The Eight Parts of Speech
The words of the English language are classified into eight categories. These are called the
parts of speech:
Noun, Verb, Pronoun, Preposition, Adjective, Adverb, Conjunction, Interjection
The Noun:
Person: Dr. Beenken is my teacher.
Place: Birmingham is my home town.
Thing: My purse has a broken strap.
Quality: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder
Idea: Love for my country is based on the freedoms given to me.
Activity: Swimming is an activity I enjoy
Condition: Alcoholism claims many lives each year.
There are five major categories of nouns:
1. Common: any one of a group of non-specified things such as woman, teacher, girl
town, school, month, etc.
2. Proper: a specific naming word such as Mountain Brook Junior High/school or Dr.
Beenken/teacher falls into the proper category. A proper noun always begins with a
capital letter. Common and proper nouns can also fit into some of these other
categories.
3. Concrete: this refers to any noun that can be seen or touched in the physical sense of
the words see and touch. Examples of concrete nouns could include words like
pencil, picture, statue, air, Jane, leaf, etc. Both common and proper nouns can be
concrete.
4. Abstract: An abstract noun is something that cannot be seen or touched in the
physical sense. “Love” would be an abstract noun, because, even though the results
of love can be seen through acts of caring and affection, this word does not mean the
same thing to all people. There are different interpretations of love’s meaning.
Other examples of abstract nouns could include freedom, pride, integrity, honesty,
hate, friendship, etc. Just as all nouns will be either common or proper, all nouns
will also be either concrete or abstract.
5. Collective: A collective noun is a word that is singular in form but refers to
something that includes more than one member or number. Examples could
include flock, pack, troop, army, family, congregation, school, herd, collection. A
helpful way to remember this type of noun is to think about a collection you might
have. I collect cardinals, but if you had only one cardinal, that would not be
considered a collection.