what are the articles of speech

Parts of Speech and Sentence Structure

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the car down the street, the man next to you
a book, an apple, a bottle
the definite article the : You use it before a singular or a plural noun when you talk about one or more specific member(s) of a group (things, places or people) that is known to you: the tall man, the big house, the man next to me ;
the indefinite articles a/an : You use them before a singular noun when you talk about any general thing : a line, a house, a kitchen, a person, an apple, an airport, an idea, an umbrella .
You use the article a before nouns/adjectives or numbers that start with a consonant : a line, a kitchen, a person, a dog, a book, a tall man, a five-year-old boy, a job interview .
You use the article an before nouns that start with a vowel : an apple, an idea, an umbrella, an egg, an hour, an eight-year-old girl, an interview .
There is --- a an airport close to the city.
Do you have --- a an armchair in your room?
She has --- an a idea!
They have --- an a female English teacher.
He eats --- an a apple.
There is --- a an school around the corner.
She has --- an a new armchair.
We will give him --- a an book for his birthday.
Check ( 1 )
Check and show solutions
He works as pilot.
I need new TV.
He is best teacher at the school.
They have eight-year-old girl.
book she bought yesterday is not so good.
She is nicest girl I know.
She is nice girl.
city that she likes the most is New York City.
time
shop
adjective
elephant
umbrella
week
opinion
number
English book
example
door
table
eagle
bike
Michael says: "I have best friend. His name is Josh. He lives in small house outside the city. They have beautiful garden behind house. house is painted blue and there is fence around garden. I love going there. It's so nice and peaceful."

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Course: Grammar > Unit 4

Introduction to adjectives
Meet the adjective

Introduction to articles

Meet the article
Definite and indefinite articles
The indefinite article
Choosing between definite and indefinite articles

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Video transcript

English Grammar
Articles In English

Articles in English - Learn What It Is, Definition, Types, Uses and Examples

Have you ever been wondering what part of speech the articles belong to? Do you think they are pronouns , adverbs or adjectives ? Well, this article will help you with all that you need to know. Learn what articles are, their definition, types, how to use them, and uses, along with examples. Also, try out the practice questions given to check how far you have understood the same.

Definition of an article.

Definite Article
Indefinite Article

Usage and Exceptions – Points to be Remembered When Using Articles

Examples of articles, check your understanding of articles, frequently asked questions on articles in english grammar, what is an article.

An article is a short monosyllabic word that is used to define if the noun is specific or not. Articles are normally used before nouns and since they are used to speak about the noun, they can be considered as adjectives.

Look at how various dictionaries define an article to have a much clearer idea of what they are.

An article, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, is defined as “any of a small set of words or affixes (such as a, an, and the) used with nouns to limit or give definiteness to the application.” According to the Collins Dictionary, “an article is a kind of determiner. In English, ‘a’ and ‘an’ are called the indefinite article, and ‘the’ is called the definite article.” The Macmillan Dictionary defines an article as “a type of determiner (=word used before a noun) that shows whether you are referring to a particular thing or to a general example of something. The indefinite article is ‘a’ or ‘an’ and the definite article is ‘the’.”

Types of Articles

There are three articles in English – ‘a’, ‘an’ and ‘the’. These articles are divided into two types namely:

Among the three articles, ‘the’ is said to be the definite article. A definite article is used to determine something that is specific or particular. It is also used before plural nouns and to indicate the superlative degree of comparison . Furthermore, it can be used before collective nouns as well.

For example:

The Sun sets in the west.

In the above sentence, the nouns ‘Sun’ and ‘west’ are proper nouns and are specific and so the definite article has to be used.

The children are playing cricket.

In the above sentence, the definite article is used to determine the plural noun, ‘children’.

This is the world’s longest river.

In the above sentence, the definite article is used to denote the superlative degree of comparison.

The crowd sang along with the band.

In the above sentence, the definite article is used before the collective nouns, ‘crowd’ and ‘band’.

The articles ‘an’ and ‘an’ are termed as indefinite articles. An indefinite article, as the name suggests, is used to indicate something that is not definite or specific. It can also be used before singular nouns .

Among the indefinite articles, ‘an’ is used before singular nouns that start with vowel sounds and ‘a’ is used before singular nouns that begin with consonant sounds.

I had an apple for breakfast.
Do you have an eraser?
I saw an aeroplane.
She has a pet dog.
My father is a doctor.
My brother gave me a calculator.

Articles are used extensively by English language users, and for this very reason, it is important to know where and where not to use them. In order to have a thorough knowledge of how to use the right articles in the right places, have a look at the following.

The article ‘an’ is normally used before words that begin with vowel sounds. However, this is often confused with the idea that it can be used before words that start with a vowel. Look at the examples given below to understand how this works.

I have an umbrella.
This is an orange.
An elephant was crossing the road.

If you see here, the words ‘university’ and ‘unique’ start with a vowel. However, it does not have a vowel sound but a consonant sound ‘yu’ in the beginning. It is because of this reason that the indefinite article, ‘a’ is used instead of ‘an’.

Studying in a university will give you a lot of exposure.
This is a unique way of communicating with birds.

In the examples given below, ‘an’ is used before ‘MBA’ and ‘hour’ though they are words starting with consonants. This is because the word ‘MBA’ starts with ‘m’ which has a vowel sound (em) in the beginning. Likewise, the ‘h’ in the word ‘hour’ is silent, thus having a vowel sound in the beginning.

I have completed an MBA degree.
It took an hour to reach the airport.

Words starting with a vowel, but use ‘a’ instead of ‘an’:

Words starting with a consonant, but use ‘an’ instead of ‘a’.

There are also some cases in which you will have to use the indefinite article ‘the’ before a common noun . Look at the following set of sentences to understand how this works.

Example 1: My brother and I are going for a wedding reception. The reception is held in an open lawn at 7 p.m.

Example 2: I saw a dog at the end of the street. The dog came running to me.

Example 3: Tharun watched a movie yesterday. He felt that the movie was too slow.

Let us look at a few more examples to find out how articles can be used.

The English teacher is absent today.
I saw a bird sitting on the tree in front of my house.
Not many know how to use an oven properly.
Tom has a cat.
We are going to buy a dress for our daughter.
Carry an umbrella. I am sure it will rain.
Keren found a puppy on the road.
The parents have been asked to attend a meeting tomorrow.
The committee has decided to bring down the fuel rates.
Due to a hartal, the shops have been closed.

Fill in the blanks with the appropriate articles in the following sentences:

1. Have you watched ______ new movie?

2. I have never used ______ computer.

3. Do you know _____ multiplication tables?

4. Sandra brought ______ apple.

5. Madhu has ____ teddy bear.

6. ______ chairs are all broken.

7. The janitor asked ______ students to walk carefully as ______ floor was wet.

8. I have finished reading _____ book you lent me.

9. Hari is planning to buy ____ new car.

10. He has been waiting for ___ hour.

Check your answers.

1. Have you watched the new movie?

2. I have never used a computer.

3. Do you know the multiplication tables?

4. Sandra brought an apple.

5. Madhu has a teddy bear.

6. The chairs are all broken.

7. The janitor asked the students to walk carefully as the floor was wet.

8. I have finished reading the book you lent me.

9. Hari is planning to buy a new car.

10. He has been waiting for an hour.

What is an article?

What is the definition of an article.

What are the types of articles?

There are two types of articles in English and they are:

What is a definite article?

A definite article is used to determine something that is specific or particular. It is also used before plural nouns and to indicate the superlative degree of comparison. The article ‘the’ is the only definite article.

What is an indefinite article?

An indefinite article, as the name suggests, is used to indicate something that is not definite or specific. It can also be used before singular nouns. The articles ‘an’ and ‘an’ are termed as indefinite articles.

Give some examples of articles.

Here are a few examples to show you how articles can be used in sentences.

Why is it ‘a university’ and not ‘an university’?

The article ‘a’ is used before university because it does not have a vowel sound but a consonant sound ‘yu’ in the beginning.

Why is it ‘an MBA’ and not ‘a MBA’?

This is because the word ‘MBA’ starts with ‘m’ which is pronounced with a vowel sound (em) in the beginning.

ENGLISH Related Links

Register with BYJU'S & Download Free PDFs

Articles in Grammar: From "A" to "The" With "An" and "Some" Between

An Introduction to Punctuation
Ph.D., Rhetoric and English, University of Georgia
M.A., Modern English and American Literature, University of Leicester
B.A., English, State University of New York

In English grammar , an article is a type of determiner that precedes and provides context to a noun . A determiner is a word or a group of words that specifies, identifies, or quantifies the noun or noun phrase that follows it: There are only two types of articles in English, definite or indefinite. The three main articles in English grammar are "the," "a," and "an." This grammatical concept may sound simple, but there are some tricky rules related to using it correctly.

Definite vs. Indefinite Articles

The only definite article is "the," which specifies a particular individual or thing in a particular context . For example, in the title of a famous Sherlock Holmes story "The Hound of the Baskervilles," the first word of the sentence is a definite article because it refers to a specific case that the illustrious fictional detective tried to (and, of course, did) solve.

By contrast, Purdue Owl notes the indefinite articles—"a" and "an"—signal that the noun modified is indefinite, referring to any member of a group, or something that cannot be identified specifically by the writer or speaker. An example of a sentence containing both the "a" and "an" indefinite articles was published in E.B. White's classic children's tale "Charlotte's Web."

"Mr. Arable fixed a small yard specially for Wilbur under an apple tree, and gave him a large wooden box full of straw, with a doorway cut in it so he could walk in and out as he pleased."

This example uses both "a," which is always used before a consonant sound , and "an," which is always used before a vowel sound .

Using "A" and "An"

The key to knowing when to use "a" or "an" depends on the sound at the beginning of the noun (or adjective) that is being modified, not whether the noun or adjective actually begins with a vowel or consonant, notes study.com :

"If the noun (or adjective) that comes after the article begins with a vowel sound, the appropriate indefinite article to use is 'an.' A vowel sound is a sound that is created by any vowel in the English language: 'a,' 'e,' 'i,' 'o,' 'u,' and sometimes 'y' if it makes an 'e' or 'i' sound."

By contrast, if the noun or adjective that comes after the article begins with a consonant that actually sounds like a consonant, use "a." "The Complete English Grammar Rules" presents some examples of when to use "a" or "an," depending on the sound of the first letter of the noun the article is modifying.

"What an u nusual discovery." - This is correct because "unusual" starts with a "u" that makes an "uh" sound.
"What a u nique discovery." - This is correct because the adjective after the article begins with a "u" that sounds like the consonant sound "yu."
I bought " a h orse." - You use the "a" here because "horse" starts with an "h" that sounds like the consonant "h."
" A h istorical event is worth recording." - Many folks think it should be "an" historic," but the article "a" is correct because the "h" is pronounced and sounds like the consonant "h."
" An h our" has passed. - In this case, you use "an" because the "h" in hour is silent, and the noun actually begins with the vowel sound "ow."

Note that in the first two sentences above, the article actually precedes the adjectives, "unusual" and "unique," but the articles actually modify the noun, "discovery" in both sentences. Sometimes the article directly precedes an adjective that modifies the noun. When this occurs, look at the first letter of the adjective when determining whether to use "a" or "an" and then use the same rules as those discussed above to determine which article to use.

Before Countable and Uncountable Nouns

When dealing with articles, nouns can either be:

Uncountable - You cannot count a specific number.
Countable - The noun does indicate a specific number.

When a noun is uncountable, it is preceded by an indefinite article—"a" or "an." Butte College gives this example to illustrate both:

I ate an apple yesterday. The apple was juicy and delicious.

In the first sentence, "apple" is uncountable because you're not referring to a specific apple; whereas, in the second sentence, "apple" is a countable noun because you are referring to one specific apple.

Another example would be:

Would you like tea? or "Would you like some tea."
"I would like the tea."

In the first instance, "tea" is uncountable because you're not referring to a specific tea, but instead, just to "some" tea (an undefinable number or amount). In the second sentence, by contrast, the speaker is referring to a specific cup or bottle of tea.

When to Omit Articles

As the first sentence in the previous example shows, you can sometimes omit the article particularly when the number or quantity is not known. Sometimes you would use the article in American English but not British English. For example:

"I have to go to the hospital." (American English)
"I have to go to hospital." (British English)

Conversely, sometimes you omit the article in American English but not in British English, as in:

"I played rugby." (American English)
"I play the rugby. (British English)

In these cases, the use, or omission, of the definite article depends on the type of English being spoken.

Pronouns, Demonstratives, and Possessives

You can also replace articles with pronouns , demonstratives , and possessives . They all work in the same way as a demonstrative article—naming a specific thing:

In English grammar, a pronoun is a word that takes the place of a noun, noun phrase, or noun clause. So, instead of the sentence: "Give the book to me," you would replace the definite article, "the," as well as the noun it modifies, "book," with the pronoun, "it," to yield the sentence: "Give it to me."
A demonstrative is a determiner or a pronoun that points to a particular noun or to the noun it replaces. So, instead of saying: "The movie is boring," you would replace the definite article, "the," with the demonstrative "this" or "that" to yield: "This movie is boring" or "That movie is boring."
A possessive pronoun is a pronoun that can take the place of a noun phrase to show ownership. Instead of saying: "The tale is long and sad!" you would replace the definite article, "the," to yield a sentence, such as: "Mine is a long and sad tale!" In the first sentence, the definite article, "the," modifies the noun, "tale." In the second sentence, the possessive pronoun, "mine," also modifies the noun, "tale."

High-Ranking Words

According to Ben Yagoda's book "When You Catch an Adjective, Kill It: The Parts of Speech, for Better and/or Worse," the word "the" is the most commonly-used word in the English language. It occurs "nearly 62,000 times in every million words written or uttered—or about once every 16 words." Meanwhile, "a" ranks as the fifth most commonly used word—and "an" ranks 34th.

So take the time to learn these important words—as well as their replacements, such as pronouns, demonstratives, and possessives—correctly to boost your command of English grammar, and in the process, enlighten your friends, impress your teachers, and gain the admiration of your associates.

The 9 Parts of Speech: Definitions and Examples
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Grammar: Articles

Articles video.

Note that this video was created while APA 6 was the style guide edition in use. There may be some examples of writing that have not been updated to APA 7 guidelines.

Mastering the Mechanics: Articles (video transcript)

Article Basics

What is an article.

Articles ("a," "an," and "the") are determiners or noun markers that function to specify if the noun is general or specific in its reference. Often the article chosen depends on if the writer and the reader understand the reference of the noun.
The articles "a" and "an" are indefinite articles. They are used with a singular countable noun when the noun referred to is nonspecific or generic.
The article "the" is a definite article. It is used to show specific reference and can be used with both singular and plural nouns and with both countable and uncountable nouns.

Many languages do not use articles ("a," "an," and "the"), or if they do exist, the way they are used may be different than in English. Multilingual writers often find article usage to be one of the most difficult concepts to learn. Although there are some rules about article usage to help, there are also quite a few exceptions. Therefore, learning to use articles accurately takes a long time. To master article usage, it is necessary to do a great deal of reading, notice how articles are used in published texts, and take notes that can apply back to your own writing.

To get started, please read this blog post on The Argument for Articles .

A few important definitions to keep in mind:

one horse, two horses
one chair, two chairs
one match, two matches
one child, two children
one mouse, two mice
Information

Please see this webpage for more about countable and uncountable nouns .

"A" or "An"

When to use "a" or "an".

"A" and "an" are used with singular countable nouns when the noun is nonspecific or generic.

In this sentence, "car " is a singular countable noun that is not specific. It could be any car.
"University" is a singular countable noun. Although it begins with a vowel, the first sound of the word is /j/ or “y.” Thus, "a" instead of "an" is used. In this sentence, it is also generic (it could be any university with this specialization, not a specific one).
In this sentence, "apple" is a singular countable noun that is not specific. It could be any apple.

"A" is used when the noun that follows begins with a consonant sound.

a uniform (Note that "uniform" starts with a vowel, but the first sound is /j/ or a “y” sound. Therefore "a" instead of "an" is used here.)

"An" is used when the noun that follows begins with a vowel sound.

an elephant
an American
an MBA (Note that "MBA" starts with a consonant, but the first sound is /Ɛ/ or a short “e” sound. Therefore, "an" instead of "a" is used here.)

Sometimes "a" or "an" can be used for first mention (the first time the noun is mentioned). Then, in subsequent sentences, the article "the" is used instead.

In the first sentence (first mention), "a" is used because it is referring to a nonspecified house. In the second sentence, "the" is used because now the house has been specified.

When to Use "The"

"The" is used with both singular and plural nouns and with both countable and uncountable nouns when the noun is specific.

In this sentence, "book" is a singular, countable noun. It is also specific because of the phrase “that I read last night.” The writer and reader (or speaker and listener) know which book is being referred to.
In this sentence, "books" is a plural, countable noun. It is also specific because of the phrase “for this class.” The writer and reader (or speaker and listener) know which books are being referred to.
In this sentence, "advice" is an uncountable noun. However, it is specific because of the phrase “you gave me.” It is clear which piece of advice was helpful.

Here are some more specific rules:

"The" is used in the following categories of proper nouns:

Museums and art galleries : the Walker Art Center, the Minneapolis Institute of Art
Buildings : the Empire State Building, the Willis Tower
Seas and oceans : the Mediterranean Sea, the Atlantic Ocean
Rivers : the Mississippi, the Nile
Deserts : the Sahara Desert, the Sonora Desert
Periods and events in history: the Dark Ages, the Civil War
Bridges: the London Bridge, the Mackinac Bridge
Parts of a country : the South, the Upper Midwest

In general, use "the" with plural proper nouns.

the Great Lakes
the Rockies (as in the Rocky Mountains)

"The" is often used with proper nouns that include an “of” phrase.

the United States of America
the University of Minnesota
the International Swimming Hall of Fame

Use "the" when the noun being referred to is unique because of our understanding of the world.

The Earth moves around the sun.
Wolves howl at the moon.

Use "the" when a noun can be made specific from a previous mention in the text. This is also known as second or subsequent mention.

My son bought a cat. I am looking after the cat while he is on vacation.
I read a good book. The book was about how to use articles correctly in English.

"The" is used with superlative adjectives, which are necessarily unique (the first, the second, the biggest, the smallest, the next, the only, etc.).

It was the first study to address the issue.
She was the weakest participant.
He was the only person to drop out of the study.

Biber et al. (1999) found that "the" is about twice as common as "a" or "an" in academic writing. This may be because writers at this level often focus on overall ideas and categories ( generic reference , usually no article) and on specific references (definite reference, the article "the").

Biber, D., Johansson, S., Leech, G., Conrad, S., & Finegan, E. (1999). Longman grammar of written and spoken English . Pearson.

No Article (Generic Reference)

Writers sometimes struggle with the choice to include an article or to leave it out altogether. Keep in mind that if the noun is singular, countable, and nonspecific or generic (e.g., book, author), the articles "a" and "an" may be used. However, if the noun is countable and plural (e.g.., "research studies") or uncountable (e.g., "information") and it is being used in a nonspecific or generic way, no article is used.

Here are some more specifics:

I bought new pens and pencils at the store. (general, not specific ones)
Cats have big eyes that can see in the dark. (cats in general, all of them)
Babies cry a lot. (babies in general, all of them)
I bought milk and rice at the store. (generic reference)
We were assigned homework in this class. (generic reference)
There has been previous research on the topic. (generic reference)

Articles in Phrases and Idiomatic Expressions

Sometimes article usage in English does not follow a specific rule. These expressions must be memorized instead.

Here are some examples of phrases where article usage is not predictable:

Destinations: go to the store, go to the bank , but go to school, go to church, go to bed, go home
Locations: in school, at home, in bed, but in the hospital (in American English)
Parts of the day: in the morning, in the evening, but at night
Chores: mow the lawn, do the dishes, do the cleaning

There are also numerous idiomatic expressions in English that contain nouns. Some of these also contain articles while others do not.

Here are just a few examples:

To give someone a hand
To be on time

Related Resources

Knowledge Check: Articles

Didn't find what you need? Email us at [email protected] .

Previous Page: Noun–Pronoun Agreement
Next Page: Count and Noncount Nouns
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Purdue Online Writing Lab Purdue OWL® College of Liberal Arts

Parts of Speech Overview

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

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Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use.

A noun is a word that denotes a person, place, or thing. In a sentence, nouns answer the questions who and what.

In the sentence above, there are two nouns, dog and ball . A noun may be concrete (something you can touch, see, etc.), like the nouns in the example above, or a noun may be abstract, as in the sentences below.

The abstract concepts of integrity and love in the sentences above are both nouns. Nouns may also be proper.

Chicago , Thanksgiving , and November are all proper nouns, and they should be capitalized. (For more information on proper nouns and when to capitalize words, see our handout on Capital Letters .)

You may also visit our handout on Count and Noncount Nouns .

Learn how to spot verbs that act as nouns. Visit our handout on Verbals: Gerunds, Participles, and Infinitives .

A pronoun is a word that takes the place of a noun in a sentence.

In the sentence above, she is the pronoun. Like nouns, pronouns may be used either as subjects or as objects in a sentence.

In the example above, both she and him are pronouns; she is the subject of the sentence while him is the object. Every subject pronoun has a corresponding object form, as shown in the table below.



I	Me
We	Us
You	You
She	Her
He	Him
It	It
They	Them

For more information on pronouns, go to our handout on Pronouns .

To find out what part of speech are that , which , and whom ? Visit our handout on Relative Pronouns .

Articles include a , an , and the . They precede a noun or a noun phrase in a sentence.

In example 1, the article a precedes the noun house , and a also precedes the noun phrase big porch , which consists of an adjective (big) and the noun it describes (porch). In example 2, the article the precedes the noun phrase blue sweater , in which sweater is the noun and blue, the adjective.

For more information, go to our handouts on Articles: A vs. An and How to Use Articles (a/an/the) .

An adjective is a word that modifies, or describes, a noun or pronoun. Adjectives may precede nouns, or they may appear after a form of the reflexive verb to be (am, are, is, was, etc.).

In example 1, two consecutive adjectives, red and brick , both describe the noun house. In example 2, the adjective tall appears after the reflexive verb is and describes the subject, she .

For more on adjectives, go to our handouts Adjective or Adverb and How to Use Adjectives and Adverbs .

A verb is a word that denotes action, or a state of being, in a sentence.

In example 1, rides is the verb; it describes what the subject, Beth, does. In example 2, was describes Paul’s state of being and is therefore the verb.

There may be multiple verbs in a sentence, or there may be a verb phrase consisting of a verb plus a helping verb.

In example 1, the subject she performs two actions in the sentence, turned and opened . In example 2, the verb phrase is was studying .

Some words in a sentence may look like verbs but act as something else, like a noun; these are called verbals. For more information on verbs that masquerade as other parts of speech, go to our handout on Verbals: Gerunds, Participles, and Infinitives .

To learn more about conjugating verbs, visit our handouts on Verb Tenses , Irregular Verbs , and Two-Part (Phrasal) Verbs (Idioms) .

Just as adjectives modify nouns, adverbs modify, or further describe, verbs. Adverbs may also modify adjectives. (Many, though not all, adverbs end in - ly .)

In the first example, the adverb wildly modifies the verb waved . In the second example, the adverb extremely modifies the adjective bright , which describes the noun shirt . While nouns answer the questions who and what , adverbs answer the questions how , when , why , and where .

For a more detailed discussion of adverbs, visit our handout Adjective or Adverb and become an expert.

Conjunctions

A conjunction is a word that joins two independent clauses, or sentences, together.

In the examples above, both but and so are conjunctions. They join two complete sentences with the help of a comma. And, but, for, or, nor, so, and yet can all act as conjunctions.

Prepositions

Prepositions work in combination with a noun or pronoun to create phrases that modify verbs, nouns/pronouns, or adjectives. Prepositional phrases convey a spatial, temporal, or directional meaning.

There are two prepositional phrases in the example above: up the brick wall and of the house . The first prepositional phrase is an adverbial phrase, since it modifies the verb by describing where the ivy climbed. The second phrase further modifies the noun wall (the object of the first prepositional phrase) and describes which wall the ivy climbs.

For a more detailed discussion on this part of speech and its functions, click on Prepositions .

Below is a list of prepositions in the English language:

Aboard, about, above, across, after, against, along, amid, among, around, at, before, behind, below, beneath, beside, between, beyond, by, down, during, except, for, from, in, into, like, near, of, off, on, onto, out, over, past, since, through, throughout, to, toward, under, underneath, until, unto, up, upon, with, within, without.

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Knowledge Base
Parts of speech

The 8 Parts of Speech | Chart, Definition & Examples

A part of speech (also called a word class ) is a category that describes the role a word plays in a sentence. Understanding the different parts of speech can help you analyze how words function in a sentence and improve your writing.

The parts of speech are classified differently in different grammars, but most traditional grammars list eight parts of speech in English: nouns , pronouns , verbs , adjectives , adverbs , prepositions , conjunctions , and interjections . Some modern grammars add others, such as determiners and articles .

Many words can function as different parts of speech depending on how they are used. For example, “laugh” can be a noun (e.g., “I like your laugh”) or a verb (e.g., “don’t laugh”).

Prepositions
Conjunctions
Interjections

Other parts of speech

Interesting language articles, frequently asked questions.

A noun is a word that refers to a person, concept, place, or thing. Nouns can act as the subject of a sentence (i.e., the person or thing performing the action) or as the object of a verb (i.e., the person or thing affected by the action).

There are numerous types of nouns, including common nouns (used to refer to nonspecific people, concepts, places, or things), proper nouns (used to refer to specific people, concepts, places, or things), and collective nouns (used to refer to a group of people or things).

Ella lives in France .

Other types of nouns include countable and uncountable nouns , concrete nouns , abstract nouns , and gerunds .

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A pronoun is a word used in place of a noun. Pronouns typically refer back to an antecedent (a previously mentioned noun) and must demonstrate correct pronoun-antecedent agreement . Like nouns, pronouns can refer to people, places, concepts, and things.

There are numerous types of pronouns, including personal pronouns (used in place of the proper name of a person), demonstrative pronouns (used to refer to specific things and indicate their relative position), and interrogative pronouns (used to introduce questions about things, people, and ownership).

That is a horrible painting!

A verb is a word that describes an action (e.g., “jump”), occurrence (e.g., “become”), or state of being (e.g., “exist”). Verbs indicate what the subject of a sentence is doing. Every complete sentence must contain at least one verb.

Verbs can change form depending on subject (e.g., first person singular), tense (e.g., simple past), mood (e.g., interrogative), and voice (e.g., passive voice ).

Regular verbs are verbs whose simple past and past participle are formed by adding“-ed” to the end of the word (or “-d” if the word already ends in “e”). Irregular verbs are verbs whose simple past and past participles are formed in some other way.

“I’ve already checked twice.”

“I heard that you used to sing .”

Other types of verbs include auxiliary verbs , linking verbs , modal verbs , and phrasal verbs .

An adjective is a word that describes a noun or pronoun. Adjectives can be attributive , appearing before a noun (e.g., “a red hat”), or predicative , appearing after a noun with the use of a linking verb like “to be” (e.g., “the hat is red ”).

Adjectives can also have a comparative function. Comparative adjectives compare two or more things. Superlative adjectives describe something as having the most or least of a specific characteristic.

Other types of adjectives include coordinate adjectives , participial adjectives , and denominal adjectives .

An adverb is a word that can modify a verb, adjective, adverb, or sentence. Adverbs are often formed by adding “-ly” to the end of an adjective (e.g., “slow” becomes “slowly”), although not all adverbs have this ending, and not all words with this ending are adverbs.

There are numerous types of adverbs, including adverbs of manner (used to describe how something occurs), adverbs of degree (used to indicate extent or degree), and adverbs of place (used to describe the location of an action or event).

Talia writes quite quickly.

Other types of adverbs include adverbs of frequency , adverbs of purpose , focusing adverbs , and adverbial phrases .

A preposition is a word (e.g., “at”) or phrase (e.g., “on top of”) used to show the relationship between the different parts of a sentence. Prepositions can be used to indicate aspects such as time , place , and direction .

I left the cup on the kitchen counter.

A conjunction is a word used to connect different parts of a sentence (e.g., words, phrases, or clauses).

The main types of conjunctions are coordinating conjunctions (used to connect items that are grammatically equal), subordinating conjunctions (used to introduce a dependent clause), and correlative conjunctions (used in pairs to join grammatically equal parts of a sentence).

You can choose what movie we watch because I chose the last time.

An interjection is a word or phrase used to express a feeling, give a command, or greet someone. Interjections are a grammatically independent part of speech, so they can often be excluded from a sentence without affecting the meaning.

Types of interjections include volitive interjections (used to make a demand or request), emotive interjections (used to express a feeling or reaction), cognitive interjections (used to indicate thoughts), and greetings and parting words (used at the beginning and end of a conversation).

Ouch ! I hurt my arm.

I’m, um , not sure.

The traditional classification of English words into eight parts of speech is by no means the only one or the objective truth. Grammarians have often divided them into more or fewer classes. Other commonly mentioned parts of speech include determiners and articles.

Determiners

A determiner is a word that describes a noun by indicating quantity, possession, or relative position.

Common types of determiners include demonstrative determiners (used to indicate the relative position of a noun), possessive determiners (used to describe ownership), and quantifiers (used to indicate the quantity of a noun).

My brother is selling his old car.

Other types of determiners include distributive determiners , determiners of difference , and numbers .

An article is a word that modifies a noun by indicating whether it is specific or general.

The definite article the is used to refer to a specific version of a noun. The can be used with all countable and uncountable nouns (e.g., “the door,” “the energy,” “the mountains”).
The indefinite articles a and an refer to general or unspecific nouns. The indefinite articles can only be used with singular countable nouns (e.g., “a poster,” “an engine”).

There’s a concert this weekend.

If you want to know more about nouns , pronouns , verbs , and other parts of speech, make sure to check out some of our language articles with explanations and examples.

Nouns & pronouns

Common nouns
Proper nouns
Collective nouns
Personal pronouns
Uncountable and countable nouns
Verb tenses
Phrasal verbs
Types of verbs
Active vs passive voice
Subject-verb agreement

A is an indefinite article (along with an ). While articles can be classed as their own part of speech, they’re also considered a type of determiner .

The indefinite articles are used to introduce nonspecific countable nouns (e.g., “a dog,” “an island”).

In is primarily classed as a preposition, but it can be classed as various other parts of speech, depending on how it is used:

Preposition (e.g., “ in the field”)
Noun (e.g., “I have an in with that company”)
Adjective (e.g., “Tim is part of the in crowd”)
Adverb (e.g., “Will you be in this evening?”)

As a part of speech, and is classed as a conjunction . Specifically, it’s a coordinating conjunction .

And can be used to connect grammatically equal parts of a sentence, such as two nouns (e.g., “a cup and plate”), or two adjectives (e.g., “strong and smart”). And can also be used to connect phrases and clauses.

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General Education

If you’re trying to learn the grammatical rules of English, you’ve probably been asked to learn the parts of speech. But what are parts of speech and how many are there? How do you know which words are classified in each part of speech?

The answers to these questions can be a bit complicated—English is a difficult language to learn and understand. Don’t fret, though! We’re going to answer each of these questions for you with a full guide to the parts of speech that explains the following:

What the parts of speech are, including a comprehensive parts of speech list
Parts of speech definitions for the individual parts of speech. (If you’re looking for information on a specific part of speech, you can search for it by pressing Command + F, then typing in the part of speech you’re interested in.)
Parts of speech examples
A ten question quiz covering parts of speech definitions and parts of speech examples

We’ve got a lot to cover, so let’s begin!

Feature Image: (Gavina S / Wikimedia Commons)

What Are Parts of Speech?

The parts of speech definitions in English can vary, but here’s a widely accepted one: a part of speech is a category of words that serve a similar grammatical purpose in sentences.

To make that definition even simpler, a part of speech is just a category for similar types of words . All of the types of words included under a single part of speech function in similar ways when they’re used properly in sentences.

In the English language, it’s commonly accepted that there are 8 parts of speech: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, conjunctions, interjections, and prepositions. Each of these categories plays a different role in communicating meaning in the English language. Each of the eight parts of speech—which we might also call the “main classes” of speech—also have subclasses. In other words, we can think of each of the eight parts of speech as being general categories for different types within their part of speech . There are different types of nouns, different types of verbs, different types of adjectives, adverbs, pronouns...you get the idea.

And that’s an overview of what a part of speech is! Next, we’ll explain each of the 8 parts of speech—definitions and examples included for each category.

There are tons of nouns in this picture. Can you find them all?

Nouns are a class of words that refer, generally, to people and living creatures, objects, events, ideas, states of being, places, and actions. You’ve probably heard English nouns referred to as “persons, places, or things.” That definition is a little simplistic, though—while nouns do include people, places, and things, “things” is kind of a vague term. I t’s important to recognize that “things” can include physical things—like objects or belongings—and nonphysical, abstract things—like ideas, states of existence, and actions.

Since there are many different types of nouns, we’ll include several examples of nouns used in a sentence while we break down the subclasses of nouns next!

Subclasses of Nouns, Including Examples

As an open class of words, the category of “nouns” has a lot of subclasses. The most common and important subclasses of nouns are common nouns, proper nouns, concrete nouns, abstract nouns, collective nouns, and count and mass nouns. Let’s break down each of these subclasses!

Common Nouns and Proper Nouns

Common nouns are generic nouns—they don’t name specific items. They refer to people (the man, the woman), living creatures (cat, bird), objects (pen, computer, car), events (party, work), ideas (culture, freedom), states of being (beauty, integrity), and places (home, neighborhood, country) in a general way.

Proper nouns are sort of the counterpart to common nouns. Proper nouns refer to specific people, places, events, or ideas. Names are the most obvious example of proper nouns, like in these two examples:

Common noun: What state are you from?

Proper noun: I’m from Arizona .

Whereas “state” is a common noun, Arizona is a proper noun since it refers to a specific state. Whereas “the election” is a common noun, “Election Day” is a proper noun. Another way to pick out proper nouns: the first letter is often capitalized. If you’d capitalize the word in a sentence, it’s almost always a proper noun.

Concrete Nouns and Abstract Nouns

Concrete nouns are nouns that can be identified through the five senses. Concrete nouns include people, living creatures, objects, and places, since these things can be sensed in the physical world. In contrast to concrete nouns, abstract nouns are nouns that identify ideas, qualities, concepts, experiences, or states of being. Abstract nouns cannot be detected by the five senses. Here’s an example of concrete and abstract nouns used in a sentence:

Concrete noun: Could you please fix the weedeater and mow the lawn ?

Abstract noun: Aliyah was delighted to have the freedom to enjoy the art show in peace .

See the difference? A weedeater and the lawn are physical objects or things, and freedom and peace are not physical objects, though they’re “things” people experience! Despite those differences, they all count as nouns.

Collective Nouns, Count Nouns, and Mass Nouns

Nouns are often categorized based on number and amount. Collective nouns are nouns that refer to a group of something—often groups of people or a type of animal. Team , crowd , and herd are all examples of collective nouns.

Count nouns are nouns that can appear in the singular or plural form, can be modified by numbers, and can be described by quantifying determiners (e.g. many, most, more, several). For example, “bug” is a count noun. It can occur in singular form if you say, “There is a bug in the kitchen,” but it can also occur in the plural form if you say, “There are many bugs in the kitchen.” (In the case of the latter, you’d call an exterminator...which is an example of a common noun!) Any noun that can accurately occur in one of these singular or plural forms is a count noun.

Mass nouns are another type of noun that involve numbers and amount. Mass nouns are nouns that usually can’t be pluralized, counted, or quantified and still make sense grammatically. “Charisma” is an example of a mass noun (and an abstract noun!). For example, you could say, “They’ve got charisma, ” which doesn’t imply a specific amount. You couldn’t say, “They’ve got six charismas, ” or, “They’ve got several charismas .” It just doesn’t make sense!

Verbs are all about action...just like these runners.

A verb is a part of speech that, when used in a sentence, communicates an action, an occurrence, or a state of being . In sentences, verbs are the most important part of the predicate, which explains or describes what the subject of the sentence is doing or how they are being. And, guess what? All sentences contain verbs!

There are many words in the English language that are classified as verbs. A few common verbs include the words run, sing, cook, talk, and clean. These words are all verbs because they communicate an action performed by a living being. We’ll look at more specific examples of verbs as we discuss the subclasses of verbs next!

Subclasses of Verbs, Including Examples

Like nouns, verbs have several subclasses. The subclasses of verbs include copular or linking verbs, intransitive verbs, transitive verbs, and ditransitive or double transitive verbs. Let’s dive into these subclasses of verbs!

Copular or Linking Verbs

Copular verbs, or linking verbs, are verbs that link a subject with its complement in a sentence. The most familiar linking verb is probably be. Here’s a list of other common copular verbs in English: act, be, become, feel, grow, seem, smell, and taste.

So how do copular verbs work? Well, in a sentence, if we said, “Michi is ,” and left it at that, it wouldn’t make any sense. “Michi,” the subject, needs to be connected to a complement by the copular verb “is.” Instead, we could say, “Michi is leaving.” In that instance, is links the subject of the sentence to its complement.

Transitive Verbs, Intransitive Verbs, and Ditransitive Verbs

Transitive verbs are verbs that affect or act upon an object. When unattached to an object in a sentence, a transitive verb does not make sense. Here’s an example of a transitive verb attached to (and appearing before) an object in a sentence:

Please take the clothes to the dry cleaners.

In this example, “take” is a transitive verb because it requires an object—”the clothes”—to make sense. “The clothes” are the objects being taken. “Please take” wouldn’t make sense by itself, would it? That’s because the transitive verb “take,” like all transitive verbs, transfers its action onto another being or object.

Conversely, intransitive verbs don’t require an object to act upon in order to make sense in a sentence. These verbs make sense all on their own! For instance, “They ran ,” “We arrived ,” and, “The car stopped ” are all examples of sentences that contain intransitive verbs.

Finally, ditransitive verbs, or double transitive verbs, are a bit more complicated. Ditransitive verbs are verbs that are followed by two objects in a sentence . One of the objects has the action of the ditransitive verb done to it, and the other object has the action of the ditransitive verb directed towards it. Here’s an example of what that means in a sentence:

I cooked Nathan a meal.

In this example, “cooked” is a ditransitive verb because it modifies two objects: Nathan and meal . The meal has the action of “cooked” done to it, and “Nathan” has the action of the verb directed towards him.

Adjectives are descriptors that help us better understand a sentence. A common adjective type is color.

#3: Adjectives

Here’s the simplest definition of adjectives: adjectives are words that describe other words . Specifically, adjectives modify nouns and noun phrases. In sentences, adjectives appear before nouns and pronouns (they have to appear before the words they describe!).

Adjectives give more detail to nouns and pronouns by describing how a noun looks, smells, tastes, sounds, or feels, or its state of being or existence. . For example, you could say, “The girl rode her bike.” That sentence doesn’t have any adjectives in it, but you could add an adjective before both of the nouns in the sentence—”girl” and “bike”—to give more detail to the sentence. It might read like this: “The young girl rode her red bike.” You can pick out adjectives in a sentence by asking the following questions:

Which one?
What kind?
How many?
Whose’s?

We’ll look at more examples of adjectives as we explore the subclasses of adjectives next!

Subclasses of Adjectives, Including Examples

Subclasses of adjectives include adjective phrases, comparative adjectives, superlative adjectives, and determiners (which include articles, possessive adjectives, and demonstratives).

Adjective Phrases

An adjective phrase is a group of words that describe a noun or noun phrase in a sentence. Adjective phrases can appear before the noun or noun phrase in a sentence, like in this example:

The extremely fragile vase somehow did not break during the move.

In this case, extremely fragile describes the vase. On the other hand, adjective phrases can appear after the noun or noun phrase in a sentence as well:

The museum was somewhat boring.

Again, the phrase somewhat boring describes the museum. The takeaway is this: adjective phrases describe the subject of a sentence with greater detail than an individual adjective.

Comparative Adjectives and Superlative Adjectives

Comparative adjectives are used in sentences where two nouns are compared. They function to compare the differences between the two nouns that they modify. In sentences, comparative adjectives often appear in this pattern and typically end with -er. If we were to describe how comparative adjectives function as a formula, it might look something like this:

Noun (subject) + verb + comparative adjective + than + noun (object).

Here’s an example of how a comparative adjective would work in that type of sentence:

The horse was faster than the dog.

The adjective faster compares the speed of the horse to the speed of the dog. Other common comparative adjectives include words that compare distance ( higher, lower, farther ), age ( younger, older ), size and dimensions ( bigger, smaller, wider, taller, shorter ), and quality or feeling ( better, cleaner, happier, angrier ).

Superlative adjectives are adjectives that describe the extremes of a quality that applies to a subject being compared to a group of objects . Put more simply, superlative adjectives help show how extreme something is. In sentences, superlative adjectives usually appear in this structure and end in -est :

Noun (subject) + verb + the + superlative adjective + noun (object).

Here’s an example of a superlative adjective that appears in that type of sentence:

Their story was the funniest story.

In this example, the subject— story —is being compared to a group of objects—other stories. The superlative adjective “funniest” implies that this particular story is the funniest out of all the stories ever, period. Other common superlative adjectives are best, worst, craziest, and happiest... though there are many more than that!

It’s also important to know that you can often omit the object from the end of the sentence when using superlative adjectives, like this: “Their story was the funniest.” We still know that “their story” is being compared to other stories without the object at the end of the sentence.

Determiners

The last subclass of adjectives we want to look at are determiners. Determiners are words that determine what kind of reference a noun or noun phrase makes. These words are placed in front of nouns to make it clear what the noun is referring to. Determiners are an example of a part of speech subclass that contains a lot of subclasses of its own. Here is a list of the different types of determiners:

Definite article: the
Indefinite articles : a, an
Demonstratives: this, that, these, those
Pronouns and possessive determiners: my, your, his, her, its, our, their
Quantifiers : a little, a few, many, much, most, some, any, enough
Numbers: one, twenty, fifty
Distributives: all, both, half, either, neither, each, every
Difference words : other, another
Pre-determiners: such, what, rather, quite

Here are some examples of how determiners can be used in sentences:

Definite article: Get in the car.

Demonstrative: Could you hand me that magazine?

Possessive determiner: Please put away your clothes.

Distributive: He ate all of the pie.

Though some of the words above might not seem descriptive, they actually do describe the specificity and definiteness, relationship, and quantity or amount of a noun or noun phrase. For example, the definite article “the” (a type of determiner) indicates that a noun refers to a specific thing or entity. The indefinite article “an,” on the other hand, indicates that a noun refers to a nonspecific entity.

One quick note, since English is always more complicated than it seems: while articles are most commonly classified as adjectives, they can also function as adverbs in specific situations, too. Not only that, some people are taught that determiners are their own part of speech...which means that some people are taught there are 9 parts of speech instead of 8!

It can be a little confusing, which is why we have a whole article explaining how articles function as a part of speech to help clear things up .

Adverbs can be used to answer questions like "when?" and "how long?"

Adverbs are words that modify verbs, adjectives (including determiners), clauses, prepositions, and sentences. Adverbs typically answer the questions how?, in what way?, when?, where?, and to what extent? In answering these questions, adverbs function to express frequency, degree, manner, time, place, and level of certainty . Adverbs can answer these questions in the form of single words, or in the form of adverbial phrases or adverbial clauses.

Adverbs are commonly known for being words that end in -ly, but there’s actually a bit more to adverbs than that, which we’ll dive into while we look at the subclasses of adverbs!

Subclasses Of Adverbs, Including Examples

There are many types of adverbs, but the main subclasses we’ll look at are conjunctive adverbs, and adverbs of place, time, manner, degree, and frequency.

Conjunctive Adverbs

Conjunctive adverbs look like coordinating conjunctions (which we’ll talk about later!), but they are actually their own category: conjunctive adverbs are words that connect independent clauses into a single sentence . These adverbs appear after a semicolon and before a comma in sentences, like in these two examples:

She was exhausted; nevertheless , she went for a five mile run.

They didn’t call; instead , they texted.

Though conjunctive adverbs are frequently used to create shorter sentences using a semicolon and comma, they can also appear at the beginning of sentences, like this:

He chopped the vegetables. Meanwhile, I boiled the pasta.

One thing to keep in mind is that conjunctive adverbs come with a comma. When you use them, be sure to include a comma afterward!

There are a lot of conjunctive adverbs, but some common ones include also, anyway, besides, finally, further, however, indeed, instead, meanwhile, nevertheless, next, nonetheless, now, otherwise, similarly, then, therefore, and thus.

Adverbs of Place, Time, Manner, Degree, and Frequency

There are also adverbs of place, time, manner, degree, and frequency. Each of these types of adverbs express a different kind of meaning.

Adverbs of place express where an action is done or where an event occurs. These are used after the verb, direct object, or at the end of a sentence. A sentence like “She walked outside to watch the sunset” uses outside as an adverb of place.

Adverbs of time explain when something happens. These adverbs are used at the beginning or at the end of sentences. In a sentence like “The game should be over soon,” soon functions as an adverb of time.

Adverbs of manner describe the way in which something is done or how something happens. These are the adverbs that usually end in the familiar -ly. If we were to write “She quickly finished her homework,” quickly is an adverb of manner.

Adverbs of degree tell us the extent to which something happens or occurs. If we were to say “The play was quite interesting,” quite tells us the extent of how interesting the play was. Thus, quite is an adverb of degree.

Finally, adverbs of frequency express how often something happens . In a sentence like “They never know what to do with themselves,” never is an adverb of frequency.

Five subclasses of adverbs is a lot, so we’ve organized the words that fall under each category in a nifty table for you here:

It’s important to know about these subclasses of adverbs because many of them don’t follow the old adage that adverbs end in -ly.

Here's a helpful list of pronouns. (Attanata / Flickr )

#5: Pronouns

Pronouns are words that can be substituted for a noun or noun phrase in a sentence . Pronouns function to make sentences less clunky by allowing people to avoid repeating nouns over and over. For example, if you were telling someone a story about your friend Destiny, you wouldn’t keep repeating their name over and over again every time you referred to them. Instead, you’d use a pronoun—like they or them—to refer to Destiny throughout the story.

Pronouns are typically short words, often only two or three letters long. The most familiar pronouns in the English language are they, she, and he. But these aren’t the only pronouns. There are many more pronouns in English that fall under different subclasses!

Subclasses of Pronouns, Including Examples

There are many subclasses of pronouns, but the most commonly used subclasses are personal pronouns, possessive pronouns, demonstrative pronouns, indefinite pronouns, and interrogative pronouns.

Personal Pronouns

Personal pronouns are probably the most familiar type of pronoun. Personal pronouns include I, me, you, she, her, him, he, we, us, they, and them. These are called personal pronouns because they refer to a person! Personal pronouns can replace specific nouns in sentences, like a person’s name, or refer to specific groups of people, like in these examples:

Did you see Gia pole vault at the track meet? Her form was incredible!

The Cycling Club is meeting up at six. They said they would be at the park.

In both of the examples above, a pronoun stands in for a proper noun to avoid repetitiveness. Her replaces Gia in the first example, and they replaces the Cycling Club in the second example.

(It’s also worth noting that personal pronouns are one of the easiest ways to determine what point of view a writer is using.)

Possessive Pronouns

Possessive pronouns are used to indicate that something belongs to or is the possession of someone. The possessive pronouns fall into two categories: limiting and absolute. In a sentence, absolute possessive pronouns can be substituted for the thing that belongs to a person, and limiting pronouns cannot.

The limiting pronouns are my, your, its, his, her, our, their, and whose, and the absolute pronouns are mine, yours, his, hers, ours, and theirs . Here are examples of a limiting possessive pronoun and absolute possessive pronoun used in a sentence:

Limiting possessive pronoun: Juan is fixing his car.

In the example above, the car belongs to Juan, and his is the limiting possessive pronoun that shows the car belongs to Juan. Now, here’s an example of an absolute pronoun in a sentence:

Absolute possessive pronoun: Did you buy your tickets ? We already bought ours .

In this example, the tickets belong to whoever we is, and in the second sentence, ours is the absolute possessive pronoun standing in for the thing that “we” possess—the tickets.

Demonstrative Pronouns, Interrogative Pronouns, and Indefinite Pronouns

Demonstrative pronouns include the words that, this, these, and those. These pronouns stand in for a noun or noun phrase that has already been mentioned in a sentence or conversation. This and these are typically used to refer to objects or entities that are nearby distance-wise, and that and those usually refer to objects or entities that are farther away. Here’s an example of a demonstrative pronoun used in a sentence:

The books are stacked up in the garage. Can you put those away?

The books have already been mentioned, and those is the demonstrative pronoun that stands in to refer to them in the second sentence above. The use of those indicates that the books aren’t nearby—they’re out in the garage. Here’s another example:

Do you need shoes? Here...you can borrow these.

In this sentence, these refers to the noun shoes. Using the word these tells readers that the shoes are nearby...maybe even on the speaker’s feet!

Indefinite pronouns are used when it isn’t necessary to identify a specific person or thing . The indefinite pronouns are one, other, none, some, anybody, everybody, and no one. Here’s one example of an indefinite pronoun used in a sentence:

Promise you can keep a secret?

Of course. I won’t tell anyone.

In this example, the person speaking in the second two sentences isn’t referring to any particular people who they won’t tell the secret to. They’re saying that, in general, they won’t tell anyone . That doesn’t specify a specific number, type, or category of people who they won’t tell the secret to, which is what makes the pronoun indefinite.

Finally, interrogative pronouns are used in questions, and these pronouns include who, what, which, and whose. These pronouns are simply used to gather information about specific nouns—persons, places, and ideas. Let’s look at two examples of interrogative pronouns used in sentences:

Do you remember which glass was mine?

What time are they arriving?

In the first glass, the speaker wants to know more about which glass belongs to whom. In the second sentence, the speaker is asking for more clarity about a specific time.

Conjunctions hook phrases and clauses together so they fit like pieces of a puzzle.

#6: Conjunctions

Conjunctions are words that are used to connect words, phrases, clauses, and sentences in the English language. This function allows conjunctions to connect actions, ideas, and thoughts as well. Conjunctions are also used to make lists within sentences. (Conjunctions are also probably the most famous part of speech, since they were immortalized in the famous “Conjunction Junction” song from Schoolhouse Rock .)

You’re probably familiar with and, but, and or as conjunctions, but let’s look into some subclasses of conjunctions so you can learn about the array of conjunctions that are out there!

Subclasses of Conjunctions, Including Examples

Coordinating conjunctions, subordinating conjunctions, and correlative conjunctions are three subclasses of conjunctions. Each of these types of conjunctions functions in a different way in sentences!

Coordinating Conjunctions

Coordinating conjunctions are probably the most familiar type of conjunction. These conjunctions include the words for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so (people often recommend using the acronym FANBOYS to remember the seven coordinating conjunctions!).

Coordinating conjunctions are responsible for connecting two independent clauses in sentences, but can also be used to connect two words in a sentence. Here are two examples of coordinating conjunctions that connect two independent clauses in a sentence:

He wanted to go to the movies, but he couldn’t find his car keys.

They put on sunscreen, and they went to the beach.

Next, here are two examples of coordinating conjunctions that connect two words:

Would you like to cook or order in for dinner?

The storm was loud yet refreshing.

The two examples above show that coordinating conjunctions can connect different types of words as well. In the first example, the coordinating conjunction “or” connects two verbs; in the second example, the coordinating conjunction “yet” connects two adjectives.

But wait! Why does the first set of sentences have commas while the second set of sentences doesn’t? When using a coordinating conjunction, put a comma before the conjunction when it’s connecting two complete sentences . Otherwise, there’s no comma necessary.

Subordinating Conjunctions

Subordinating conjunctions are used to link an independent clause to a dependent clause in a sentence. This type of conjunction always appears at the beginning of a dependent clause, which means that subordinating conjunctions can appear at the beginning of a sentence or in the middle of a sentence following an independent clause. (If you’re unsure about what independent and dependent clauses are, be sure to check out our guide to compound sentences.)

Here is an example of a subordinating conjunction that appears at the beginning of a sentence:

Because we were hungry, we ordered way too much food.

Now, here’s an example of a subordinating conjunction that appears in the middle of a sentence, following an independent clause and a comma:

Rakim was scared after the power went out.

See? In the example above, the subordinating conjunction after connects the independent clause Rakim was scared to the dependent clause after the power went out. Subordinating conjunctions include (but are not limited to!) the following words: after, as, because, before, even though, one, since, unless, until, whenever, and while.

Correlative Conjunctions

Finally, correlative conjunctions are conjunctions that come in pairs, like both/and, either/or, and neither/nor. The two correlative conjunctions that come in a pair must appear in different parts of a sentence to make sense— they correlate the meaning in one part of the sentence with the meaning in another part of the sentence . Makes sense, right?

Here are two examples of correlative conjunctions used in a sentence:

We’re either going to the Farmer’s Market or the Natural Grocer’s for our shopping today.

They’re going to have to get dog treats for both Piper and Fudge.

Other pairs of correlative conjunctions include as many/as, not/but, not only/but also, rather/than, such/that, and whether/or.

Interjections are single words that express emotions that end in an exclamation point. Cool!

#7: Interjections

Interjections are words that often appear at the beginning of sentences or between sentences to express emotions or sentiments such as excitement, surprise, joy, disgust, anger, or even pain. Commonly used interjections include wow!, yikes!, ouch!, or ugh! One clue that an interjection is being used is when an exclamation point appears after a single word (but interjections don’t have to be followed by an exclamation point). And, since interjections usually express emotion or feeling, they’re often referred to as being exclamatory. Wow!

Interjections don’t come together with other parts of speech to form bigger grammatical units, like phrases or clauses. There also aren’t strict rules about where interjections should appear in relation to other sentences . While it’s common for interjections to appear before sentences that describe an action or event that the interjection helps explain, interjections can appear after sentences that contain the action they’re describing as well.

Subclasses of Interjections, Including Examples

There are two main subclasses of interjections: primary interjections and secondary interjections. Let’s take a look at these two types of interjections!

Primary Interjections

Primary interjections are single words, like oh!, wow!, or ouch! that don’t enter into the actual structure of a sentence but add to the meaning of a sentence. Here’s an example of how a primary interjection can be used before a sentence to add to the meaning of the sentence that follows it:

Ouch ! I just burned myself on that pan!

While someone who hears, I just burned myself on that pan might assume that the person who said that is now in pain, the interjection Ouch! makes it clear that burning oneself on the pan definitely was painful.

Secondary Interjections

Secondary interjections are words that have other meanings but have evolved to be used like interjections in the English language and are often exclamatory. Secondary interjections can be mixed with greetings, oaths, or swear words. In many cases, the use of secondary interjections negates the original meaning of the word that is being used as an interjection. Let’s look at a couple of examples of secondary interjections here:

Well , look what the cat dragged in!

Heck, I’d help if I could, but I’ve got to get to work.

You probably know that the words well and heck weren’t originally used as interjections in the English language. Well originally meant that something was done in a good or satisfactory way, or that a person was in good health. Over time and through repeated usage, it’s come to be used as a way to express emotion, such as surprise, anger, relief, or resignation, like in the example above.

This is a handy list of common prepositional phrases. (attanatta / Flickr)

#8: Prepositions

The last part of speech we’re going to define is the preposition. Prepositions are words that are used to connect other words in a sentence—typically nouns and verbs—and show the relationship between those words. Prepositions convey concepts such as comparison, position, place, direction, movement, time, possession, and how an action is completed.

Subclasses of Prepositions, Including Examples

The subclasses of prepositions are simple prepositions, double prepositions, participle prepositions, and prepositional phrases.

Simple Prepositions

Simple prepositions appear before and between nouns, adjectives, or adverbs in sentences to convey relationships between people, living creatures, things, or places . Here are a couple of examples of simple prepositions used in sentences:

I’ll order more ink before we run out.

Your phone was beside your wallet.

In the first example, the preposition before appears between the noun ink and the personal pronoun we to convey a relationship. In the second example, the preposition beside appears between the verb was and the possessive pronoun your.

In both examples, though, the prepositions help us understand how elements in the sentence are related to one another. In the first sentence, we know that the speaker currently has ink but needs more before it’s gone. In the second sentence, the preposition beside helps us understand how the wallet and the phone are positioned relative to one another!

Double Prepositions

Double prepositions are exactly what they sound like: two prepositions joined together into one unit to connect phrases, nouns, and pronouns with other words in a sentence. Common examples of double prepositions include outside of, because of, according to, next to, across from, and on top of. Here is an example of a double preposition in a sentence:

I thought you were sitting across from me.

You see? Across and from both function as prepositions individually. When combined together in a sentence, they create a double preposition. (Also note that the prepositions help us understand how two people— you and I— are positioned with one another through spacial relationship.)

Prepositional Phrases

Finally, prepositional phrases are groups of words that include a preposition and a noun or pronoun. Typically, the noun or pronoun that appears after the preposition in a prepositional phrase is called the object of the preposition. The object always appears at the end of the prepositional phrase. Additionally, prepositional phrases never include a verb or a subject. Here are two examples of prepositional phrases:

The cat sat under the chair .

In the example above, “under” is the preposition, and “the chair” is the noun, which functions as the object of the preposition. Here’s one more example:

We walked through the overgrown field .

Now, this example demonstrates one more thing you need to know about prepositional phrases: they can include an adjective before the object. In this example, “through” is the preposition, and “field” is the object. “Overgrown” is an adjective that modifies “the field,” and it’s quite common for adjectives to appear in prepositional phrases like the one above.

While that might sound confusing, don’t worry: the key is identifying the preposition in the first place! Once you can find the preposition, you can start looking at the words around it to see if it forms a compound preposition, a double preposition of a prepositional phrase.

10 Question Quiz: Test Your Knowledge of Parts of Speech Definitions and Examples

Since we’ve covered a lot of material about the 8 parts of speech with examples ( a lot of them!), we want to give you an opportunity to review and see what you’ve learned! While it might seem easier to just use a parts of speech finder instead of learning all this stuff, our parts of speech quiz can help you continue building your knowledge of the 8 parts of speech and master each one.

Are you ready? Here we go:

1) What are the 8 parts of speech?

a) Noun, article, adverb, antecedent, verb, adjective, conjunction, interjection b) Noun, pronoun, verb, adverb, determiner, clause, adjective, preposition c) Noun, verb, adjective, adverb, pronoun, conjunction, interjection, preposition

2) Which parts of speech have subclasses?

a) Nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs b) Nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions, and prepositions c) All of them! There are many types of words within each part of speech.

3) What is the difference between common nouns and proper nouns?

a) Common nouns don’t refer to specific people, places, or entities, but proper nouns do refer to specific people, places, or entities. b) Common nouns refer to regular, everyday people, places, or entities, but proper nouns refer to famous people, places, or entities. c) Common nouns refer to physical entities, like people, places, and objects, but proper nouns refer to nonphysical entities, like feelings, ideas, and experiences.

4) In which of the following sentences is the emboldened word a verb?

a) He was frightened by the horror film . b) He adjusted his expectations after the first plan fell through. c) She walked briskly to get there on time.

5) Which of the following is a correct definition of adjectives, and what other part of speech do adjectives modify?

a) Adjectives are describing words, and they modify nouns and noun phrases. b) Adjectives are describing words, and they modify verbs and adverbs. c) Adjectives are describing words, and they modify nouns, verbs, and adverbs.

6) Which of the following describes the function of adverbs in sentences?

a) Adverbs express frequency, degree, manner, time, place, and level of certainty. b) Adverbs express an action performed by a subject. c) Adverbs describe nouns and noun phrases.

7) Which of the following answers contains a list of personal pronouns?

a) This, that, these, those b) I, you, me, we, he, she, him, her, they, them c) Who, what, which, whose

8) Where do interjections typically appear in a sentence?

a) Interjections can appear at the beginning of or in between sentences. b) Interjections appear at the end of sentences. c) Interjections appear in prepositional phrases.

9) Which of the following sentences contains a prepositional phrase?

a) The dog happily wagged his tail. b) The cow jumped over the moon. c) She glared, angry that he forgot the flowers.

10) Which of the following is an accurate definition of a “part of speech”?

a) A category of words that serve a similar grammatical purpose in sentences. b) A category of words that are of similar length and spelling. c) A category of words that mean the same thing.

So, how did you do? If you got 1C, 2C, 3A, 4B, 5A, 6A, 7B, 8A, 9B, and 10A, you came out on top! There’s a lot to remember where the parts of speech are concerned, and if you’re looking for more practice like our quiz, try looking around for parts of speech games or parts of speech worksheets online!

What’s Next?

You might be brushing up on your grammar so you can ace the verbal portions of the SAT or ACT. Be sure you check out our guides to the grammar you need to know before you tackle those tests! Here’s our expert guide to the grammar rules you need to know for the SAT , and this article teaches you the 14 grammar rules you’ll definitely see on the ACT.

When you have a good handle on parts of speech, it can make writing essays tons easier. Learn how knowing parts of speech can help you get a perfect 12 on the ACT Essay (or an 8/8/8 on the SAT Essay ).

While we’re on the topic of grammar: keep in mind that knowing grammar rules is only part of the battle when it comes to the verbal and written portions of the SAT and ACT. Having a good vocabulary is also important to making the perfect score ! Here are 262 vocabulary words you need to know before you tackle your standardized tests.

Ashley Sufflé Robinson has a Ph.D. in 19th Century English Literature. As a content writer for PrepScholar, Ashley is passionate about giving college-bound students the in-depth information they need to get into the school of their dreams.

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Parts of Speech: The Ultimate Guide for Students and Teachers

This article is part of the ultimate guide to language for teachers and students. Click the buttons below to view these.

What are Parts of Speech ?

Just as a skilled bricklayer must get to grips with the trowel, brick hammer, tape measure, and spirit level, the student-writer must develop a thorough understanding of the tools of their trade too.

In English, words can be categorized according to their common syntactic function in a sentence, i.e. the job they perform.

We call these different categories Parts of Speech . Understanding the various parts of speech and how they work has several compelling benefits for our students.

Without first acquiring a firm grasp of the various parts of speech, students will struggle to fully comprehend how language works. This is essential not only for the development of their reading comprehension but their writing skills too.

Parts of speech are the core building blocks of grammar . To understand how a language works at a sentence and a whole-text level, we must first master parts of speech.

In English, we can identify eight of these individual parts of speech, and these will provide the focus for our Complete Guide to Parts of Speech .

THE EIGHT PARTS OF SPEECH (Click to jump to each section)

A complete unit on teaching figurative language.

Parts of Speech | figurative language Unit 1 | Parts of Speech: The Ultimate Guide for Students and Teachers | literacyideas.com

FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE is like “SPECIAL EFFECTS FOR AUTHORS.” It is a powerful tool to create VIVID IMAGERY through words. This HUGE UNIT guides you through completely understanding FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE .

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Often the first word a child speaks will be a noun, for example, Mum , Dad , cow , dog , etc.

Nouns are naming words, and, as most school kids can recite, they are the names of people, places, and things . But, what isn’t as widely understood by many of our students is that nouns can be further classified into more specific categories.

These categories are:

Common Nouns

Proper nouns, concrete nouns, abstract nouns, collective nouns, countable nouns, uncountable nouns.

All nouns can be classified as either common or proper .

Common nouns are the general names of people, places, and things. They are groups or classes on their own, rather than specific types of people, places, or things such as we find in proper nouns.

Common nouns can be further classified as abstract or concrete – more on this shortly!

Some examples of common nouns include:

People: teacher, author, engineer, artist, singer.

Places: country, city, town, house, garden.

Things: language, trophy, magazine, movie, book.

Proper nouns are the specific names for people, places, and things. Unlike common nouns, which are always lowercase, proper nouns are capitalized. This makes them easy to identify in a text.

Where possible, using proper nouns in place of common nouns helps bring precision to a student’s writing.

Some examples of proper nouns include:

People: Mrs Casey, J.K. Rowling, Nikola Tesla, Pablo Picasso, Billie Eilish.

Places: Australia, San Francisco, Llandovery, The White House, Gardens of Versailles.

Things: Bulgarian, The World Cup, Rolling Stone, The Lion King, The Hunger Games.

Nouns Teaching Activity: Common vs Proper Nouns

Provide students with books suitable for their current reading level.
Instruct students to go through a page or two and identify all the nouns.
Ask students to sort these nouns into two lists according to whether they are common nouns or proper nouns.

As mentioned, all common and proper nouns can be further classified as either concrete or abstract .

A concrete noun is any noun that can be experienced through one of the five senses. In other words, if you can see, smell, hear, taste, or touch it, then it’s a concrete noun.

Some examples of concrete nouns include:

Abstract nouns refer to those things that can’t be experienced or identified through the five senses.

They are not physical things we can perceive but intangible concepts and ideas, qualities and states.

Some examples of abstract nouns include:

Nouns Teaching Activity: Concrete Vs. Abstract Nouns

Provide students with a book suitable for their current reading level.
Instruct students to go through a page or two and identify all the nouns (the lists from Practice Activity #1 may be suitable).
This time, ask students to sort these nouns into two lists according to whether they are concrete or abstract nouns.

A collective noun is the name of a group of people or things. That is, a collective noun always refers to more than one of something.

Some examples of collective nouns include:

People: a board of directors, a team of football players, a cast of actors, a band of musicians, a class of students.

Places: a range of mountains, a suite of rooms, a union of states, a chain of islands.

Things: a bale of hay, a constellation of stars, a bag of sweets, a school of fish, a flock of seagulls.

Countable nouns are nouns that refer to things that can be counted. They come in two flavors: singular and plural .

In their singular form, countable nouns are often preceded by the article, e.g. a , an , or the .

In their plural form, countable nouns are often preceded by a number. They can also be used in conjunction with quantifiers such as a few and many .

Some examples of countable nouns include:

COUNTABLE NOUNS EXAMPLES


a driver	two drivers
the house	the houses
an apple	a few apples
dog	dogs

Also known as mass nouns, uncountable nouns are, as their name suggests, impossible to count. Abstract ideas such as bravery and compassion are uncountable, as are things like liquid and bread .

These types of nouns are always treated in the singular and usually do not have a plural form.

They can stand alone or be used in conjunction with words and phrases such as any , some , a little , a lot of , and much .

Some examples of uncountable nouns include:

UNCOUNTABLE NOUNS EXAMPLES

Advice

Money

Baggage

Danger

Warmth

Milk

Nouns Teaching Activity: How many can you list ?

Organize students into small groups to work collaboratively.
Challenge students to list as many countable and uncountable nouns as they can in ten minutes.
To make things more challenging, stipulate that there must be an uncountable noun and a countable noun to gain a point.
The winning group is the one that scores the most points.

Parts of Speech | parts of speech square 1 | Parts of Speech: The Ultimate Guide for Students and Teachers | literacyideas.com

Without a verb, there is no sentence! Verbs are the words we use to represent both internal and external actions or states of being. Without a verb, nothing happens.

There are many different types of verbs. Here, we will look at five important verb forms organised according to the jobs they perform:

Dynamic Verbs

Stative verbs, transitive verbs, intransitive verbs, auxiliary verbs.

Each verb can be classified as being either an action or a stative verb.

Dynamic or action verbs describe the physical activity performed by the subject of a sentence. This type of verb is usually the first we learn as children.

For example, run , hit , throw , hide , eat , sleep , watch , write , etc. are all dynamic verbs, as is any action performed by the body.

Let’s see a few examples in sentences:

I jogged around the track three times.
She will dance as if her life depends on it.
She took a candy from the bag, unwrapped it, and popped it into her mouth.

If a verb doesn’t describe a physical activity, then it is a stative verb.

Stative verbs refer to states of being, conditions, or mental processes. Generally, we can classify stative verbs into four types:

Emotions/Thoughts

Some examples of stative verbs include:

Senses: hurt, see, smell, taste, hear, etc.

Emotions: love, doubt, desire, remember, believe, etc.

Being: be, have, require, involve, contain, etc.

Possession: want, include, own, have, belong, etc.

Here are some stative verbs at work in sentences:

That is one thing we can agree on.
I remember my first day at school like it was yesterday.
The university requires students to score at least 80%.
She has only three remaining.

Sometimes verbs can fit into more than one category, e.g., be , have , look , see , e.g.,

She looks beautiful. (Stative)
I look through the telescope. (Dynamic)

Each action or stative verb can also be further classified as transitive or intransitive .

A transitive verb takes a direct object after it. The object is the noun, noun phrase, or pronoun that has something done to it by the subject of the sentence.

We see this in the most straightforward English sentences, i.e., the Subject-Verb-Object or SVO sentence.

Here are two examples to illustrate. Note: the subject of each sentence is underlined, and the transitive verbs are in bold.

The teacher answered the student’s questions.
She studies languages at university.
My friend loves cabbage.

Most sentences in English employ transitive verbs.

An intransitive verb does not take a direct object after it. It is important to note that only nouns, noun phrases, and pronouns can be classed as direct objects.

Here are some examples of intransitive verbs – notice how none of these sentences has direct objects after their verbs.

Jane’s health improved .
The car ran smoothly.
The school opens at 9 o’clock.

Auxiliary verbs, also known as ‘helping’ verbs, work with other verbs to affect the meaning of a sentence. They do this by combining with a main verb to alter the sentence’s tense, mood, or voice.

Auxiliary verbs will frequently use not in the negative.

There are relatively few auxiliary verbs in English. Here is a list of the main ones:

be (am, are, is, was, were, being)
do (did, does, doing)
have (had, has, having)

Here are some examples of auxiliary verbs (in bold) in action alongside a main verb (underlined).

She is working as hard as she can.

You must not eat dinner until after five o’clock.
The parents may come to the graduation ceremony.

The Subject-Auxiliary Inversion Test

To test whether or not a verb is an auxiliary verb, you can use the Subject-Auxiliary Inversion Test .

Take the sentence, e.g:
Now, invert the subject and the suspected auxiliary verb to see if it creates a question.

Is she working as hard as she can?

Can it take ‘not’ in the negative form?

She is not working as hard as she can.

If the answer to both of these questions is yes, you have an auxiliary verb. If not, you have a full verb.

Verbs Teaching Activity: Identify the Verbs

Instruct students to go through an appropriate text length (e.g., paragraph, page, etc.) and compile a list of verbs.
In groups, students should then discuss and categorize each verb according to whether they think they are dynamic or stative, transitive or intransitive, and/or auxiliary verbs.

The job of an adjective is to modify a noun or a pronoun. It does this by describing, quantifying, or identifying the noun or pronoun. Adjectives help to make writing more interesting and specific. Usually, the adjective is placed before the word it modifies.

As with other parts of speech, not all adjectives are the same. There are many different types of adjectives and, in this article, we will look at:

Descriptive Adjectives

Degrees of Adjectives

Quantitative Adjectives

Demonstrative adjectives, possessive adjectives, interrogative adjectives, proper adjectives.

Descriptive adjectives are what most students think of first when asked what an adjective is. Descriptive adjectives tell us something about the quality of the noun or pronoun in question. For this reason, they are sometimes referred to as qualitative adjectives .

Some examples of this type of adjective include:

hard-working

In sentences, they look like this:

The pumpkin was enormous .
It was an impressive feat of athleticism I ever saw.
Undoubtedly, this was an exquisite vase.
She faced some tough competition.

Degrees of Adjectives

Descriptive adjectives have three degrees to express varying degrees of intensity and to compare one thing to another. These degrees are referred to as positive , comparative , and superlative .

The positive degree is the regular form of the descriptive adjective when no comparison is being made, e.g., strong .

The comparative degree is used to compare two people, places, or things, e.g., stronger .

There are several ways to form the comparative, methods include:

Adding more or less before the adjective
Adding -er to the end of one syllable adjectives
For two-syllable adjectives ending in y , change the y to an i and add -er to the end.

The superlative degree is typically used when comparing three or more things to denote the upper or lowermost limit of a quality, e.g., strongest .

There are several ways to form the superlative, including:

Adding most or least before the adjective
Adding -est to the end of one syllable adjectives
For two-syllable adjectives ending in y , change the y to an i and add -est to the end.

There are also some irregular adjectives of degree that follow no discernible pattern that must be learned off by students, e.g., good – better – best .

Let’s take a look at these degrees of adjectives in their different forms.


beautiful	more beautiful	most beautiful
delicious	less delicious	least delicious
near	nearer	nearest
happy	happier	happiest
bad	worse	worst

Let’s take a quick look at some sample sentences:

It was a beautiful example of kindness.

Comparative

The red is nice, but the green is prettier .

Superlative

This mango is the most delicious fruit I have ever tastiest.

Quantitive adjectives provide information about how many or how much of the noun or pronoun.

Some quantitive adjectives include:

She only ate half of her sandwich.
This is my first time here.
I would like three slices, please.
There isn’t a single good reason to go.
There aren’t many places like it.
It’s too much of a good thing.
I gave her a whole box of them.

A demonstrative adjective identifies or emphasizes a noun’s place in time or space. The most common demonstrative adjectives are this , that , these , and those .

Here are some examples of demonstrative adjectives in use:

This boat is mine.
That car belongs to her.
These shoes clash with my dress.
Those people are from Canada.

Possessive adjectives show ownership, and they are sometimes confused with possessive pronouns.

The most common possessive adjectives are my , your , his , her , our , and their .

Students need to be careful not to confuse these with possessive pronouns such as mine , yours , his (same in both contexts), hers , ours , and theirs .

Here are some examples of possessive adjectives in sentences:

My favorite food is sushi.
I would like to read your book when you have finished it.
I believe her car is the red one.
This is their way of doing things.
Our work here is done.

Interrogative adjectives ask questions, and, in common with many types of adjectives, they are always followed by a noun. Basically, these are the question words we use to start questions. Be careful however, interrogative adjectives modify nouns. If the word after the question word is a verb, then you have an interrogative adverb on hand.

Some examples of interrogative adjectives include what , which , and whose .

Let’s take a look at these in action:

What drink would you like?
Which car should we take?
Whose shoes are these?

Please note: Whose can also fit into the possessive adjective category too.

We can think of proper adjectives as the adjective form of proper nouns – remember those? They were the specific names of people, places, and things and need to be capitalized.

Let’s take the proper noun for the place America . If we wanted to make an adjective out of this proper noun to describe something, say, a car we would get ‘ American car’.

Let’s take a look at another few examples:

Joe enjoyed his cup of Ethiopian coffee.
My favorite plays are Shakespearean tragedies.
No doubt about it, Fender guitars are some of the best in the world.
The Mona Lisa is a fine example of Renaissance art.

Though it may come as a surprise to some, articles are also adjectives as, like all adjectives, they modify nouns. Articles help us determine a noun’s specification.

For example, ‘a’ and ‘an’ are used in front of an unspecific noun, while ‘the’ is used when referring to a specific noun.

Let’s see some articles as adjectives in action!

You will find an apple inside the cupboard.
This is a car.
The recipe is a family secret.

Adjectives Teaching Activity: Types of Adjective Tally

Choose a suitable book and assign an appropriate number of pages or length of a chapter for students to work with.
Students work their way through each page, tallying up the number of each type of adjective they can identify using a table like the one below:


Descriptive
Comparative
Superlative
Quantitative
Demonstrative
Possessive
Interrogative
Proper
Articles

Note how degrees of adjective has been split into comparative and superlative. The positive forms will take care of in the descriptive category.
You may wish to adapt this table to exclude the easier categories to identify, such as articles and demonstrative, for example.

Traditionally, adverbs are defined as those words that modify verbs, but they do so much more than that. They can be used not only to describe how verbs are performed but also to modify adjectives, other adverbs, clauses, prepositions, or entire sentences.

With such a broad range of tasks at the feet of the humble adverb, it would be impossible to cover every possibility in this article alone. However, there are five main types of adverbs our students should familiarize themselves with. These are:

Adverbs of Manner

Adverbs of time, adverbs of frequency, adverbs of place, adverbs of degree.

Adverbs of manner describe how or the way in which something happens or is done. This type of adverb is often the first type taught to students. Many of these end with -ly . Some common examples include happily , quickly , sadly , slowly , and fast .

Here are a few taster sentences employing adverbs of manner:

She cooks Chinese food well .
The children played happily together.
The students worked diligently on their projects.
Her mother taught her to cross the road carefully .
The date went badly .

Adverbs of time indicate when something happens. Common adverbs of time include before , now , then , after , already , immediately , and soon .

Here are some sentences employing adverbs of time:

I go to school early on Wednesdays.
She would like to finish her studies eventually .
Recently , Sarah moved to Bulgaria.
I have already finished my homework.
They have been missing training lately .

While adverbs of time deal with when something happens, adverbs of frequency are concerned with how often something happens. Common adverbs of frequency include always , frequently , sometimes , seldom , and never .

Here’s what they look like in sentences:

Harry usually goes to bed around ten.
Rachel rarely eats breakfast in the morning.
Often , I’ll go home straight after school.
I occasionally have ketchup on my pizza.
She seldom goes out with her friends.

Adverbs of place, as the name suggests, describe where something happens or where it is. They can refer to position, distance, or direction. Some common adverbs of place include above , below , beside , inside , and anywhere .

Check out some examples in the sentences below:

Underneath the bridge, there lived a troll.
There were pizzerias everywhere in the city.
We walked around the park in the pouring rain.
If the door is open, then go inside .
When I am older, I would like to live nearby .

Adverbs of degree express the degree to which or how much of something is done. They can also be used to describe levels of intensity. Some common adverbs of degree include barely , little , lots , completely , and entirely .

Here are some adverbs of degree at work in sentences:

I hardly noticed her when she walked into the room.
The little girl had almost finished her homework.
The job was completely finished.
I was so delighted to hear the good news.
Jack was totally delighted to see Diane after all these years.

Adverb Teaching Activity: The Adverb Generator

Give students a worksheet containing a table divided into five columns. Each column bears a heading of one of the different types of adverbs ( manner , time , frequency , place , degree ).
Challenge each group to generate as many different examples of each adverb type and record these in the table.
The winning group is the one with the most adverbs. As a bonus, or tiebreaker, task the students to make sentences with some of the adverbs.

Pronouns are used in place of a specific noun used earlier in a sentence. They are helpful when the writer wants to avoid repetitive use of a particular noun such as a name. For example, in the following sentences, the pronoun she is used to stand for the girl’s name Mary after it is used in the first sentence.

Mary loved traveling. She had been to France, Thailand, and Taiwan already, but her favorite place in the world was Australia. She had never seen an animal quite as curious-looking as the duck-billed platypus.

We also see her used in place of Mary’s in the above passage. There are many different pronouns and, in this article, we’ll take a look at:

Subject Pronouns

Object pronouns, possessive pronouns, reflexive pronouns, intensive pronouns, demonstrative pronouns, interrogative pronouns.

Subject pronouns are the type of pronoun most of us think of when we hear the term pronoun . They operate as the subject of a verb in a sentence. They are also known as personal pronouns.

The subject pronouns are:

Here are a few examples of subject pronouns doing what they do best:

Sarah and I went to the movies last Thursday night.
That is my pet dog. It is an Irish Wolfhound.
My friends are coming over tonight, they will be here at seven.
We won’t all fit into the same car.
You have done a fantastic job with your grammar homework!

Object pronouns operate as the object of a verb, or a preposition, in a sentence. They act in the same way as object nouns but are used when it is clear what the object is.

The object pronouns are:

Here are a few examples of object pronouns in sentences:

I told you , this is a great opportunity for you .
Give her some more time, please.
I told her I did not want to do it .
That is for us .
Catherine is the girl whom I mentioned in my letter.

Possessive pronouns indicate ownership of a noun. For example, in the sentence:

These books are mine .

The word mine stands for my books . It’s important to note that while possessive pronouns look similar to possessive adjectives, their function in a sentence is different.

The possessive pronouns are:

Let’s take a look at how these are used in sentences:

Yours is the yellow jacket.
I hope this ticket is mine .
The train that leaves at midnight is theirs .
Ours is the first house on the right.
She is the person whose opinion I value most.
I believe that is his .

Reflexive pronouns are used in instances where the object and the subject are the same. For example, in the sentence, she did it herself , the words she and herself refer to the same person.

The reflexive pronoun forms are:

Here are a few more examples of reflexive pronouns at work:

I told myself that numerous times.
He got himself a new computer with his wages.
We will go there ourselves .
You must do it yourself .
The only thing to fear is fear itself .

This type of pronoun can be used to indicate emphasis. For example, when we write, I spoke to the manager herself , the point is made that we talked to the person in charge and not someone lower down the hierarchy.

Similar to the reflexive pronouns above, we can easily differentiate between reflexive and intensive pronouns by asking if the pronoun is essential to the sentence’s meaning. If it isn’t, then it is used solely for emphasis, and therefore, it’s an intensive rather than a reflexive pronoun.

Often confused with demonstrative adjectives, demonstrative pronouns can stand alone in a sentence.

When this , that , these , and those are used as demonstrative adjectives they come before the noun they modify. When these same words are used as demonstrative pronouns, they replace a noun rather than modify it.

Here are some examples of demonstrative pronouns in sentences:

This is delicious.
That is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.
These are not mine.
Those belong to the driver.

Interrogative pronouns are used to form questions. They are the typical question words that come at the start of questions, with a question mark coming at the end. The interrogative pronouns are:

Putting them into sentences looks like this:

What is the name of your best friend?
Which of these is your favourite?
Who goes to the market with you?
Whom do you think will win?
Whose is that?

Pronoun Teaching Activity: Pronoun Review Table

Provide students with a review table like the one below to revise the various pronoun forms.
They can use this table to help them produce independent sentences.
Once students have had a chance to familiarize themselves thoroughly with each of the different types of pronouns, provide the students with the headings and ask them to complete a table from memory.


I	me	my	myself	myself	this	what
you	you	your	yourself	yourself	that	which
he	him	his	himself	himself	these	who
she	her	her	herself	herself	those	whom
it	it	its	itself	itself		whose
we	us	our	ourselves	ourselves
you	you	your	yourselves	yourselves
they	them	their	themselves	themselves

Prepositions

Parts of speech - What is a preposition?

Prepositions provide extra information showing the relationship between a noun or pronoun and another part of a sentence. These are usually short words that come directly before nouns or pronouns, e.g., in , at , on , etc.

There are, of course, many different types of prepositions, each relating to particular types of information. In this article, we will look at:

Prepositions of Time

Prepositions of place, prepositions of movement, prepositions of manner, prepositions of measure.

Preposition of Agency
Preposition of Possession
Preposition of Source

Phrasal Prepositions

It’s worth noting that several prepositional words make an appearance in several different categories of prepositions.

Prepositions of time indicate when something happens. Common prepositions of time include after , at , before , during , in , on .

Let’s see some of these at work:

I have been here since Thursday.
My daughter was born on the first of September.
He went overseas during the war.
Before you go, can you pay the bill, please?
We will go out after work.

Sometimes students have difficulty knowing when to use in , on , or at . These little words are often confused. The table below provides helpful guidance to help students use the right preposition in the right context.


	Centuries YearsSeasonsMonthsTime of day
	DaysDatesSpecific holidays
	Some time of day exceptionsFestivals

The prepositions of place, in , at , on , will be instantly recognisable as they also double as prepositions of time. Again, students can sometimes struggle a little to select the correct one for the situation they are describing. Some guidelines can be helpful.

If something is contained or confined inside, we use in .
If something is placed upon a surface, we use on .
If something is located at a specific point, we use at .

A few example sentences will assist in illustrating these:

He is in the house.
I saw it in a magazine.
In France, we saw many great works of art.
Put it on the table.
We sailed on the river.
Hang that picture on the wall, please.
We arrived at the airport just after 1 pm.
I saw her at university.
The boy stood at the window.

Usually used with verbs of motion, prepositions of movement indicate movement from one place to another. The most commonly used preposition of movement is to .

Some other prepositions of movement include:

Here’s how they look in some sample sentences:

The ball rolled across the table towards me.
We looked up into the sky.
The children ran past the shop on their way home.
Jackie ran down the road to greet her friend.
She walked confidently through the curtains and out onto the stage.

Preposition of manner shows us how something is done or how it happens. The most common of these are by , in , like , on , with .

Let’s take a look at how they work in sentences:

We went to school by bus.
During the holidays, they traveled across the Rockies on foot.
Janet went to the airport in a taxi.
She played soccer like a professional.
I greeted her with a smile.

Prepositions of measure are used to indicate quantities and specific units of measurement. The two most common of these are by and of .

Check out these sample sentences:

I’m afraid we only sell that fabric by the meter.
I will pay you by the hour.
She only ate half of the ice cream. I ate the other half.
A kilogram of apples is the same weight as a kilogram of feathers.

Prepositions of Agency

These prepositions indicate the causal relationship between a noun or pronoun and an action. They show the cause of something happening. The most commonly used prepositions of agency are by and with .

Here are some examples of their use in sentences:

The Harry Potter series was written by J.K. Rowling.
This bowl was made by a skilled craftsman.
His heart was filled with love.
The glass was filled with water.

Prepositions of Possession

Prepositions of possessions indicate who or what something belongs to. The most common of these are of , to , and with .

Let’s take a look:

He is the husband of my cousin.
He is a friend of the mayor.
This once belonged to my grandmother.
All these lands belong to the Ministry.
The man with the hat is waiting outside.
The boy with the big feet tripped and fell.

Prepositions of Source

Prepositions of source indicate where something comes from or its origins. The two most common prepositions of source are from and by . There is some crossover here with prepositions of agency.

Here are some examples:

He comes from New Zealand.
These oranges are from our own orchard.
I was warmed by the heat of the fire.
She was hugged by her husband.
The yoghurt is of Bulgarian origin.

Phrasal prepositions are also known as compound prepositions. These are phrases of two or more words that function in the same way as prepositions. That is, they join nouns or pronouns to the rest of the sentence.

Some common phrasal prepositions are:

According to
For a change
In addition to
In spite of
Rather than
With the exception of

Students should be careful of overusing phrasal prepositions as some of them can seem clichéd. Frequently, it’s best to say things in as few words as is necessary.

Preposition Teaching Activity: Pr eposition Sort

Print out a selection of the different types of prepositions on pieces of paper.
Organize students into smaller working groups and provide each group with a set of prepositions.
Using the headings above as categories, challenge students to sort the prepositions into the correct groups. Note that some prepositions will comfortably fit into more than one group.
The winning group is the one to sort all prepositions correctly first.
As an extension exercise, students can select a preposition from each category and write a sample sentence for it.

ConjunctionS

Parts of Speech - What is a conjunction?

Conjunctions are used to connect words, phrases, and clauses. There are three main types of conjunction that are used to join different parts of sentences. These are:

Coordinating
Subordinating
Correlative

Coordinating Conjunctions

These conjunctions are used to join sentence components that are equal such as two words, two phrases, or two clauses. In English, there are seven of these that can be memorized using the mnemonic FANBOYS:

Here are a few example sentences employing coordinating conjunctions:

As a writer, he needed only a pen and paper.
I would describe him as strong but lazy.
Either we go now or not at all.

Subordinating Conjunctions

Subordinating conjunctions are used to introduce dependent clauses in sentences. Basically, dependent clauses are parts of sentences that cannot stand as complete sentences on their own.

Some of the most common subordinate conjunctions are:

Let’s take a look at some example sentences:

I will complete it by Tuesday if I have time.
Although she likes it, she won’t buy it.
Jack will give it to you after he finds it.

Correlative Conjunctions

Correlative conjunctions are like shoes; they come in pairs. They work together to make sentences work. Some come correlative conjunctions are:

either / or
neither / nor
Not only / but also

Let’s see how some of these work together:

If I were you, I would get either the green one or the yellow one.
John wants neither pity nor help.
I don’t know whether you prefer horror or romantic movies.

Conjunction Teaching Activity: Conjunction Challenge

Organize students into Talking Pairs .
Partner A gives Partner B an example of a conjunction.
Partner B must state which type of conjunction it is, e.g. coordinating, subordinating, or correlative.
Partner B must then compose a sentence that uses the conjunction correctly and tell it to Partner A.
Partners then swap roles.

InterjectionS

parts of speech - What is an interjection?

Interjections focus on feelings and are generally grammatically unrelated to the rest of the sentence or sentences around them. They convey thoughts and feelings and are common in our speech. They are often followed by exclamation marks in writing. Interjections include expressions such as:

Eww! That is so gross!
Oh , I don’t know. I’ve never used one before.
That’s very… err …generous of you, I suppose.
Wow! That is fantastic news!
Uh-Oh! I don’t have any more left.

Interjection Teaching Activity: Create a scenario

Once students clearly understand what interjections are, brainstorm as a class as many as possible.
Write a master list of interjections on the whiteboard.
Partner A suggests an interjection word or phrase to Partner B.
Partner B must create a fictional scenario where this interjection would be used appropriately.

With a good grasp of the fundamentals of parts of speech, your students will now be equipped to do a deeper dive into the wild waters of English grammar.

To learn more about the twists and turns of English grammar, check out our comprehensive article on English grammar here.

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The Eight Parts of Speech

Prepositions
Conjunctions
Interjections
Basic Sentence Structure
Sentence Fragments
Run-on Sentences and Comma Splices
Sentence Type and Purpose
Independent and Dependent Clauses: Coordination and Subordination
Subject Verb Agreement
Consistent Verb Tense
Other Phrases: Verbal, Appositive, Absolute
Pronoun Reference
Relative Pronouns: Restrictive and Nonrestrictive Clauses
Avoiding Modifier Problems
Transitions
Would, Should, Could
Achieving Parallelism
Definite and Indefinite Articles
Two-Word Verbs

TIP Sheet THE EIGHT PARTS OF SPEECH

There are eight parts of speech in the English language: noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, conjunction, and interjection. The part of speech indicates how the word functions in meaning as well as grammatically within the sentence. An individual word can function as more than one part of speech when used in different circumstances. Understanding parts of speech is essential for determining the correct definition of a word when using the dictionary.

1. NOUN

A noun is the name of a person, place, thing, or idea.

man... Butte College... house... happiness

A noun is a word for a person, place, thing, or idea. Nouns are often used with an article ( the , a , an ), but not always. Proper nouns always start with a capital letter; common nouns do not. Nouns can be singular or plural, concrete or abstract. Nouns show possession by adding 's . Nouns can function in different roles within a sentence; for example, a noun can be a subject, direct object, indirect object, subject complement, or object of a preposition.

The young girl brought me a very long letter from the teacher , and then she quickly disappeared. Oh my!

See the TIP Sheet on "Nouns" for further information.

2. PRONOUN

A pronoun is a word used in place of a noun.

She... we... they... it

A pronoun is a word used in place of a noun. A pronoun is usually substituted for a specific noun, which is called its antecedent. In the sentence above, the antecedent for the pronoun she is the girl. Pronouns are further defined by type: personal pronouns refer to specific persons or things; possessive pronouns indicate ownership; reflexive pronouns are used to emphasize another noun or pronoun; relative pronouns introduce a subordinate clause; and demonstrative pronouns identify, point to, or refer to nouns.

The young girl brought me a very long letter from the teacher, and then she quickly disappeared. Oh my!

See the TIP Sheet on "Pronouns" for further information.

3. VERB

A verb expresses action or being.

jump... is... write... become

The verb in a sentence expresses action or being. There is a main verb and sometimes one or more helping verbs. (" She can sing." Sing is the main verb; can is the helping verb.) A verb must agree with its subject in number (both are singular or both are plural). Verbs also take different forms to express tense.

The young girl brought me a very long letter from the teacher, and then she quickly disappeared . Oh my!

See the TIP Sheet on "Verbs" for more information.

4. ADJECTIVE

An adjective modifies or describes a noun or pronoun.

pretty... old... blue... smart

An adjective is a word used to modify or describe a noun or a pronoun. It usually answers the question of which one, what kind, or how many. (Articles [a, an, the] are usually classified as adjectives.)

See the TIP Sheet on "Adjectives" for more information.

5. ADVERB

An adverb modifies or describes a verb, an adjective, or another adverb.

gently... extremely... carefully... well

An adverb describes or modifies a verb, an adjective, or another adverb, but never a noun. It usually answers the questions of when, where, how, why, under what conditions, or to what degree. Adverbs often end in -ly.

See the TIP Sheet on "Adverbs" for more information.

6. PREPOSITION

A preposition is a word placed before a noun or pronoun to form a phrase modifying another word in the sentence.

by... with.... about... until

(by the tree, with our friends, about the book, until tomorrow)

A preposition is a word placed before a noun or pronoun to form a phrase modifying another word in the sentence. Therefore a preposition is always part of a prepositional phrase. The prepositional phrase almost always functions as an adjective or as an adverb. The following list includes the most common prepositions:

See the TIP Sheet on "Prepositions" for more information.

7. CONJUNCTION

A conjunction joins words, phrases, or clauses.

and... but... or... while... because

A conjunction joins words, phrases, or clauses, and indicates the relationship between the elements joined. Coordinating conjunctions connect grammatically equal elements: and, but, or, nor, for, so, yet. Subordinating conjunctions connect clauses that are not equal: because, although, while, since, etc. There are other types of conjunctions as well.

The young girl brought me a very long letter from the teacher, and then she quickly disappeared. Oh my!

See the TIP Sheet on "Conjunctions" for more information.

8. INTERJECTION

An interjection is a word used to express emotion.

Oh!... Wow!... Oops!

An interjection is a word used to express emotion. It is often followed by an exclamation point.

The young girl brought me a very long letter from the teacher, and then she quickly disappeared. Oh my !

See the TIP Sheet on "Interjections" for more information.

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Parts of Speech – What is an Article?

What is an article.

While we typically use words such as “the,” “a,” and “an,” without giving them much thought, they actually have a special name, articles, and there are some very specific details that define when you use these words.

What is an article, you ask? Articles are a part of speech used to express whether something is specific or unspecific. Still confused? Sit up, pay attention, and get ready for a grammar lesson.

Using “the”

This is the article that is used to define something specific.

For example: “This is the house,” or “this is the new car.”

Used in this way, it presumes that the house or car were already previously mentioned and made known to the audience or reader. In other words, the article makes reference to a specific house and car, not a generic one. Because of this, “the,” is known as the definite article.

Using “a,” or “an”

Conversely, if the reader or audience has not been made aware of the subject, you would use “a,” or “an.” In these cases, the subject is unspecified, and as such these articles are known as the indefinite articles.

For example: “This is a house,” or “this is a new car.”

Things to Remember

For example, use “an” for both of these sentences: “We are going to an appointment.” “I will be there in an hour.”
Articles precede adjectives (as shown above with “the new car” ).
For example, you wouldn’t say “play me a music,” you would say, “ play me music,” or “play me some music.”
Articles are not used with possessive adjectives or possessive nouns, such as my , yours , his or hers .

While you have been using these words for most of your life, now you can brush up on your article speaking skills and know just when (and when not!) to use each one!

Love learning about Language and Grammar? Check out our other posts on the subject, and make sure to play some Language quizzes on Sporcle!

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An Attack on Free Speech at Harvard

Universities require a culture of open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement.

Listen to this article

Produced by ElevenLabs and News Over Audio (NOA) using AI narration.

In a recent op-ed in The Harvard Crimson —“ Faculty Speech Must Have Limits ”—the university’s dean of social science, Lawrence Bobo, made an extraordinary set of claims that seriously threaten academic freedom, including the chilling idea that faculty members who dare to criticize the university should be punished. Bobo is a senior administrator at Harvard, overseeing centers and departments including history, economics, sociology, and African and African American studies. When he writes about faculty free speech, those within and outside his division listen.

His essay reflects a poor appreciation of the norms and values that academic freedom was developed to protect. As the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard—a faculty group of which I am co-president—has written, “A university must ensure that the work of its scholars receives robust, informed, and impartial appraisal that applies the best truth-seeking standards appropriate to their discipline— without pressure to bow to the opinions of the state, a corporation, a university administrator, or those (including students) who express feelings of outrage or harm about ideas they dislike.” Further, members of the academic community “should be free from reprisal for positions they defend, questions they ask, or ideas they entertain.” Stated another way, universities require a culture of open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement.

Bobo, for his part, presented two distinct scenarios in which he asserted that faculty speech should be restricted. His first example referenced prominent faculty members with large platforms for communicating their views who speak or write to “excoriate University leadership, faculty, staff, or students with the intent to arouse external intervention in University business.” He concluded that such speech may deserve to be punished by the university. The prime example he described came from “a former University president”—an apparent allusion to former Harvard President Lawrence Summers—who strongly criticized the university leadership’s response to the Hamas attacks on October 7.

Bobo didn’t identify the nature of the sanctions he had in mind. But any sanction for the speech he referenced would be a frontal assault on academic freedom. The speech he proposed to target doesn’t trigger any of the well-recognized exceptions to free-speech protection, such as extortion, bribery, libel, and sexual harassment; violation of time, place, and manner restrictions; and dereliction of professional duties. That a leader of Harvard would sanction a faculty member—with or without a large platform—for criticizing the actions of other members of the Harvard community or the university itself is outrageous. That would be true even if a faculty member really did speak with the intent to encourage what Bobo identified as “external actors”—media, alumni, donors, and government—to “intervene” in Harvard affairs.

Will Creeley: Those who preach free speech need to practice it

Each of the external constituencies Bobo identified has a legitimate interest in Harvard, and faculty should absolutely have the right to communicate their unhappiness with Harvard and its actions to these groups. Of course, such public criticisms may be right or wrong, well or poorly argued, and faculty risk reputational consequences based on the nature of their criticism. The appropriate response by university leaders who might disagree with such statements is to counter them with speech, as strongly and pointedly as those leaders wish, not to sanction them.

Two of the groups on Bobo’s list, however—alumni and donors—are part of the extended Harvard community, not simply external actors. The credentials and reputation of alumni are linked to the reputation of their alma mater, and donors have every right to weigh in on whether the beneficiary of their generosity is fulfilling its stated goals. Of course, these constituencies don’t speak with one voice, and the views of individuals or groups of alumni and donors may be reasonable or unreasonable. Leaders should listen to diverse inputs and, based on their considered judgment, choose and defend specific courses of action.

What if faculty statements are seen to promote government interventions in university affairs? A private university like Harvard has many well-defined points of intersection with government policy, including the need to conform with Titles VI and IX of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Likewise, universities agree to conform with a range of embedded policies when they accept government grants and gain access to student loans. If government interventions cross the line, making specific demands regarding curriculum and other educational and research matters, then the university would need to resist the threat to its core values under applicable law. But a faculty member who expressed support for intrusive government actions should have their views vigorously countered by university leaders, not be punished for expressing them.

Bobo’s second example of speech that needs limits involves faculty encouraging students to engage in campus activities that explicitly violate university rules of conduct, which raises distinct and more complicated issues. Of course, if a faculty member occupied a dean’s office to demand a specific administrative action, they could be sanctioned even under existing policies. But what if a faculty member encouraged protesting students to violate university rules? And what does encouragement even mean in this context?

Many faculty members supported the protests against Israel’s war in Gaza and communicated with students to provide advice and guidance, including on their rights as students and the nature and consequences of civil disobedience. Indeed, many law-school faculty members provided such advice and counsel in alignment with their professional roles, so the discussions were covered by attorney-client privilege. Such faculty speech should be fully protected.

But might there be instances where such faculty speech should not be protected? Free speech requires a very high bar for considering speech between a faculty member and a student protester to have crossed the line into conspiring to commit or aiding misconduct. I haven’t heard of any instances where faculty at Harvard went beyond providing moral support and counsel, and actually encouraged or incited students to violate clearly articulated university rules.

So, how strong are the cases Bobo made for restricting faculty speech? His first category—speech publicly critical of the university by a prominent member of the faculty—should be fully protected, never sanctioned or threatened with sanctions. He provided no cogent argument to the contrary consistent with the core principles of academic freedom. His second category—sanctioning a faculty member for encouraging students to violate campus rules—involves conduct that it seems no one has actually documented. Regrettably, though, the essay is likely both to chill faculty speech and to suppress appropriate advisory interactions between faculty and students, not least because Bobo failed to stipulate that the views were his own and not a statement of policy for the division he administers.

Robert E. Rubin: Higher education isn’t the enemy

To take an optimistic view, the current moment seems to have stimulated a valuable reaffirmation of the crucial importance of protecting campus speech and academic freedom. But Bobo’s essay is a reminder that there is much work still to be done, and that the price of academic freedom is eternal vigilance.

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Supreme Court Rejects Challenge to Biden Administration’s Contacts With Social Media Companies

The case, one of several this term on how the First Amendment applies to technology platforms, was dismissed on the ground that the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue.

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President Biden, wearing a blue suit, speaks at a lectern.

By Adam Liptak

Reporting from Washington

The Supreme Court handed the Biden administration a major practical victory on Wednesday, rejecting a Republican challenge that sought to prevent the government from contacting social media platforms to combat what it said was misinformation.

The court ruled that the states and users who had challenged those interactions had not suffered the sort of direct injury that gave them standing to sue.

The decision, by a 6-to-3 vote, left for another day fundamental questions about what limits the First Amendment imposes on the government’s power to influence the technology companies that are the main gatekeepers of information in the internet era.

The case arose from a barrage of communications from administration officials urging platforms to take down posts on topics like the coronavirus vaccine and claims of election fraud. The attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana, both Republicans, sued, along with three doctors, the owner of a right-wing website that frequently traffics in conspiracy theories and an activist concerned that Facebook had suppressed her posts on the supposed side effects of the coronavirus vaccine.

“The plaintiffs, without any concrete link between their injuries and the defendants’ conduct, ask us to conduct a review of the yearslong communications between dozens of federal officials, across different agencies, with different social media platforms, about different topics,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote for the majority. “This court’s standing doctrine prevents us from exercising such general legal oversight of the other branches of government.”

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch, dissented.

“For months,” Justice Alito wrote, “high-ranking government officials placed unrelenting pressure on Facebook to suppress Americans’ free speech. Because the court unjustifiably refuses to address this serious threat to the First Amendment, I respectfully dissent.”

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Racial justice, free speech groups join fight against potential TikTok ban

FILE - The icon for the video sharing TikTok app is seen on a smartphone, Feb. 28, 2023, in Marple Township, Pa. The Federal Trade Commission has referred a complaint against TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, to the Department of Justice. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum, File)

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A dozen social and racial justice groups said Thursday that the federal effort to require a sale or ban of TikTok would suppress speech from minority communities by disrupting a critical tool many use to establish connections online and advocate for causes.

The legal brief, submitted to a federal court in Washington, comes as TikTok and its Beijing-based parent, ByteDance, are waging a consequential legal battle against the law, which would disrupt the platform’s U.S. operation to address bipartisan concerns about the popular app .

Thursday is the deadline for third-party groups to file documents supporting the social video platform and eight TikTok creators who sued the U.S. government last month. The two cases have since been consolidated.

The legal filing submitted Thursday came from a diverse set of organizations, including the New York-based Asian American Federation, a Washington-based nonprofit called the Hispanic Heritage Foundation, a Virginia-based transgender advocacy organization named the Calos Coalition and the Muslim Public Affairs Council.

In the brief, the groups wrote that TikTok has been instrumental to advocacy around various issues, such as reproductive rights and opposition to anti-LGBTQ+ legislation around the country.

They say the platform has empowered diverse communities in online conversations and placed “marginalized views squarely before new audiences,” enabling them “to break down stereotypes that persist in America and globally.” The brief claims this happens because the platform gives communities increased reach and the ability to bypass “entrenched hierarchies” found on other social media platforms.

TikTok has also received support from other organizations, which have echoed arguments the company has made in its lawsuit against the government.

On Wednesday evening, seven other free speech-oriented advocacy groups submitted a brief to the court, arguing the law would infringe on the First Amendment and make it impossible for users to associate on the app. Some digital rights groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation have previously expressed support for the company or sided with it in a similar lawsuit against Montana last year.

The libertarian public interest firm Institute For Justice and Reason Foundation also filed a brief Thursday supporting TikTok’s free speech claims. Both groups have received donations from the Susquehanna Foundation, a sister organization to the trading firm co-founded by prominent ByteDance investor and Republican megadonor Jeff Yass.

The federal law, which President Joe Biden signed as part of a larger foreign aid package in April, is the U.S. government’s attempt to deal with long-running national security concerns about TikTok’s presence and reach in the U.S.

Lawmakers from both parties and some administration officials have said TikTok’s current ownership structure poses a threat since ByteDance operates under the laws of the Chinese government. They say Chinese authorities could force ByteDance to hand over U.S. user data or sway public opinion towards Beijing’s interests by tinkering with the algorithm that populates users’ feeds. However, the government hasn’t provided public evidence to support either claim.

The racial and social justice groups argue in their filing that anti-Asian sentiments clouded discussions around the law. Many TikTok creators have also opposed the measure, which marks the first time the U.S. has singled out a social media company for a potential ban. It gives ByteDance nine months to sell TikTok, and a possible three-month extension if a sale is in progress.

However, both companies have argued they would have to shut down TikTok’s U.S. operation by Jan. 19 because continuing to operate in the U.S. wouldn’t be commercially, technologically or legally possible if forced to divest.

Last week, TikTok filed another legal brief giving its account of negotiations it held with the Biden administration since 2021. The company said it presented a draft agreement in August 2022 but claimed the administration “ceased any substantive negotiations” with its attorneys after that.

The Justice Department said in a statement last week that it’s looking forward to defending the recently enacted legislation, which addresses “critical national security concerns in a manner that is consistent with the First Amendment and other constitutional limitations.”

The Cato Institute, a Washington-based libertarian think tank, is also expected to file a legal brief supporting TikTok. Yass currently serves as Cato’s vice chair.

Is Joe Biden sick? First presidential debate viewers surprised at hoarse voice

President Joe Biden started the first presidential debate with a noticeably hoarse voice.

Biden and former president Donald Trump are facing one another yet again after two debates in 2020 . They started out discussing inflation and abortion. But many online took notice of Biden's raspy voice as he delivered his early answers.

Pollster Frank Luntz , who is conducting a focus group on the showdown, said on X: "My focus group of undecided voters is surprised and concerned about Biden’s voice. This doesn’t bode well for questions about his health."

Candidates are allowed a water bottle at the lectern, along with a a pen and a pad of paper.

Presidential debate: Candidates have survived bad debates. But is a reckoning afoot after Biden v. Trump?

Biden freeze sparks backlash on Twitter

Biden freezing on stage when discussing healthcare quickly drew fire on X, formerly Twitter.

“Sorry, I’m voting for President Biden but a disaster so far,” wrote Mike Murphy, a Republican strategist and NBC News analyst, on the platform.

Stephen Hayes, editor and CEO of The Dispatch, tweeted, “Let the Dem panic begin.”

Biden was 'healthy' and 'robust' at this year's physical

Biden had a yearly physical in February , according to the results published by the White House.

"President Biden is a healthy, active, robust 81-year-old male who remains fit to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency," according to the report.

The report indicated Biden had been responding well to treatment for sleep apnea, a condition which breathing is repeatedly interrupted during sleep, according to the president's doctors. The report also showed some mild arthritic changes that contributes to his stiffened gate.

Contributing: Francesca Chambers

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Parts of Speech and Sentence Structure: Articles
The articles in the English language are the, a, an: An article belongs to a noun, but it can also be placed before a number or an adjective: the man, the tall man, the two men, the two tall men. As you can see, there are two different kinds of articles: a line, a house, a kitchen, a person, an apple, an airport, an idea, an umbrella.
Articles
Articles are the smallest of the small but still serve an important function. We have three articles in the English language: a, an and the. The is the definite article, which means it refers to a specific noun in a group. A or an is the indefinite article, which means it refers to any member of a group. You would use the indefinite article ...
The 9 Parts of Speech: Definitions and Examples
Also known as word classes, these are the building blocks of grammar. Every sentence you write or speak in English includes words that fall into some of the nine parts of speech. These include nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, articles/determiners, and interjections. (Some sources include only eight parts ...
Article (grammar)
Article (grammar) In grammar, an article is any member of a class of dedicated words that are used with noun phrases to mark the identifiability of the referents of the noun phrases. The category of articles constitutes a part of speech . In English, both "the" and "a (n)" are articles, which combine with nouns to form noun phrases.
Definite and Indefinite Articles
English has two types of articles to precede nouns: definite (the) and indefinite (a/an). You can improve the articles that appear in your dissertation by: not using unnecessary articles with plural nouns, not using "a" or "an" with uncountable nouns, using articles with singular countable nouns, correctly choosing "a" or "an ...
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In order to get at the idea of this thing called the article. We'll explain what that is after I tell you about the elephant and an elephant. Now articles are words like "a" or "an" or "the". Articles are a kind of adjective, some people would call them a determiner, that help you figure out how important something is.
Articles in English
An article is a short monosyllabic word that is used to define if the noun is specific or not. Articles are normally used before nouns and since they are used to speak about the noun, they can be considered as adjectives. Look at how various dictionaries define an article to have a much clearer idea of what they are.
Intro to articles
Courses on Khan Academy are always 100% free. Start practicing—and saving your progress—now: https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/grammar/parts-of-speech-...
Articles in Grammar: From "A" to "The" With "An" and "Some" Between
In English grammar, a pronoun is a word that takes the place of a noun, noun phrase, or noun clause. So, instead of the sentence: "Give the book to me," you would replace the definite article, "the," as well as the noun it modifies, "book," with the pronoun, "it," to yield the sentence: "Give it to me." A demonstrative is a determiner or a ...
Articles
Articles ("a," "an," and "the") are determiners or noun markers that function to specify if the noun is general or specific in its reference. Often the article chosen depends on if the writer and the reader understand the reference of the noun. The articles "a" and "an" are indefinite articles. They are used with a singular countable noun when ...
Parts of Speech Overview
Prepositional phrases convey a spatial, temporal, or directional meaning. Example 1: Ivy climbed up the brick wall of the house. There are two prepositional phrases in the example above: up the brick wall and of the house. The first prepositional phrase is an adverbial phrase, since it modifies the verb by describing where the ivy climbed.
Articles • 7ESL
In many languages, articles are a special part of speech which cannot be easily combined with other parts of speech. Article Grammar: A An The - Image 1. Different Types Of Article. As we mentioned, in English there are two different types of article, the definite article and the indefinite article. They are each used for their own purpose ...
Parts of Speech: A Super Simple Grammar Guide with Examples
The Verb (v.) A verb is one of the most important parts of speech and is a word that is used to describe an action. There are three main types of verbs which are detailed below. Examples: Walk, is, seem, realize, run, see, swim, stand, go, have, get, promise, invite, listen, sing, sit, laugh, walk….
PDF Articles: Rules and Exceptions to the Rules
Definition of the article as a part of speech: Articles can be thought of as adjectives because they function to modify a noun by limiting, quantifying or determining. e.g. "an onion" refers to any one onion. "the onion" refers to one particular onion which has been previously discussed or will be discussed with further descriptive writing.
The 8 Parts of Speech
The parts of speech are classified differently in different grammars, but most traditional grammars list eight parts of speech in English: nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections. Some modern grammars add others, such as determiners and articles. Many words can function as different parts of ...
Understanding the 8 Parts of Speech: Definitions and Examples
In the English language, it's commonly accepted that there are 8 parts of speech: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, conjunctions, interjections, and prepositions. Each of these categories plays a different role in communicating meaning in the English language. Each of the eight parts of speech—which we might also call the "main ...
A Complete Guide to Parts of Speech for Students and Teachers
Instruct students to go through an appropriate text length (e.g., paragraph, page, etc.) and compile a list of verbs. In groups, students should then discuss and categorize each verb according to whether they think they are dynamic or stative, transitive or intransitive, and/or auxiliary verbs.
The Eight Parts of Speech
The Eight Parts of Speech. There are eight parts of speech in the English language: noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, conjunction, and interjection. The part of speech indicates how the word functions in meaning as well as grammatically within the sentence. An individual word can function as more than one part of speech when ...
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Knowing the different parts of speech is essential for good grammar. Become an expert at knowing when and what parts of speech to use with these examples.
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This is the article that is used to define something specific. For example: "This is the house," or "this is the new car.". Used in this way, it presumes that the house or car were already previously mentioned and made known to the audience or reader. In other words, the article makes reference to a specific house and car, not a generic ...
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In a recent op-ed in The Harvard Crimson —" Faculty Speech Must Have Limits "—the university's dean of social science, Lawrence Bobo, made an extraordinary set of claims that seriously ...
Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Biden Administration in Social Media
Reporting from Washington. June 26, 2024. The Supreme Court handed the Biden administration a major practical victory on Wednesday, rejecting a Republican challenge that sought to prevent the ...
Racial justice, free speech groups join fight against potential TikTok
A dozen social and racial justice groups said Thursday that the federal effort to require a sale or ban of TikTok would suppress speech from minority communities by disrupting a critical tool many use to establish connections online and advocate for causes. The legal brief, submitted to a federal court in Washington, comes as TikTok and its ...
Is Biden sick? Debate viewers take note of hoarse voice
0:49. President Joe Biden started the first presidential debate with a noticeably hoarse voice. Biden and former president Donald Trump are facing one another yet again after two debates in 2020 ...

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Course: Grammar > Unit 4

Introduction to articles

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Video transcript

Articles in English - Learn What It Is, Definition, Types, Uses and Examples

Table of Contents

Usage and Exceptions – Points to be Remembered When Using Articles

Types of Articles

What is an article?

What are the types of articles?

What is a definite article?

What is an indefinite article?

Give some examples of articles.

Why is it ‘a university’ and not ‘an university’?

Why is it ‘an MBA’ and not ‘a MBA’?

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Articles in Grammar: From "A" to "The" With "An" and "Some" Between

Definite vs. Indefinite Articles

Using "A" and "An"

Before Countable and Uncountable Nouns

When to Omit Articles

Pronouns, Demonstratives, and Possessives

High-Ranking Words

Grammar: Articles

Article Basics

A few important definitions to keep in mind:

"A" or "An"

When to Use "The"

No Article (Generic Reference)

Articles in Phrases and Idiomatic Expressions

Related Resources

Knowledge Check: Articles

Walden Resources

Centers and Offices

Student Resources

Parts of Speech Overview

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

Conjunctions

Prepositions

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The 8 Parts of Speech | Chart, Definition & Examples

Table of contents

Other parts of speech

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What Are Parts of Speech?

Subclasses of Nouns, Including Examples

Common Nouns and Proper Nouns

Concrete Nouns and Abstract Nouns

Collective Nouns, Count Nouns, and Mass Nouns

Subclasses of Verbs, Including Examples

Copular or Linking Verbs

Transitive Verbs, Intransitive Verbs, and Ditransitive Verbs

#3: Adjectives

Subclasses of Adjectives, Including Examples

Adjective Phrases

Comparative Adjectives and Superlative Adjectives

Determiners

Subclasses Of Adverbs, Including Examples

Conjunctive Adverbs

Adverbs of Place, Time, Manner, Degree, and Frequency

#5: Pronouns

Subclasses of Pronouns, Including Examples

Personal Pronouns

Possessive Pronouns

Demonstrative Pronouns, Interrogative Pronouns, and Indefinite Pronouns

#6: Conjunctions

Subclasses of Conjunctions, Including Examples

Coordinating Conjunctions

Subordinating Conjunctions

Correlative Conjunctions

#7: Interjections

Subclasses of Interjections, Including Examples

Primary Interjections

Secondary Interjections