15
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.