The 9 Parts of Speech / English Grammar

The 9 Parts of Speech / English Grammar

Read about each part of speech below and get started practicing identifying each.

Noun

Nouns are a person, place, thing, or idea. They can take on a myriad of roles in a sentence, from the subject of it all to the object of an action. They are capitalized when they're the official name of something or someone, called proper nouns in these cases. Examples: pirate, Caribbean, ship, freedom, Captain Jack Sparrow.

Pronoun

Pronouns stand in for nouns in a sentence. They are more generic versions of nouns that refer only to people. Examples:​ I, you, he, she, it, ours, them, who, which, anybody, ourselves.

Verb

Verbs are action words that tell what happens in a sentence. They can also show a sentence subject's state of being (is, was). Verbs change form based on tense (present, past) and count

distinction (singular or plural). Examples: sing, dance, believes, seemed, finish, eat, drink, be, became

Adjective

Adjectives describe nouns and pronouns. They specify which one, how much, what kind, and more. Adjectives allow readers and listeners to use their senses to imagine something more clearly. Examples: hot, lazy, funny, unique, bright, beautiful, poor, smooth.

Adverb

Adverbs describe verbs, adjectives, and even other adverbs. They specify when, where, how, and why something happened and to what extent or how often. Examples: softly, lazily, often, only, hopefully, softly, sometimes.

Preposition

Prepositions show spacial, temporal, and role relations between a noun or pronoun and the other words in a sentence. They come at the start of a prepositional phrase, which contains a preposition and its object. Examples: up, over, against, by, for, into, close to, out of, apart from.

Conjunction

Conjunctions join words, phrases, and clauses in a sentence. There are coordinating, subordinating, and correlative conjunctions. Examples: and, but, or, so, yet, with.

Articles and Determiners

Articles and determiners function like adjectives by modifying nouns, but they are different than adjectives in that they are necessary for a sentence to have proper syntax. Articles and determiners specify and identify nouns, and there are indefinite and definite articles. Examples: articles: a, an, the; determiners: these, that, those, enough, much, few, which, what.

Some traditional grammars have treated articles as a distinct part of speech. Modern grammars, however, more often include articles in the category of determiners, which identify or quantify a noun. Even though they modify nouns like adjectives, articles are different in that they are essential to the proper syntax of a sentence, just as determiners are necessary to convey the meaning of a sentence, while adjectives are optional.

Interjection

Interjections are expressions that can stand on their own or be contained within sentences. These words and phrases often carry strong emotions and convey reactions. Examples: ah, whoops, ouch, yabba dabba do!

How to Determine the Part of Speech

Only interjections (Hooray!) have a habit of standing alone; every other part of speech must be contained within a sentence and some are even required in sentences (nouns and verbs). Other parts of speech come in many varieties and may appear just about anywhere in a sentence.

To know for sure what part of speech a word falls into, look not only at the word itself but also at its meaning, position, and use in a sentence.

For example, in the first sentence below, work functions as a noun; in the second sentence, a verb; and in the third sentence, an adjective:

• Bosco showed up for work two hours late.
• The noun work is the thing Bosco shows up for.
• He will have to work until midnight.
• The verb work is the action he must perform.
• His work permit expires next month.
• The attributive noun [or converted adjective] work modifies the noun permit.

Learning the names and uses of the basic parts of speech is just one way to understand how sentences are constructed.

Dissecting Basic Sentences

To form a basic complete sentence, you only need two elements: a noun (or pronoun standing in for a noun) and a verb. The noun acts as a subject and the verb, by telling what action the subject is taking, acts as the predicate. 

• Birds fly.

In the short sentence above, birds is the noun and fly is the verb. The sentence makes sense and gets the point across.

You can have a sentence with just one word without breaking any sentence formation rules. The short sentence below is complete because it's a command to an understood "you".

• Go!

Here, the pronoun, standing in for a noun, is implied and acts as the subject. The sentence is really saying, "(You) go!"

Constructing More Complex Sentences

Use more parts of speech to add additional information about what's happening in a sentence to make it more complex. Take the first sentence from above, for example, and incorporate more information about how and why birds fly.

• Birds fly when migrating before winter.

Birds and fly remain the noun and the verb, but now there is more description. 

When is an adverb that modifies the verb fly. The word before is a little tricky because it can be either a conjunction, preposition, or adverb depending on the context. In this case, it's a preposition because it's followed by a noun. This preposition begins an adverbial phrase of time (before winter) that answers the question of when the birds migrate. Before is not a conjunction because it does not connect two clauses.

 

 

In English grammar, a noun is a part of speech (or word class) that names or identifies a person, place, thing, quality, idea, or activity. Most nouns have both a singular and plural form, can be preceded by an article and/or one or more adjectives, and can serve as the head of a noun phrase.

A noun or noun phrase can function as a subject, direct object, indirect object, complement, appositive, or object of a preposition. In addition, nouns sometimes modify other nouns to form compound nouns. To understand how to recognize and use nouns, it's helpful to learn about the different types of nouns in English.

Common Noun

A common noun names any person, place, thing, activity, or idea. It's a noun that is not the name of any particular person, place, thing, or idea. A common noun is one or all of the members of a class, which can be preceded by a definite article, such as the or this, or an indefinite article, such as a or an. Examples of common nouns are sprinkled throughout these two sentences:

"Plants rely on the wind, birds, bees, and butterflies — and other pollinating insects — to transfer pollen from flower to flower. Some of our 'other' pollinating insects are flies, wasps, and beetles."
- Nancy Bauer, "The California Wildlife Habitat Garden"

Note how all of the italicized words are common nouns, which make up the vast majority of nouns in English.

Proper Noun

A proper noun names specific or unique individuals, events, or places, and may include real or fictional characters and settings. Unlike common nouns, most proper nouns, like Fred, New York, Mars, and Coca-Cola, begin with a capital letter. They may also be referred to as proper names for their function of naming specific things. An example would be this famous movie line:

"Houston, we have a problem."
- "Apollo 13"

In the sentence, the word Houston is a proper noun because it names a specific place, while the word problem is a common noun, which expresses a thing or idea.

Proper nouns are not typically preceded by articles or other determiners, but there are numerous exceptions such as the Bronx or the Fourth of July. Most proper nouns are singular, but again, there are exceptions as in the United States and the Joneses.

Concrete and Abstract Nouns

A concrete noun names a material or tangible object or phenomenon — something recognizable through the senses, such as chicken or egg.

An abstract noun, by contrast, is a noun or noun phrase that names an idea, event, quality or concept — courage, freedom, progress, love, patience, excellence, and friendship. An abstract noun names something that can't be physically touched. According to "A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language", abstract nouns are "typically nonobservable and nonmeasurable.”

In comparing these two types of nouns, Tom McArthur notes in "The Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language":

"... an abstract noun refers to an action, concept, event, quality, or state (love, conversation), whereas a concrete noun refers to a touchable, observable person or thing (child, tree)."

Collective Noun

A collective noun (such as team, committee, jury, squad, orchestra, crowd, audience, and family) refers to a group of individuals. It is also known as a group noun. In American English, collective nouns usually take singular verb forms and can be replaced by both singular and plural pronouns, depending on their meaning.

Count and Mass Nouns

A count noun refers to an object or idea that can form a plural or occur in a noun phrase with an indefinite article or with numerals. Most common nouns in English are countable — they have both singular and plural forms. Many nouns have both countable and noncountable uses, such as the countable dozen eggs and the noncountable egg on his face.

A mass noun — advice, bread, knowledge, luck, and work — names things that, when used in English, cannot usually be counted. A mass noun (also known as a noncount noun) is generally used only in the singular. Many abstract nouns are uncountable, but not all uncountable nouns are abstract.

Other Types of Nouns

There are two other types of nouns. Some style guides might separate them into their own categories, but they are really special types of nouns that fall within the categories described previously.

Denominal nouns: A denominal noun is formed from another noun, usually by adding a suffix, such as villager (from village), New Yorker (from New York), booklet (from book), limeade (from lime), guitarist (from guitar), spoonful (from spoon), and librarian (from library). 

Denominal nouns are context-sensitive; they depend on the context for their meaning. For example, while a librarian usually works in a library, a seminarian usually studies in a seminary.

Verbal nouns: A verbal noun (sometimes called a gerund) is derived from a verb (usually by adding the suffix -ing) and exhibits the ordinary properties of a noun. For example:

• His firing of William was a mistake.
• My mother didn't like the idea of my writing a book about her.

In the first sentence, the word firing derives from the word fire but functions as a verbal noun. In the second sentence, the word writing derives from the verb write, but it functions here as a verbal noun.

 

·         Demonstrative Pronouns

·         Indefinite Pronouns

·         Interrogative Pronouns

·         Reflexive Pronouns

·         Intensive Pronouns

·         Personal Pronouns

·         Possessive Pronouns

·         Reciprocal Pronouns

·         Relative Pronouns

·         Source

 

In English grammar, a pronoun is a word that takes the place of a noun, noun phrase, or noun clause. The pronoun is one of the traditional parts of speech. A pronoun can function as a subject, object, or complement in a sentence.

Unlike nouns, pronouns rarely allow modification. Pronouns are a closed word class in English: new members rarely enter the language. To understand how to recognize and correctly use pronouns, it can be helpful to review the types of pronouns that exist in English.

Demonstrative Pronouns

A demonstrative pronoun points to a particular noun or to the noun it replaces. "These pronouns can indicate items in space or time, and they can be either singular or plural," says Ginger Software. When used to represent a thing or things, demonstrative pronouns can be either near or far in distance or time, says the online grammar, punctuation, and spelling checker, offering these examples:

• Near in time or distance: this, these
• Far in time or distance: that, those

There are three basic rules for using demonstrative pronouns:

1. They always identify nouns, such as: I can’t believe this. The writer does not know what this is, but it exists.
2. They often describe animals, places, or things but they can also describe people, such as: This sounds like Mary singing.
3. They stand alone, distinguishing them from demonstrative adjectives, which qualify (or modify) nouns.

Demonstrative pronouns can be used in place of a noun, so long as the noun being replaced can be understood from the pronoun’s context:

• This was my mother’s ring.
• These are nice shoes, but they look uncomfortable.
• None of these answers is correct.

Indefinite Pronouns

An indefinite pronoun refers to an unspecified or unidentified person or thing. Put another way, an indefinite pronoun doesn't have an antecedent. Indefinite pronouns include quantifiers (some, any, enough, several, many, or much); universals (all, both, every, or each); and partitives (any, anyone, anybody, either, neither, no, nobody, some, or someone). For example:

• Everyone did as he pleased.
• Both of us match the donation.
• Some coffee is left.

Many of the indefinite pronouns can function as determiners.

Interrogative Pronouns

The term interrogative pronoun refers to a pronoun that introduces a question. These words are also called a pronominal interrogative. Related terms include interrogative, "wh"-word, and question word, although these terms are usually not defined in precisely the same way. In English, who, whom, whose, which, and what commonly function as interrogative pronouns, for example:

"Even if you do learn to speak correct English, whom are you going to speak it to?"
- Clarence Darrow

When immediately followed by a noun, whose, which, and what function as determiners or interrogative adjectives. When they start a question, interrogative pronouns have no antecedent, because what they refer to is precisely what the question is trying to find out.

Reflexive Pronouns

A reflexive pronoun ends in -self or -selves and is used as an object to refer to a previously named noun or pronoun in a sentence. It can also simply be called a reflexive. Reflexive pronouns usually follow verbs or prepositions. For example:

"Good breeding consists of concealing how much we think of ourselves and how little we think of the other person."
- ​Mark Twain

Reflexive pronouns, which have the forms myself, ourselves, yourself, yourselves, himself, herself, itself, oneself, and themselves, are essential to the meaning of a sentence.

Intensive Pronouns

An intensive pronoun ends in -self or -selves and emphasizes its antecedent. It is also known as an intensive reflexive pronoun. Intensive pronouns often appear as appositives after nouns or other pronouns, for example:

"He wondered, as he had many times wondered before, whether he himself was a lunatic."
- George Orwell, "Nineteen Eighty-Four"

Intensive pronouns have the same forms as reflexive pronouns: myself, ourselves, yourself, yourselves, himself, herself, itself, oneself, and themselves. Unlike reflexive pronouns, intensive pronouns are not essential to the basic meaning of a sentence.

Personal Pronouns

A personal pronoun refers to a particular person, group, or thing. Like all pronouns, personal pronouns can take the place of nouns and noun phrases. These are the personal pronouns in English:

• First-person singular: I ( subject), me (object)
• First-person plural: we (subject), us (object)
• Second-person singular and plural: you (subject and object)
• Third-person singular: he, she, it (subject), him, her, it (object)
• Third-person plural: they (subject), them (object)

Note that personal pronouns inflect for case to show whether they are serving as subjects of clauses or as objects of verbs or prepositions. All the personal pronouns except you have distinct forms indicating number, either singular or plural. Only the third-person singular pronouns have distinct forms indicating gender: masculine (he, him), feminine (she, her), and neuter (it). A personal pronoun (such as they) that can refer to both masculine and feminine entities is called a generic pronoun.

Possessive Pronouns

A possessive pronoun can take the place of a noun phrase to show ownership, as in, "This phone is mine." The weak possessives (also called possessive determiners) function as determiners in front of nouns, as in, "My phone is broken." The weak possessives are my, your, his, her, its, our, and their.

In contrast, the strong (or absolute) possessive pronouns stand on their own: mine, yours, his, hers, its, ours, and theirs. The strong possessive is a type of independent genitive. A possessive pronoun never takes an apostrophe.

Reciprocal Pronouns

A reciprocal pronoun expresses a mutual action or relationship. In English, the reciprocal pronouns are each other and one another, as in this example:

"Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other."
- John F. Kennedy, in a speech prepared for delivery on the day of his assassination, Nov. 22, 1963

Some usage guides insist that each other should be used to refer to two people or things, and one another to more than two.

Relative Pronouns

A relative pronoun introduces an adjective clause (also called a relative clause), as in:

"Spaghetti at her table, which was offered at least three times a week, was a mysterious red, white, and brown concoction."
- Maya Angelou, "Mom & Me & Mom"

The standard relative pronouns in English are which, that, who, whom, and whose. Who and whom refer only to people. Which refers to things, qualities, and ideas—never to people. That and whose refer to people, things, qualities, and ideas.

 

A verb is the part of speech (or word class) that describes an action or occurrence or indicates a state of being. Verbs and verb phrases usually function as predicates. Verbs can display differences in tense, mood, aspect, number, person, and voice.

There are two main classes of verbs: lexical verbs (also known as main verbs), which aren't dependent on other verbs, and auxiliary verbs (also called helping verbs). As with lexical versus auxiliary verbs, many types of verbs come in opposites, as explained below.

Lexical vs. Auxiliary

Lexical verbs—also called full verbs—convey the semantic (or lexical) meaning in a sentence, such as:

• It rained last night.
• I ran fast.
• I ate the entire hamburger.

The great majority of verbs in English are lexical verbs. An auxiliary verb, by contrast, determines the mood or tense of another verb in a phrase, for example:

• It will rain tonight.

In this sentence, the verb will helps the verb rain by pointing to the future. In English, the auxiliary verbs are:

• Is, am, are, was, were
• Be, being, been
• Has, have, had
• Do, does, did
• Will, shall, should, would
• Can, could
• May, might, must

Dynamic vs. Stative

A dynamic verb is used primarily to indicate an action, process, or sensation as opposed to a state, such as:

• I bought a new guitar.

 It is also called an action or event verb. There are three major types of dynamic verbs:

• Accomplishment verbs: expressing action that has a logical endpoint
• Achievement verbs: expressing action that occurs instantaneously
• Activity verbs: expressing action that can go on for an indefinite period of time

A stative verb—such as be, have, know, like, own, seem, prefer, understand, belong, doubt, and hate—describes a state, situation, or condition, as in:

• Now I own a Gibson Explorer.
• We are what we believe we are.

A stative verb primarily describes a state or situation as opposed to an action or process. It can be a mental or emotional state as well as a physical state of being. The situations are unchanging while they last and can continue for a long or indefinite time period. These words are also known as a state verbs or a static verbs.

Finite vs. Nonfinite

A finite verb expresses tense and can occur on its own in a main clause, as in:

• She walked to school.

A finite verb shows agreement with a subject and is marked for tense. If there is just one verb in a sentence, that verb is finite. Put another way, a finite verb can stand by itself in a sentence. 

Nonfinite verbs, meanwhile, are not marked for tense and do no show agreement with a subject. A nonfinite verb (an infinitive or participle) doesn't show a distinction in tense and can occur on its own only in a dependent phrase or clause, as in:

• While walking to school, she spotted a bluejay.

The main difference between finite and nonfinite verbs is that the former can act as the root of an independent clause, or full sentence, while the latter cannot. For example:

• The man runs to the store to get a gallon of milk.

The word runs is a finite verb because it agrees with the subject (man) and because it marks the tense (present tense). The word get is a nonfinite verb because it does not agree with the subject or mark the tense. Rather, it is an infinitive and depends on the main (finite) verb runs. 

Regular vs. Irregular

A regular verb forms its verb tenses, especially the past tense and past participle, by adding one in the set of generally accepted standardized suffixes. Regular verbs are conjugated by adding -d, -ed, -ing, or -s to its base form, unlike irregular verbs which have special rules for conjugation.

The majority of English verbs are regular. These are the principal parts of regular verbs:

1. The base form: the dictionary term for a word like walk
2. The -s form: used in the singular third person, present tense like walks
3. The -ed form: used in the past tense and past participle like walked
4. The -ing form: used in the present participle like walking

Regular verbs are predictable and always function the same regardless of speaker. An irregular verb does not follow the usual rules for verb forms. Verbs in English are irregular if they don't have the conventional -ed ending (such as asked or ended) in the past tense and/or past participle forms.

 Transitive vs. Intransitive

A transitive verb takes an object (a direct object and sometimes also an indirect object): 

• She sells seashells.

An intransitive verb doesn't take a direct object:

• She sat there quietly.

This distinction is especially tricky because many verbs have both transitive and intransitive functions, depending on how they are used. The verb break, for instance, sometimes takes a direct object (Rihanna breaks my heart) and sometimes does not (When I hear your name, my heart breaks).

Phrasal vs. Prepositional

A phrasal verb is a type of compound verb made up of a verb (usually one of action or movement) and a prepositional adverb—also known as an adverbial particle. Phrasal verbs are sometimes called two-part verbs (take off and leave out) or three-part verbs (look up to and look down on).

There are hundreds of phrasal verbs in English, many of them (such as tear off, run out [of], and pull through) with multiple meanings. Linguist Angela Downing points out in "English Grammar: A University Course" that phrasal verbs are "one of the most distinctive features of present-day informal English, both in their abundance and in their productivity." Phrasal verbs often appear in idioms.

A prepositional verb, by contrast, is an idiomatic expression that combines a verb and a preposition to make a new verb with a distinct meaning. Some examples of prepositional verbs in English are care for, long for, apply for, approve of, add to, resort to, result in, count on, and deal with.

The preposition in a prepositional verb is generally followed by a noun or pronoun, and thus prepositional verbs are transitive.

Other Types of Verbs

Since verbs describe all action or indicate all states of being in English, it's not surprising that there are other types of verbs, which are important to know.

Catenative: A catenative verb can link with other verbs to form a chain or series. Examples include ask, keep, promise, help, want, and seem.

Causative: A causative verb is used to indicate that some person or thing makes—or helps to make—something happen. Examples of causative verbs include make, cause, allow, help, have, enable, keep, hold, let, force, and require, which can also be referred to as causal verbs or simply causatives.

Compound: A compound verb is made up of two or more words that function as a single verb. Conventionally, verb compounds are written as either one word (housesit) or two words joined with a hyphen (water-proof).

Copular: A copular verb is a specific type of linking verb that joins the subject of a sentence or clause to a subject complement. For example, the word is functions as a copular verb in the sentences, "Jane is my friend" and "Jane is friendly."

Iterative: An iterative verb indicates that an action is (or was) repeated, such as, "Philip was kicking his sister."

Linking: A linking verb is a traditional term for a type of verb (such as a form of be or seem) that joins the subject of a sentence to a word or phrase that tells something about the subject. For example, is functions as a linking verb in the sentence: The boss is unhappy.

Mental-state: A mental-state verb is a verb with a meaning related to understanding, discovering, planning, or deciding. Mental-state verbs refer to cognitive states that are generally unavailable for outside evaluation. For example: Tom's teaching ability is known by all his colleagues.

Performative: A performative verb conveys the kind of speech act being performed—such as promise, invite, apologize, predict, vow, request, warn, insist, and forbid. It is also known as speech-act verb or performative utterance. 

Prepositional: A prepositional verb is an idiomatic expression that combines a verb and a preposition to make a new verb with a distinct meaning. Some examples are care for, long for, apply for, approve of, add to, resort to, result in, count on, and deal with.

Reporting: A reporting verb (such as say, tell, believe, reply, respond, or ask) is used to indicate that discourse is being quoted or paraphrased, such as: I highly recommend that you get a better lawyer. It is also called a communication verb.

An adjective is a part of speech (or word class) that modifies a noun or a pronoun. In addition to their basic (or positive) forms (for example, big and beautiful), most adjectives have two other forms: comparative (bigger and more beautiful) and superlative (biggest and most beautiful). Adjectives often—but not always—serve as modifiers, providing additional information about another word or word group, such as a noun or noun phrase. But adjectives can also themselves act as nouns in a sentence.

Learning a few basic grammatical rules and recognizing the various types of adjectives will have you correctly using these important parts of speech in no time. Below are the main types of adjectives you are likely to encounter in English, together with accompanying explanations for each.

Absolute Adjectives

An absolute adjective—such as supreme or infinite—is an adjective with a meaning that cannot be intensified or compared. It is also known as an incomparable, ultimate, or absolute modifier. English Language Centres gives this example of an absolute adjective:

• He is dead.

In the sentence, the word dead is an absolute adjective. The person is either dead or he is not, says the firm that offers online and in-person English language courses. You cannot be deader than someone else and you cannot be the deadest among a group. According to some style guides, absolute adjectives are always in the superlative degree. However, some absolute adjectives can be quantified by the addition of the word almost, nearly, or virtually.

Attributive and Predicative Adjectives

An attributive adjective usually comes before the noun it modifies without a linking verb. For example, take this sentence from Maya Angelou's work "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings":

"In those tender mornings, the Store was full of laughing, joking, boasting, and bragging."

The word tender is an attributive adjective because it precedes and modifies the noun mornings. Attributive adjectives are direct modifiers of nominals.

By contrast, a predicative adjective usually comes after a linking verb rather than before a noun. Another term for a predicative adjective is a subject complement. The Oxford Online Living Dictionaries gives this example:

• The cat is black.

In general, when adjectives are used after a verb such as be, become, grow, look, or seem, they’re called predicative adjectives, says the dictionary.

Appositive Adjectives

An appositive adjective is a traditional grammatical term for an adjective (or a series of adjectives) that follows a noun and, like a nonrestrictive appositive, is set off by commas or dashes. For example:

"Arthur was a big boy, tall, strong, and broad-shouldered."
– Janet B. Pascal, "Arthur Conan Doyle: Beyond Baker Street"

As the example shows, appositive adjectives often appear in pairs or groups of three, called tricolons.

Comparative and Superlative Adjectives

The comparative adjective is the form of an adjective involving the comparisons of more or less as well as greater or lesser.

Comparative adjectives in English are either marked by the suffix -er (as in "the faster bike") or identified by the word more or less ("the more difficult job"). Almost all one-syllable adjectives, along with some two-syllable adjectives, add -er to the base to form the comparative. In most adjectives of two or more syllables, the comparative is identified by the word more or less.

The superlative adjective, by comparison, is the form or degree of an adjective that indicates the most or the least of something. Superlatives are either marked by the suffix -est (as in "the fastest bike") or identified by the word most or least ("the most difficult job"). Similar to comparative adjectives, almost all one-syllable adjectives, along with some two-syllable adjectives, add -est to the base to form the superlative. In most adjectives of two or more syllables, the superlative is identified by the word most or least. Not all adjectives have superlative forms.

After a superlative, in or of plus a noun phrase can be used to indicate what is being compared (as in "the tallest building in the world" and "the best time of my life").

Compound Adjectives

A compound adjective is made up of two or more words (such as part-time and high-speed) that act as a single idea to modify a noun (a part-time employee, a high-speed chase). Compound adjectives are also called phrasal adjectives or compound modifiers.

As a general rule, the words in a compound adjective are hyphenated when they come before a noun (a well-known actor) but not when they come after (The actor is well known). Compound adjectives formed with an adverb ending in -ly (such as rapidly changing) are usually not hyphenated.

Demonstrative Adjectives

A demonstrative adjective is a determiner that comes before and points to a particular noun. Indeed, a demonstrative adjective is sometimes called a demonstrative determiner. For example:

• Son, take this bat and hit that ball out of the park.

There are four demonstratives in English:

• The "near" demonstratives: this and these
• The "far" demonstratives: that and those
• The singular demonstratives: this and that
• The plural demonstratives: these and those

Denominal Adjectives

A denominal adjective is formed from a noun, usually with the addition of a suffix—such as hopeless, earthen, cowardly, childish, and Reaganesque. An example would be:

• Our new neighborhood seemed romantic, somehow, and very San Franciscoish, especially to a couple of young people who hailed from Idaho.

In this sentence, the proper noun San Francisco is altered with the suffix -ish to form the denominal adjective. These kinds of adjectives can heighten the drama and descriptiveness of a sentence, as in this example:

"The president's oration was...Lincolnian in its cadences, and in some ways, was the final, impassioned, heart-felt rebuke to all those, including his opponent, who tried to portray him as somehow un-American."
– Andrew Sullivan, "The American President." The Daily Beast, Nov. 7, 2012

Nominal Adjectives

The term nominal adjective refers to an adjective or group of adjectives that function as a noun. "The Complete English Grammar Rules" by Farlex International notes that nominal adjectives are generally preceded by the word the and can be found as the subject or the object of a sentence or clause. For example:

• The elderly are a great source of wisdom.

The word elderly generally acts as a true adjective—an elderly gentleman—but in the previous sentence, it functions as a collective noun and as the subject of the sentence. Nominal adjectives are also known as substantive adjectives. 

Participial Adjectives

A participial adjective is an adjective that has the same form as the participle (a verb ending in -ing or -ed/-en) and usually exhibits the ordinary properties of an adjective. For example:

"What kind of a man was he to fall in love with a lying thief?"
– Janet Dailey, "The Hostage Bride"

In the sentence, the verb lie is altered by adding the ending -ing to form the participial adjective lying, which then describes the noun thief. Also, the comparative and superlative forms of participial adjectives are formed with more and most and less and least—not with the endings -er and -est.

Adjectival Observations

 

Not everyone is a fan of adjectives. Constance Hale, in "Sin and Syntax: How to Craft Wickedly Effective Prose," noted that the famous humorist and author Mark Twain had some rather negative comments about this part of speech:

"When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them—then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart."​

And in his 2002 memorial eulogy to former British Cabinet Minister Barbara Castle, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw recalled her remark:

"Bugger the adjectives. It's the nouns and verbs people want."
– Ned Halley, "Dictionary of Modern English Grammar"

Nouns generally are the subject of a sentence, while verbs do describe the action or state of being. But used effectively and correctly, as you see from the previous examples, adjectives can indeed enhance many sentences by adding colorful, vivid, and detailed description, increasing interest in an otherwise mundane sentence.

 

An adverb is a part of speech (or word class) that's primarily used to modify a verb, adjective, or other adverbs and can additionally modify prepositional phrases, subordinate clauses, and complete sentences. Put another way, adverbs are content words that provide information about how, when, or where something happens. Adverbs are also called intensifiers because they intensify the meaning of the word or words they are modifying, notes Your Dictionary.

An adverb that modifies an adjective—as in quite sad—or another adverb—as in very carelessly—appears immediately in front of the word it modifies, but one that modifies a verb is generally more flexible: It may appear before or after—as in softly sang or sang softly—or at the beginning of the sentence—Softly she sang to the baby—with the position of an adverb typically affecting the meaning of the sentence. Adverbs can modify a verb or adjective in several ways, by providing information about emphasis, manner, time, place, and frequency.

Adverbs of Emphasis

Adverbs of emphasis are used to give added force or a greater degree of certainty to another word in a sentence or to the sentence as a whole, for example:

• He certainly liked the food.
• She is clearly the frontrunner.
• Naturally, I like my chicken crispy.

Other common adverbs of emphasis include absolutely, definitely, obviously, positively, really, simply, and undoubtedly. These types of adverbs serve to bolster the part of speech they modify.

Adverbs of Manner

Adverbs of manner indicate how something is done. They are usually placed at the end of a sentence or before the main verb, as in:

• Tom drives quickly.
• She slowly opened the door.
• Mary waited for him patiently.

Other examples of adverbs of manner include quietly, fitfully, and carefully.

Adverbs of Time

Adverbs of time tell you when or at what time something is done. Adverbs of time are usually placed at the end of a sentence. They can also be used at the beginning of a sentence followed by a comma.

• The meeting is next week. 
• Yesterday, we decided to take a walk.
• I've already bought my tickets for the concert. 

These adverbs are used with other time expressions, such as days of the week. The most common adverbs of time include yet, already, yesterday, tomorrow, next week (or month or year), last week (or month or year), now, and ago.

Adverbs of Place

Adverbs of place indicate where something is done and usually appear at the end of a sentence, but they can also follow the verb.

• I decided to rest over there.
• She'll wait for you in the room downstairs.
• Peter walked above me upstairs. 

Adverbs of place can be confused with prepositional phrases such as in the doorway or at the shop. Prepositional phrases indicate where something is, but adverbs of place can tell you where something occurs, such as here and everywhere.

Adverbs of Frequency

Adverbs of frequency tell you how often something is repeatedly done. They include usually, sometimes, never, often, and rarely. Adverbs of frequency are often placed directly before the main verb:

• She rarely goes to parties.
• I often read a newspaper.
• He usually gets up at 6 o'clock.

Adverbs of frequency that express infrequency are not used in the negative or question form. Sometimes, adverbs of frequency are placed at the beginning of a sentence:

• Sometimes, I enjoy staying at home instead of going on vacation.
• Often, Peter will telephone his mother before he leaves for work.

Adverbs of frequency follow the verb to be:

• He is sometimes late for work.
• I am often confused by computers.

Adverbs Modifying Adjectives

When adverbs modify an adjective, they are placed before the adjective:

• She is extremely happy.
• They are absolutely sure.

However, do not use very with adjectives to express increased quality of a basic adjective, such as fantastic:

• She is an absolutely fantastic piano player.
• Mark is an absolutely amazing lecturer.

You would not say, "She is very fantastic," or "Mark is a very amazing lecturer."

Forming Adverbs From Adjectives

Adverbs are often formed by adding -ly to an adjective, such as:

• Beautiful > beautifully
• Careful > carefully

However, some adjectives don't change in the adverb form, such as fast and hard. Many common adverbs like just, still, and almost do not end in -ly. Good is probably the most important example. The adverb form of good is well, as in:

• He is good at tennis.
• He plays tennis well.

In the first sentence, good is an adjective that modifies the pronoun he; while in the second, well is an adverb that modifies plays (explains how he plays tennis). Additionally, not all words that end in -ly are adverbs, such as friendly and neighborly, which are both adjectives.

Distinguishing Between Adverbs and Adjectives

Sometimes the same word can be both an adjective and an adverb. To distinguish between them, it is important to look at the context of the word and its function in a sentence. 

For instance, in the sentence, "The fast train from London to Cardiff leaves at 3 o'clock," the word fast modifies and comes before a noun, train, and is, therefore, an attributive adjective. However, in the sentence, "The sprinter took the bend fast," the word fast modifies the verb took and is, therefore, an adverb.

Interestingly, -ly is not the only suffix that can be added to the end of a word to change its meaning or be used by both adjectives and adverbs. Additionally, -er and -est can combine with adverbs in a much more limited way wherein the comparative form of an adverb is likely to add more or most to the beginning of the adverb phrase rather than adding an -er or -est.

It's important to refer to context clues when hints like the addition of an -ly or the word most to accompany a word doesn't tell you whether it is an adjective or adverb. Look to the word that is being emphasized. If the word being emphasized is a noun, you have an adjective; if the word being emphasized is a verb, you have an adverb.