The Parts of Speech

Traditional grammar classifies words based on eight parts of speech:

speech : the verb
verb,, the noun
noun,, th
the
epronoun
pronoun,, the adjective
adjective,,
the adverb
adverb,, the preposition
preposition,, the conjunction
conjunction,, and the interjection
interjection..

Each part of speech explains not what the word is, but how the word is used . In fact, the same word can be a noun in
one sentence and a verb or adjective in the next. The next few examples show how a word's part of speech can change
from one sentence to the next, and following them is a series of sections on the individual parts of speech, followed by an
exercise.

Books are made of ink, paper, and glue.

In this sentence, "books" is a noun, the subject of the sentence.

Deborah waits patiently while Bridget books the tickets.

Here "books" is a verb, and its subject is "Bridget."

We walk down the street.

In this sentence, "walk" is a verb, and its subject is the pronoun "we."

The mail carrier stood on the walk

walk..

In this example, "walk" is a noun, which is part of a prepositional phrase describing where the mail carrier stood.

The town decided to build a new jail

new  jail..

Here "jail" is a noun, which is the object of the infinitive phrase "to build."

The sheriff told us that if we did not leave town immediately he would  jail us.

Here "jail" is part of the compound verb "would jail."

They heard high pitched cries in the middle of the night.

In this sentence, "cries" is a noun acting as the direct object of the verb "heard."

The baby cries all night long and all day long.

But here "cries" is a verb that describes the actions of the subject of the sentence, the baby.

The next few sections explain each of the parts of speech in detail. When you have finished, you might want to test
yourself by trying the exercise.

Written by Heather MacFadyen

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 example

example sentences
speech "job" words

(to) be, have,

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

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

a/an, the, 2,
describes a some, good, I have two dogs. My dogs
Adjective
noun big, red, well, are big.
big. I like big dogs.
interesting

quickly,
describes a My dog eats quickly.
quickly. When he
silently, well,
Adverb verb, adjective isvery
isvery hungry, he
badly, very,
or adverb eats reallyquickly.
reallyquickly.
really

I, you, he,
Pronoun replaces a noun Tara is Indian. She is beautiful.
she, some

links a noun to to, at, after,

Preposition We went to school on Monday.
another word on, but

 joins clauses or I like dogs and I like cats. I

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

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

The history of algebra

of algebra began in ancient Egypt and Babylon
Babylon,, where people learned to solve linear (ax 
(ax =
= b)
2 2 2 2
and quadratic (ax 
(ax  + bx =
bx = c) equations, as well as indeterminate equations such as x 
as x  + y  = z , whereby
several unknowns are involved. The ancient Babylonians solved arbitrary quadratic equations by
essentially the same procedures taught today. They also could solve some indeterminate e quations.

The Alexandrian mathematicians Hero of Alexandria and Diophantus continued the traditions of Egypt
and Babylon, but Diophantus's book Arithmetica
book  Arithmetica is on a much higher level and gives
g ives many surprising
solutions to difficult indeterminate equations. This ancient knowledge of solutions of equations in turn
found a home early in the Islamic world, where it was known as the "science of re storation and
balancing." (The Arabic word for restoration, al-jabru, is the root of the word algebra.)
algebra.) In the 9th
century, the Arab mathematician al-Khwarizmi wrote one of the first Arabic algebras, a systematic
exposé of the basic theory of equations, with both examples and proofs. By the end of t he 9th century,
the Egyptian mathematician Abu Kamil had stated and proved the basic laws and identities of algebra
2 2 2
and solved such complicated problems as finding x,
finding x, y, and z such that x 
that x ++ y +
y + z = 10, x 
10, x  + y  = z , and xz
and xz =
2
y  .

Ancient civilizations wrote out algebraic expressions using only occasional abbreviations, but by
medieval times Islamic mathematicians were able to talk about ar bitrarily high powers of the unknown
 x, and work out the basic algebra of polynomials (without yet using modern symbolism). This included
included
the ability to multiply, divide, and find square roots of polynomials
of  polynomials as well as a knowledge of the
binomial theorem. The Persian mathematician, astronomer, and poet Omar Khayyam showed how to
express roots of cubic
of cubic equations by line segments obtained by intersecting conic sections,
sections, but he could
not find a formula for the roots. A L atin translation of Al-Khwarizmi's Algebra
Al-Khwarizmi's Algebra appeared in the 12th
century. In the early 13th century,
ce ntury, the great Italian mathematician Leonardo Fibonacci achieved a close
3 2
approximation to the solution of the cubic equation x 
equation x  + 2 x  + cx =
cx = d . Because Fibonacci had traveled in
Islamic lands, he probably used an Arabic method of successive approximations.

Early in the 16th century, the Italian mathematicians Scipione del Ferro,
Ferro, Niccolò Tartaglia
Tartaglia,, and Gerolamo
Cardano solved the general cubic equation in terms o f the constants appearing in the equation.
Cardano's pupil, Ludovico Ferrari, soon found an exact solution to equations of the fourth degree (see
quartic equation)
equation), and as a result, mat hematicians for the next several centuries tried to find a formula
for the roots of equations of degree five, or higher. Early in the 19th century, however, the Norwegian
mathematician Niels Abel and the French mathematician Evariste Galois proved that no such formula
exists.

An important development in algebra in the 16th century was the introduction of symbols for the
unknown and for algebraic powers and operations. As a result o f this development, Book III of La
of La
géometrie (1637), written by the French philosopher and mathematician René Descartes
Descartes,, looks much
like a modern algebra text. Descartes's
De scartes's most significant contribution to mathematics, however, was his
discovery of analytic
of analytic geometry,
geometry, which reduces the solution of geometric problems to the solution of 
algebraic ones. His geometry text also contained the essentials of a course on the theory of equations
of equations,,
including his so-called rule of signs for counting the number of what Descartes c alled the "true"
(positive) and "false" (negative) roots of an equation. Work continued through the 18th century o n the
theory of equations, but not until 1799 was the proof published, by the German mathematician Carl
Friedrich Gauss,
Gauss, showing that every polynomial equation has at least one root in the complex plane (see
(see
Number: Complex Numbers)
Numbers).

By the time of Gauss, algebra had entered its modern phase. Atte ntion shifted from solving polynomial
equations to studying the structure of abstract m athematical systems whose axioms were based on the
behavior of mathematical objects, such as complex numbers,
numbers, that mathematicians encountered when
studying polynomial equations. Two examples of such systems are algebraic groups (see Group) and
quaternions,, which share some of the properties of number systems but also depart from them in
quaternions
important ways. Groups began as systems of permutations and combinations of roots of polynomials,
but they became one of the
t he chief unifying concepts of 19th-century mathematics. Important
contributions to their study were made by the French mathematicians Galois and Augustin Cauchy,
Cauchy, the
British mathematician Arthur Cayley, and the Norwegian mathematicians Niels Abel and Sophus Lie.
Quaternions were discovered by British mathematician and astronomer William Rowan Hamilton,
Hamilton , who
extended the arithmetic of complex numbers to quaternions while complex numbers are of the form a +
bi, quaternions are of the form a + bi +
bi + cj +
cj + dk.

Immediately after Hamilton's discovery, the German mathematician Hermann Grassmann began
investigating vectors. Despite its abstract character, Amer ican physicist J. W. Gibbs recognized in vector
algebra a system of great utility for physicists, just as Hamilton had recognized the usefulness of 
quaternions. The widespread influence of this abstract approach led George Boole to write The Laws of 
Thought (1854), an algebraic treatment of basic logic
Thought (1854), algebra—also called
logic.. Since that time, modern algebra—
algebra—has continued to develop. Important new results have been discovered, and the
abstract algebra—
subject has found applications in all branches of mathematics and in many of the sciences as well. Main
page
*The origins of algebra go all the way back to the early Babylonians and Hindus. The Arabs (specifically
the person described next) used and formalized algebra, giving it the name by which we now know it.
The name is derived from the treatise
t reatise written in about the year 830 AD by the Persian Muslim
mathematician Muhammad bin Mūsā al-
mathematician al-Khwārizmī titled (in Arabic ) Al-Kitab al-
Jabr wa-l-Muqabala (meaning "The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing"),
which provided symbolic operations for the systematic solution of linear and quadratic equations.

*Algebra (from Arabic al-jebr meaning

al-jebr meaning "reunion of broken parts)

*By the time of Plato

of Plato,, Greek mathematics had undergone a drastic change. The Greeks created a
geometric algebra where terms were represented by sides of geometric obje cts, usually lines, that
[2]
had letters associated with them.
them. Diophantus (3rd century AD), sometimes called "the father of 
algebra", was an Alexandrian Greek mathematician and the author of a series of books called
[3]
 Arithmetica.. These texts deal with solving algebraic equations.
 Arithmetica equations.

While the word algebra comes from the Arabic language ( al-jabr "restoration")
al-jabr "restoration") and much
of its methods from Arabic/Islamic mathematics,
mathematics, its roots can be traced to earlier traditions,
which had a direct influence on Muhammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī (c. 780 – 850). 850). He later 
wrote The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing , which established
[4]
algebra as a mathematical discipline that is indep endent of geometry
of geometry and arithmetic
arithmetic..

[5]
The roots of algebra can be traced to the ancient Babylonians
Babylonians,, who developed an advanced
arithmetical system with which they were able to do calculations in an algorithmic fashion. The
Babylonians developed formulas to calculate solutions for problems typically solved today by
using linear equations,
equations, quadratic equations,
equations, and indeterminate linear equations.
equations. By contrast, most
Egyptians of this era, as well as Greek 
Greek and
and Chinese mathematicians in the 1st millennium BC,BC,
usually solved such equations by geometric methods, such as those described in the Rhind 
the Rhind 
 Mathematical Papyrus,
Papyrus, Euclid's
Euclid's Elements
 Elements,, and The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art . The
geometric work of the Greeks, typified in the Elements
the Elements,, provided the framework for generalizing
formulae beyond the solution of particular problems into more general systems of stating and
solving equations, though this would not be realized until the medieval Muslim
[citation needed ]
mathematicians..
mathematicians

[6]
The Hellenistic mathematicians Hero of Alexandria and Diophantus as well as Indian
mathematicians such as Brahmagupta continued the traditions of Egypt and Babylon, though
[7]
Diophantus' Arithmetica
Diophantus' Arithmetica and Brahmagupta's Brahmasphutasiddhanta
Brahmagupta's Brahmasphutasiddhanta are on a higher level.level. For 
example, the first complete arithmetic solution (including zero and ne gative solutions) to
quadratic equations was described by Brahmagupta in his book  Brahmasphutasiddhanta.
 Brahmasphutasiddhanta. Later,
Arabic and Muslim mathematicians developed algebraic methods to a much higher degree of 
sophistication. Although Diophantus and the Bab ylonians used mostly special ad hoc methods to
solve equations, Al-Khwarizmi was the first to solve equations using general method s. He solved
the linear indeterminate equations, quadratic equations, second order indeterminate equations
[citation needed ]
and equations with multiple variables.
In 1545, the Italian mathematician Girolamo Cardano published Ars
published Ars magna -The great art , a 40-chapter
masterpiece in which he gave for the first time a method for solving the general quartic equation.
equation.

The Greek 
Greek mathematician
mathematician Diophantus has traditionally been known as the "father of algebra" but
in more recent times there is much debate over whether al-Khwarizmi, who founded the
[8]
discipline of al-jabr 
of al-jabr , deserves that title instead.
instead. Those who support Diophantus point to the fact
that the algebra found in Al-Jabr 
in Al-Jabr is
is slightly more elementary than the algebra found in
[9]
 Arithmetica and that Arithmetica
that Arithmetica is syncopated while Al-Jabr 
while Al-Jabr is
is fully rhetorical.
rhetorical. Those who
support Al-Khwarizmi point to the fact that he introduced the methods of "reduction "reduction"" and
"balancing" (the transposition of subtracted terms to the other side of an equation, that is, the
cancellation of like
of like terms on opposite sides of the equation) which the term al-jabr originally
al-jabr originally
[10] [11]
referred to,to, and that he gave an exhaustive explanation of solving quadratic equations,
equations,
supported by geometric proofs, while treating algebra as an independent discipline in its own
[12]
right.
right. His algebra was also no longer concerned "with a series of  problems
 problems to be resolved, but
an exposition which starts with primitive terms in which the combinations must give all possible
 prototypes for equations, which henceforward explicitly constitute the true object of study." study." He
also studied an equation for its own sake and "in a generic manner, mann er, insofar as it does not simply
emerge in the course of solving a problem, but is specifically called on to define an infinite class
[13]
of problems."
problems."

The Persian mathematician Omar Khayyam is credited with identifying the foundations of 
algebraic geometry and found the general geometric solution of the cubic equation.
equation. Another 
Persian mathematician, Sharaf al-Dīn al-Tūsī , found algebraic and numerical solutions to various
[14] [15]
cases of cubic equations.
equations. He also developed the concept of a function
function.. The Indian
[16]
mathematicians Mahavira and Bhaskara II, II, the Persian mathematician Al-Karaji
Al-Karaji,, and the
Chinese mathematician Zhu Shijie,
Shijie, solved various cases of cubic, quartic
quartic,, quintic and higher-
order  polynomial
 polynomial equations using numerical methods. In the 13th century, the solution of a cubic
equation by Fibonacci is representative of the beginning of a revival in European algebra. As the
Islamic world was declining, the European world was ascend ing. And it is here that algebra
al gebra was
further developed.

François Viète’s work at the close of the 16th century marks the start of the classical discipline
of algebra. In 1637, René Descartes published
Descartes published La La Géométrie,
Géométrie, inventing analytic geometry and
introducing modern algebraic notation. Another key event in the further development of algebra
al gebra
was the general algebraic solution of the cubic and quartic equations, developed in the mid-16th
century. The idea of a determinant was developed by Japanese mathematician Kowa Seki in the
17th century, followed independently by Gottfried Leibniz ten years later, for the purpose of 
solving systems of simultaneous linear equations using matrices
matrices.. Gabriel Cramer also
Cramer also did some
work on matrices and determinants in the 18th century. Permutations were studied by Joseph
Lagrange in his 1770 paper  Réflexions
 Réflexions sur la résolution algébrique des équations devoted to
solutions of algebraic equations, in which he introduced Lagrange resolvents.
resolvents. Paolo Ruffini was
the first person to develop the theory of  permutation
 permutation groups,
groups, and like his predecessors, also in the
context of solving algebraic equations.

Abstract algebra was developed in the 19th century, initially focusing on what is now called
[17]
Galois theory,
theory, and on constructibility issues.
issues. The "modern algebra"
algebra" has deep nineteenth-
century roots in the work, for example, of Richard
of Richard Dedekind and Leopold Kronecker and
Kronecker and
 profound interconnections with other branches of mathematics such as algebraic number theory
[18]
and algebraic geometry.
geometry. George Peacock was
Peacock was the founder of axiomatic thinking in arithmetic
and algebra. Augustus De Morgan discovered relation algebra in his Syllabus of a Proposed 
System of Logic.
Logic. Josiah Willard Gibbs developed an algebra of vectors in three-dimensional
space, and Arthur Cayley developed an algebra of matrices (this is a noncommutative
[19]
algebra).
algebra).

*The word algebra is a Latin variant of the Arabic

Ar abic word al-jabr . This came from the title of
o f a book,
"Hidab al-jabr wal-muqubala" , written in Baghdad about 825 A.D. by the Arab mathematician
Mohammed ibn-Musa al-Khowarizmi.
The words jabr 
words jabr (JAH-ber)
(JAH-ber) and muqubalah (moo-KAH-ba-lah) were used by al-Khowarizmi to designate
two basic operations in solving equations. Jabr 
equations. Jabr was
was to transpose subtracted terms to the other side of 
the equation. Muqubalah was to cancel like terms on o pposite sides of the equation. In fact, the title has
been translated to mean "science of restoration (or reunion) and opposition" or "science of 
transposition and cancellation" and "The Book of Completion and Cancellation" or "The Book of 
Restoration and Balancing."
 Jabr is used in the step where x - 2 = 12 becomes x = 14. The left-side of the first equation, where x is
 Jabr is
lessened by 2, is "restored" or "completed" back to x in the second equation.
Muqabalah takes us from x + y = y + 7 to x = 7 by "cancelling" or "balancing" the two sides of t he
equation.
Eventually the muqabalah was left behind, and this type of math became known as algebra in many
languages.
However, algebra was not invented by any single person or civilization. It is a reasoning skill that is most
likely as old as human beings. The concept of algebra began as a reasoning skill to determine unknown
quantities.
For example, an early human being (living nearly 7 million years ago) probably ran across the problem of 
food being stolen from him by other animals... He may have had 5 berries laying on the ground, but
then, suddenly a bird flew by and now only had 2. He probably wondered how many berries the bird ate
(an unknown quantity). He could probably reason that 3 berries were missing and thus 3 berries were
eaten by the bird.
If you perceive algebra in this way, then no one invented algebra because it is a natural instinct encoded
in our genetics... it is our ability to reason o ut quantities that produce algebra. However, the e laboration
of this reasoning into structured symbolization and manipulation is not credited to any single individual.
Many people, throughout the world and throughout the ages, have developed parts of what is now
known as ALGEBRA. The word itself -algebra- comes from a book called Kitab al-Jabr wa-l Muqabala
(translated: Calculation by Way of Restoration and Confrontation or Calculation by Completion and
Balance), written by Persian mathematician Muhammad ibn Mosa al-Khwarizmi (approximately) in the
year 820 AD. However, this
t his was not the first written recor d of algebraic concepts or manipulation.
Ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Indians, Chinese, and Greeks all have written records of algebra dating
far before this date. No one can specify any one time, place, or person solely responsible for the
elaboration of algebra as a mathematical discipline.

However, it is true t hat the Acient Greeks invented "algebraic met hod" in which you solve a problem by
calling a unknown in the question x, then list out all the other expressions containing x. Then you find
two equal expressions and form a equation and solve it.

*History of numbers. Numbers were probably first used many thousands of years ago in commerce, and
initially only whole numbers and perhaps rational numbers were needed. But already in Babylonian
times, practical problems of geometry began to require square roots. Nevertheless, for a very long time,
and despite some development of algebra, only numbers that co uld somehow in principle be
constructed mechanically were ever considered. The invention of fluxions by Isaac Newton in the late
1600s, however, introduced the idea of continuous variables - numbers with a continuous range of 
possible sizes. But while this was a convenient and powerful notion, it also involved a new level of 
abstraction, and it brought with it considerable confusion about fundamental issues. In fact, it was really
only through the development of rigorous mathematical analysis in the late 180 0s that this confusion
finally began to clear up. And already by the 1880s Georg Cantor and others had constructed completely
discontinuous functions, in which the idea of treating numbers as continuous variables where only the
size matters was called into question. But until almost the 1970s, and the emergence of fractal
geometry and chaos theory, these functions were largely considered as mathematical curiosities, of no
practical relevance. (See also page 1175.)

Independent of pure mathematics, however, practical applications of numbers have always had to go
beyond the abstract idealization of continuous variables. For whether one does calculations by hand, by
mechanical calculator or by electronic computer, one always needs an explicit representation for
numbers, typically in terms of a sequence of digits of a certain length. (From the 1930s to 1960s, some
work was done on so-called analog computers which used e lectrical voltages to represent continuous
variables, but such machines turned out not to be reliable enough for most practical purposes.) From
the earliest days of electronic computing, however, great efforts were made to try to approximate a
continuum of numbers as closely as possible. And indeed for studying systems with fairly simple
behavior, such approximations can typically be made to work. But as we shall see later in this chapter,
with more complex behavior, it is almost inevitable that the approximation breaks down, and there is no
choice but to look at the explicit representations of numbers.

 *algebra
 Diophantus
 al-Khwarismi
 Omar Khayyam
 Leonardo Fibnacci
 Scipione del Ferro+
 Niccolo Tartaglia
 Gerolamo Cardano
 Niels Abel
 Evariste Galois
 Rene Descartes
 Carl Frriedrich Gauss
 Augustin Cauchy+
 William Rowan Hamilton
 Hermann Grassmann
 George Bhoole

*trigo
Thales, Democritus, Pythagoras, Aristotle, Archimedes, Euclid, Erastosthenes, Hipparchus

REAL NUMBERS

In mathematics
mathematics,, a real number is a value that represents a quantity along a continuous line. The
numbers, such as the integer −5 and the fraction 4/3, and all
real numbers include all the rational numbers,
the irrational numbers such as √2 (1.41421356... the square root of two,two, an irrational algebraic
number ) and π (3.14159265..., a transcendental number ). Real numbers can be thought of as
 points on an infinitely long line called the number line or real
or real line,
line, where the points
corresponding to integers are equally spaced. Any real number can be determined by a possibly
infinite decimal representation such as that of 8.632, where each consecutive digit is measured in
units one tenth the size of the previous one. The real line can be thought of as a part of the
complex plane,
plane, and correspondingly, complex numbers include real numbers as a special case.

These descriptions of the real numbers are not sufficiently rigorous b y the modern standards of 
real numbers — indeed,
 pure mathematics. The discovery of a suitably rigorous definition of the real
the realization that a better definition was needed — was one of the most important
developments of 19th century mathematics. The c urrently standard axiomatic definition is that
[1]
real numbers form the unique complete totally ordered field (R ,+,·,<),
,+,·,<), up to isomorphism
isomorphism,,
Whereas popular constructive definitions of real numbers include declaring them as equivalence
classes of Cauchy
of Cauchy sequences of rational numbers, Dedekind cuts,cuts, or certain infinite "decimal
representations", together with precise interpretations for the arithmetic operations and the order 
relation. These definitions are equivalent in the realm of classical
of classical mathematics.
mathematics.

A real number may be either rational

either rational or irrational
or irrational;; either algebraic
either algebraic or transcendental
or transcendental;; and either 
 positive,, negative
 positive negative,, or zero
or zero.. Real numbers are used to measure continuous quantities. They may in
theory be expressed by decimal representations that have an infinite sequence of digits to the
right of the decimal point; these are often represented in the same form as 324.823122147… The
ellipsis (three dots) indicate that there would still be more digits to come.

More formally, real numbers have the two basic

b asic properties of being an ordered field,
field, and having
the least upper bound property.
bound property. The first says that real numbers comprise a field
field,, with addition
and multiplication as well as division by nonzero numbers, which can be totally ordered on a
number line in a way compatible
co mpatible with addition and multiplication. The seco nd says that if a
nonempty set of real numbers has an upper bound,
bound, then it has a least upper bound.
bound. The second
condition distinguishes the real numbers from the rational numbers: for example, the set of 
rational numbers whose square is less than 2 is a s et with an upper bound (e.g. 1.5) but no least
upper bound: hence the rational numbers do not satisfy the least upper bou nd property.

Natural Numbers
 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 …
 numbers you count with
 positive (not zero) whole numbers
Whole numbers
 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, …
 the natural numbers, and also zero.
 No negatives; no fractions
Integers
 … -3,-2,-1, 0, 1, 2, 3, …
 Whole numbers and their opposites
Absolute value
 Distance a number is from zero
 Can’t be negative
 Symbol … | x | means “the absolute value of x”