Parts of speech
Every English word can be assigned to a particular category, or part of speech, based on its grammatical function. There are eight categories altogether: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions and interjections. A word can belong to more than one part of speech, however when the word is used in a sentence it functions as only one part of speech within that sentence.
Every English word falls into one of eight parts of speech based on the grammatical function of that word.
Nouns
Accurately defining a noun is a little tricky without using a lot of other grammatical terminology that we haven’t introduced yet. However anyone who can speak English (or any other language) already has an intuitive understanding of what a noun is, so we’re going to rely on a simplified, intuitive (although not entirely accurate) definition and a few examples. Our simplified definition is this: A noun is a word that refers to a person or a thing.
A noun is a word that refers to a person or a thing.
In the following examples, all the nouns appear in bold.
| Nouns |
|---|
| John starts the engine. |
| The man walks along a path. |
| A dog barks. |
| Beauty is all around. |
| What time does the train leave? |
| What is the weather like today? |
| I have an idea. |
| Let’s go for a run. |
| Mary likes peanuts. |
| Peter finds a scratch on his new car. |
Articles
There is a very small category of English words known as articles. There are in fact only three articles in standard English: ”a”, “an” and “the”. In terms of the parts of speech, articles fall within the larger category of adjectives, however we won’t be dealing with adjectives in general until a later lesson. Articles appear before nouns in order to help identify what the noun is referring to.
| Articles |
|---|
| John starts the engine. |
| The man walks along a path. |
| An apple a day keeps the doctor away. |
Definite and indefinite articles
The articles are further classified as the definite article (the) and the indefinite articles (a, an). The definite article generally refers to a specific (definite) item, while the indefinite article refers to an arbitrary (indefinite) item.
| Definite and indefinite articles |
|---|
| We fed the cat. |
| We fed a cat. |
In the first example (using the definite article) there is a presumption that the reader knows exactly which cat we are talking about. Perhaps the cat was already mentioned in a previous sentence, or perhaps there is some other context that makes it clear which cat it is. In the second example (using the indefinite article), the opposite presumption exists - that the reader does not already know about the cat; it is some arbitrary cat that is being introduced into the discussion for the first time.
