The Parts of Speech
Basic Grammar
An Overview
This chapter will review the basic elements of the sentence.
The Parts of Speech
There are seven basic parts of speech in English:
In the examples in this chapter, subjects are underlined once and verbs are underlined twice.
- A noun names a person, place, or thing.
Heroin is a drug.
- A pronoun replaces a noun in a sentence. A pronoun can be the subject of a sentence (I, you, he, she, it, we, they), or it can be the object of a sentence (me, you, him, her, us, them). A pronoun can also show possession (mine, yours, his, her, its, our, their).
It causes addiction.
- A verb tells what the subject does, or it links a subject to another word that describes it.
Heroin causes addiction. [The verb causes is what the subject Heroin does.]
It is dangerous. [The verb is links the subject It to a word that describes it: dangerous.]
- An adjective describes a noun or pronoun.
[The adjective dangerous describes the noun Heroin.]
[The adjective lethal describes the pronoun It.] - An adverb describes an adjective, a verb, or another adverb. Many adverbs end in -ly.
[The adverb very describes the adjective dangerous.]
[The adverb quickly describes the verb occurs.]
[The adverb very describes the adverb quickly.] - A preposition connects a noun, pronoun, or verb with some other information about it (across, at, in, of, on, around, over, and to are some prepositions).
Dealers often sell drugs around schools. [The preposition around connects the noun drugs with the noun school.]
- A conjunction (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so) connects words.