PARTS OF SPEECH

I. NOUN
1. Proper Noun
 Personal names : Rita, Ferry
 Names of geographic units : Indonesia, Jakarta,
Ciliwung
 Names of nationalities and religions : Indonesian,
Islam, Christianity
 Names of holidays : Lebaran, Christmas
 Names of time units : Tuesday, February
 A thing or abstraction treated as a person : Nature,
Liberty
2. Concrete or Abstract Noun
 Concrete nouns (can be perceived by the senses) :
flower, boy
 Abstract noun (for concept) : beauty, justice,
mankind
3. Countable or Non Countable Noun
 Countable nouns : girls, boys, pencils
 Non countable nouns : coffee, iron, sugar
4. Collective Noun
 Audience, committee, class, crew, crowd, enemy,
faculty, family, flock, folk, government, group, herd,
jury, majority, minority, nation, orchestra, press,
public, team
5. From Different Forms
 Adjective form : the rich, the poor, the French, the
Italians, the accused, the best
 Verb form (gerund) : swimming is my hobby, seeing
is believing
II. PRONOUN
1. Personal Pronoun
 I, you, we, they, he, she, it, me, us, them, him, her,
mine, yours, ours, theirs, his, hers
2. Interrogative Pronoun
 (introduce direct or indirect questions) who
(person), what (thing), which (choice), whoever,
whatever, whichever
3. Relative Pronoun / Adverb
 (used in adjective clauses) who, whom, whose, that,
which, when, where, why
4. Demonstrative Pronoun
 This, these, that, those
5. Reflexive Pronoun
 Oneself, himself, herself, myself, yourself,
yourselves, themselves, ourselves
6. Reciprocal Pronoun
 Each other, one another
7. Indefinite Pronoun
 Indefinite persons or things : (- body) somebody,
anybody, nobody, everybody ; (- one) someone,
anyone, no one, everyone ; (- thing) something,
anything, nothing, everything
 Indefinite quantities : all, another, any, both, each,
either, few, least, less, little, a lot, many, more,
most, much, neither, none, one, (the) other(s),
plenty, several, some
8. Expletive
 It, there
III. VERB
1. Non-action Verbs
  Remember, need
2. Linking Verb
 Appear, be, become, get, look, remain, seem, feel,
taste, smell, sound
3. Action Verb
 Read, walk, give
4. Auxiliary Verb
 Be, have, do, shall, will, can must, may, should,
would, could, might, have to, used to
IV. ADJECTIVE
1. Determiner
 Articles : a, an, the
 Demonstrative adjectives : this, these, that, those
 Possessive adjectives : my, your, one’s, John’s,
Rani’s, etc
 Numeral : (cardinal) one, twenty-five ; (ordinal) first,
twenty-fifth
 Adjectives of indefinite quantity : some, few, all,
more
 Interrogative adjectives : whose, what which
2. Descriptive Adjective
 Proper adjectives : A French dish
 Participial adjectives : interesting, interested
 Adjective compounds : a heart-breaking story, ill-
tempered man
 Noun adjunct (noun functions as adjective) : school
board
V. ADVERB
1. Manner
 Quickly, neatly, awkwardly
2. Place and Direction
  Here, away, outside, left, straight, west
3. Time
 Definite time : yesterday, today, tomorrow,
Saturdays
 Indefinite time : recently, nowadays, soon, already,
still, just, immediately, now, then, before,
afterwards, next, first, later, always, often,
sometimes, never
4. Intensifying Adverbs
 Quantifiers : (denting how much) very, too, quite,
rather, so, awfully, dreadfully ; (adverb of manner)
breathtakingly, devilishly ; (denoting how complete)
almost, entirely, nearly
 Emphasizes : especially, even, exactly, just, merely,
not
5. Conjunctive Adverb
 Result : therefore, accordingly
 Addition : moreover, besides, also
 Contrast : however, nevertheless
 Condition : otherwise
 Time : then, already, yet
6. Interrogative Adverb
 Used in direct and indirect questions
VI. PREPOSITION
1. Time
 On, at, in, since, by, from – to, until, for, during,
within, before, after
2. Place
 Position : in, on, at, over, above, under, near, beside
 Direction : to, from, around, through, past
3. Cause or Reason
  Because of, for, for the sake of, on account of
4. Concession
 In spite of, despite, notwithstanding, regardless of
5. Condition
 In case of, in the event of
6. Comparison
 Like, as
7. Accompaniment
 With, along with, together with
8. Purpose, etc
 For, for the purpose of, etc
VII. CONJUCTION
1. Coordinate Conjunction
 And, or, but, yet, nor, so, for
2. Correlative Conjunction
 Both … and …, not only … but also …, either … or …,
neither … nor …
3. Subordinate Conjunction
 Introducing adverbial clauses : when, until, if,
although
 Introducing noun clauses : that, whether, if, when,
how, why
VIII. INTERJECTION
1. Expression of emotion or feeling
 Oh, hurrah, ouch, wow, really, great, etc
 Parts of Speech Table
This is a summary of the 8 parts of speech*. You can find more detail if you click on each part of
speech.

part of
function or "job" example words example sentences
speech

(to) be, have, do,

EnglishClub.com is a web site. I
Verb action or state like, work, sing,
like EnglishClub.com.
can, must

pen, dog, work,

music, town, This is my dog. He lives in my
Noun thing or person
London, teacher, house. We live in London.
John

a/an, the, 69, some,

Adjective describes a noun good, big, red, well, My dog is big. I like big dogs.
interesting

quickly, silently, My dog eats quickly. When he

describes a verb,
Adverb well, badly, very, is very hungry, he eats really
adjective or adverb
really quickly.

I, you, he, she,

Pronoun replaces a noun Tara is Indian. She is beautiful.
some

links a noun to
Preposition to, at, after, on, but We went to school on Monday.
another word

I like dogs and I like cats. I like

joins clauses or
Conjunction and, but, when cats and dogs. I like dogs but I
sentences or words
don't like cats.

short exclamation,
Ouch! That hurts! Hi! How are
Interjection sometimes inserted oh!, ouch!, hi!, well
you? Well, I don't know.
into a sentence

* Some grammar sources categorize English into 9 or 10 parts of speech. At EnglishClub.com,

we use the traditional categorization of 8 parts of speech. Examples of other categorizations are:

 Verbs may be treated as two different parts of speech:

o Lexical Verbs (work, like, run)
o Auxiliary Verbs (be, have, must)
 Determiners may be treated as a separate part of speech, instead of being categorized
under Adjectives

Parts of Speech Examples

 Here are some sentences made with different English parts of speech:
 verb noun verb noun verb verb
   
Stop! John works. John is working.
  
pronoun verb noun noun verb adjective noun
 
She loves animals. Animals like kind people.
  
noun verb noun adverb noun verb adjective noun
 
Tara speaks English well. Tara speaks good English.
  
pronoun verb preposition adjective noun adverb

She ran to the station quickly.

  
pron. verb adj. noun conjunction pron. verb pron.

She likes big snakes but I hate them.

 Here is a sentence that contains every part of speech:

interjection pron. conj. adj. noun verb prep. noun adverb

Well, she and young John walk to school slowly.

Words with More than One Job

Many words in English can have more than one job, or be more than one part of speech. For
example, "work" can be a verb and a noun; "but" can be a conjunction and a preposition; "well"
can be an adjective, an adverb and an interjection. In addition, many nouns can act as adjectives.

To analyze the part of speech, ask yourself: "What job is this word doing in this sentence?"

In the table below you can see a few examples. Of course, there are more, even for some of the
words in the table. In fact, if you look in a good dictionary you will see that the word "but" has
six jobs to do:

 verb, noun, adverb, pronoun, preposition and conjuction!

word part of speech example

noun My work is easy.
work
verb I work in London.
conjunction John came but Mary didn't come.
but
preposition Everyone came but Mary.
 adjective Are you well?
well adverb She speaks well.
interjection Well! That's expensive!
afternoon noun We ate in the afternoon.
noun acting as adjective We had afternoon tea.