The 9 Parts of Speech
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.
·
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.
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:
- They always identify nouns, such
as: I can’t believe this. The writer
does not know what this is, but it
exists.
- They often describe animals,
places, or things but they can also describe people, such as: This sounds
like Mary singing.
- 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
- The base form: the dictionary term for a word like walk
- The -s form: used
in the singular third person, present tense like walks
- The -ed form: used
in the past tense and past participle like walked
- 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 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 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 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 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 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.
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