The Parts of Speech

Traditional grammar classifies words based on eight parts of speech: the verb, the noun,
thepronoun, the adjective, the adverb, the preposition, the conjunction, and the 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.
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.
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.


Here's a little rhyme by David B. Tower & Benjamin F. Tweed that teachers
used in days gone by to help students learn the parts of speech. (We include it here in
response to popular demand. Why the song leaves out pronouns is a mystery. A writer
from Richland, Washington, suggests "A PRONOUN replaces any noun: / he, she,
it, and you are found. ) It has been set to music, but we'll leave that up to you to discover
or create for yourself:
Three little words you often see
Are ARTICLES: a, an, and the.

A NOUN's the name of anything,
As: school or garden, toy, or swing.

ADJECTIVES tell the kind of noun,
As: great, small, pretty, white, or brown.

VERBS tell of something being done:
To read, write, count, sing, jump, or run.

How things are done the ADVERBS tell,
As: slowly, quickly, badly, well.

CONJUNCTIONS join the words together,
As: men and women, wind or weather.

The PREPOSITION stands before
A noun as: in or through a door.

The INTERJECTION shows surprise
As: Oh, how pretty! Ah! how wise!

The whole are called the PARTS of SPEECH,
Which reading, writing, speaking teach.

Sentence Parts:
Function and Usage Notes
Absolute
Phrases
Adjectives Adverbs
Determiners/
Articles
Clauses Complements
Coordinated
Adjectives
Conjunctions
Direct
and
Indirect
Objects
Interjections Nouns Phrases
Predicates Prepositions Pronouns Subjects
Verbs and Verbals
(Infinitives, Participles, Gerunds)

A suffix goes at the end of a word. A prefix goes at the
beginning.
A suffix is a group of letters placed at the end of a word to
make a new word. A suffix can make a new word in one of two
ways:
1. inflectional (grammatical): for example, changing
singular to plural (dog > dogs), or changing present tense
to past tense (walk > walked). In this case, the basic
meaning of the word does not change.
2. derivational (the new word has a new meaning,
"derived" from the original word): for example, teach >
teacher or care > careful
Inflectional suffixes
Inflectional suffixes do not change the meaning of the
original word. So in "Every day I walk to school" and
"Yesterday I walked to school", the
words walk and walked have the same basic meaning. In "I
have one car" and "I have two cars", the basic meaning of the
words car and cars is exactly the same. In these cases, the
suffix is added simply for grammatical "correctness". Look at
these examples:
suffix grammatical change example
original
word
example
suffixed
word
-s plural dog dogs
-en plural (irregular) ox oxen
-s 3rd person singular
present
like he likes
-ed past tense
past participle
work he worked
he has
worked
-en past participle (irregular) eat he has eaten
-ing continuous/progressive sleep he is
sleeping
-er comparative big bigger
-est superlative big the biggest
Derivational suffixes
With derivational suffixes, the new word has a new meaning,
and is usually a different part of speech. But the new
meaning is related to the old meaning - it is "derived" from the
old meaning.
We can add more than one suffix, as in this example:
derive (verb) + tion = derivation (noun) + al = derivational
(adjective)
There are several hundred derivational suffixes. Here are some
of the more common ones:
suffix making example
original word
example
suffixed word
-ation nouns explore
hesitate
exploration
hesitation
-sion persuade
divide
persuasion
division
-er teach teacher
-cian music musician
-ess god goddess
-ness sad sadness
-al arrive arrival
-ary diction dictionary
-ment treat treatment
-y jealous
victor
jealousy
victory
-al adjectives accident accidental
-ary imagine imaginary
-able tax taxable
-ly brother brotherly
-y ease easy
-ful sorrow
forget
sorrowful
forgetful
-ly adverbs helpful helpfully
-ize verbs terror
private
terrorize
privatize
-ate hyphen hyphenate
Note that the suffix -er can convert almost any verb into the
person or thing performing the action of the verb. For example:
a teacher is a person who teaches, a lover loves, a killer kills,
an observer observes, a walker walks, a runner runs; a
sprinkler is a thing that sprinkles, a copier copies, a shredder
shreds.

Prefixes and suffixes
Prefixes and suffixes are sets of letters that are added to the beginning or end of
another word. They are not words in their own right and cannot stand on their own
in a sentence: if they are printed on their own they have a hyphen before or after
them.

Prefixes

Prefixes are added to the beginning of an existing word in order to create a new word
with a different meaning. For example:

word prefix new word
happy un- unhappy
cultural multi- multicultural
work over- overwork
space cyber- cyberspace
market super- supermarket


Suffixes

Suffixes are added to the end of an existing word. For example:

word suffix new word
child -ish childish
work -er worker
taste -less tasteless
idol -ize/-ise idolize/idolise
like -able likeable


The addition of a suffix often changes a word from one word class to another. In the
table above, the verb like becomes the adjective likeable, the noun idol becomes the
verb idolize, and the noun child becomes the adjective childish.


Some prefixes and suffixes are part of our living language, in that people regularly
use them to create new words for modern products, concepts, or situations. For
example:

word prefix or suffix new word
security bio- biosecurity
clutter de- declutter
media multi- multimedia
email -er emailer


Email is an example of a word that was itself formed from a new prefix, e-, which
stands for electronic. This modern prefix has formed an ever-growing number of
other Internet-related words, including e-book, e-cash, e-commerce, and e-tailer.

You can read more about prefixes and suffixes on the Oxford Dictionaries blog. Here
you will find guidelines, examples, and tips for using prefixes and suffixes correctly.