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BASIC GRAMMAR CONCEPTS: PARTS OF SPEECH

To start expanding your grammar knowledge, it’s helpful to begin with an understanding of the
eight traditional parts of speech that make up our sentences: nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives,
adverbs, prepositions, interjections, and conjunctions. Each of these parts of speech has a
distinct role to play in how we communicate, and a grasp of their basic definition and function
will serve you well in any future grammar lessons.

Nouns: The people, places, things, or ideas we refer to in our writing and speech.
Examples: accountant, New York, boredom, building

While there a number of ways to classify all the kinds of the people, places, and things that we
refer to in language, nouns can broadly be broken down into categories:

 Common nouns: any general term for a class of people, places, things, or ideas. Common
nouns are never capitalized.

o Examples: woman, car, city, mountain, book

 Proper nouns: unique or specific people, places, things, or ideas that are always capitalized.

o Examples: Alice, Titanic, Beijing, September, White House

Pronouns: Words that take the place of any nouns in a sentence.

Examples: I, me, my, she, he, they, we, who, yours, them

Verbs: Words that express actions or states of being. Verbs typically indicate what the subject
(or main noun) in a sentence is doing or feeling.

Examples: I wrote a sentence. I called my mother. I will walk my dog. I am happy.

Adjectives: Adjectives provide description in our sentences. Crucially, though, they

specifically identify, modify, or describe a noun.

Examples: I wrote a beautiful sentence. I called my wonderful mother. I will walk

my restless dog. I am happy.

Adverbs: Adverbs also add description to our sentences. However, what distinguishes them
from adjectives is that they describe verbs—instead of characterizing a person, place, or thing,
adverbs provide information about when, where, why, and how something is done.

Examples: I carefully wrote a sentence. I finally called my mother. Importantly, I walked my

dog. I am very happy.
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Prepositions: These words link information about the time, location, or logical relationship of
one noun to another word in a given sentence. Importantly, they tell us things like when or where
one thing is among other things.

Examples: I wrote a sentence in a Word document. I called my mother on her birthday. I walked
my dog around the park.

Interjections: Often followed by exclamation points, these are words or expressions that
convey emotions.

Examples: Oops! There’s an error in that sentence. Oh, gosh! I forgot to call my mother.

Conjunctions: These words (like and, but, and or) connect words, concepts, parts of
sentences, and even whole sentences.

Examples: I wanted to call my mother. However, I ran out of time today. I will make it up to
her and call sometime tomorrow.
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