as accent and intonation. And part of the subject is concerned with finding objective standard ways of recording speech, and representing this symbolically.
For some kinds of study - perhaps a language investigation into the phonological development of young children or regional variations in accent, you will need to use phonetic transcription to be credible. But this is not necessary in all kinds of study - in an exam, you may be concerned with stylistic effects of sound in advertising or literature, such asassonance, rhyme or onomatopoeia - and you do not need to use special phonetic symbols to do this.

The physics and physiology of speech
Man is distinguished from the other primates by having the apparatus to make the sounds of speech. Of course most of us learn to speak without ever knowing much about these organs, save in a vague and general sense - so that we know how a cold or sore throat alters our own performance. Language scientists have a very detailed understanding of how the human body produces the sounds of speech. Leaving to one side the vast subject of how we choose particular utterances and identify the sounds we need, we can think rather simply of how we use our lungs to breathe out air, produce vibrations in the larynx and then use our tongue, teeth and lips to modify the sounds. The diagram below shows some of the more important speech organs. | This kind of diagram helps us to understand what we observe in others but is less useful in understanding our own speech. Scientists can now place small cameras into the mouths of experimental subjects, and observe some of the physical movements that accompany speech. But most of us move our vocal organs by reflexes or a sense of the sound we want to produce, and are not likely to benefit from watching movement in thevocal fold.The diagram is a simplified cross-section through the human head - which we could not see in reality in a living speaker, though a simulation might be instructive. But we do observe some external signs of speech sounds apart from what we hear. |
MORPHOLOGY
Morphology is a field of linguistics focused on the study of the forms and formation of words in a language. A morpheme is the smallest indivisible unit of a language that retains meaning. The rules of morphology within a language tend to be relatively regular, so that if one sees thenoun morphemes for the first time, for example, one can deduce that it is likely related to the word morpheme.
There are three main types of languages when it comes to morphology: two of these arepolysynthetic, meaning that words are made up of connected morphemes. One type of polysynthetic language is a fusional or inflected language, in which morphemes are squeezed together and often changed dramatically in the process. English is a good example of a fusional language. The other type of polysynthetic language is an agglutinative language, in which morphemes are connected but remain more or less unchanged – many Native American languages, as well as Swahili, Japanese, German and Hungarian, demonstrate this. At the other end of the spectrum are the analytic or isolating languages, in which a great majority of morphemes remain independent words – Mandarin is the best example of this. Morphology studies all of these different types of languages and how they relate to one another as well.
This can be a confusing concept, so an example may be helpful. Looking at the morphology of English, which is not a particularly inflected language in its modern form, but retains a number of remnants, we could create the word frighteningly, which is made up of four morphemes: fright, which is a noun; en, which converts the noun to a verb; ing, which converts it to an adjective; and ly, which converts it to an adverb. Over time, languages tend to become less and less inflected – particularly when a lot of intercultural contact occurs. In morphology, this is because the languages become creolized as various pidgins used for communicating between disparate groups become natively spoken, and inter-communication in the pidgins is facilitated by dropping inflections.
Although you may be used to seeing certain forms in a specific context – such as conjugations at the end of a word – they can express themselves in a number of different ways. Aside from the English use of prefix and suffix, words can also be inflected by changing the sound of a vowel – called an umlaut – or by placing an affix right in the middle of the word. Affixes can also be quite lengthy, not just little bites of sound – in Quechua, for example, there are a number of two-syllable affixes. Though most people never formally study morphology, it is something native speakers understand intuitively. Any time a person learns a new word and immediately comes up with any number of forms for that word – past tense, plural, a noun form – they are applying the rules of morphology subconsciously to determine what the new form should be.

SYNTAX:
Syntax, the arrangement of words in sentences, clauses, and phrases, and the study of the formation of sentences and the relationship of their component parts. In a language such as English, the main device for showing the relationship among words is word order; e.g., in “The girl loves the boy,” the subject is in initial position, and the object follows the verb. Transposing them changes the meaning. In many other languages, case markers indicate the grammatical relationships. In Latin, for example, “The girl loves the boy” may be puella puerum amat with “the girl” in initial position, or puerum puella amat with “the boy” in initial position, or amat puella puerum, amat puerum puella, or puella amat puerum. The meaning remains constant because the -um ending on the form for “boy” indicates the object of the verb, regardless of its position in the sentence.
Sentences are constructed from phrases or groups of words that have a closer relationship to each other than to the words outside the phrase. In the sentence “My dog is playing in the yard” there is a closer relationship between the words “is playing,” which together form the verb, than between the words “playing in the,” which form only part of the verb and part of the phrase indicating the location of the playing.