THE EIGHT
PARTS OF SPEECH
DIONYSIUS THRAX (c. 100 BC)
Onoma (noun): a part of speech inflected for case, signifying a person or thing
Rhema (verb): a part of speech without case inflection, but inflected for tense, person,
number, signifying an activity or process performed or undone
Metoche (participle): a part of speech sharing the features of the verb and the noun
Arthon (article): a part of speech inflected for case and preposed or postposed to nouns
Antonymia (pronoun): a part of speech substitutable for a noun and marked for person
Prothesis (preposition): a part of speech placed before other words in composition and in
syntax
Epirrhema (adverb): a part of speech without inflection, in modification of or in addition
to a verb
Syndesmos (conjunction): a part of speech binding together the discourse and filling gaps
in its interpretation
PRISCIAN (c. 500 AD)
Nomen (noun, including words now classed as adjectives): the property of a noun is to
indicate a substance and a quality, and it assigns a common or a particular quality to
every body or thing
Verbum (verb) the property of a verb is to indicate an action or a being acted on; it has
tense and mood forms, but is not case inflected
Participium (participle): a class of words always derivationally referable to verbs, sharing
the categories of verbs and nouns (tenses and cases), and therefore distinct from both
Pronomen (pronoun): the property of the pronoun is its substitutability for proper nouns
and its specificability as to person (first, second, third). A specific property of the
pronoun is to indicate substance without quality, a way of interpreting the lack of lexical
restriction on the nouns which may be referred to anaphorically by pronouns
Adverbium (adverb): the property of an adverb is to be used in construction with a verb,
to which it is syntactically and semantically subordinate
Praepositio (preposition): the property of the preposition is to be used as a separate word
before case inflected words and in composition before both case-inflected and non-caseinflected words. Priscian, like Thrax, identified the first part of words like proconsul
(proconsul) and intercurrere (to mingle with) as prepositions.
Interiectio (interjection): a class of words syntactically independent of verbs, and
indicating a feeling or state of mind
Coniunctio (conjunction): the property of conjunctions is to join syntactically two or
more members of any other word class, indication a relationship between them
MODESTIAE (c. 1350)
Nomen: a part of speech signifying by means of the mode of an existent or of something
with distinctive characters, a mode of stability and permanence
Verbum: a part of speech signifying through the mode of temporal process, detached from
the substance of which it is predicated
Participium: a part of speech signifying through the mode of an existent, without
distinctive characteristics. The mode of existing without distinctive characteristics comes
from the property or mode of being of primal matter
Adverbium: a part of speech signifying by the mode of being constructed with another
part of speech that signifies through the mode of temporal process, and further qualifying
that mode but without other syntactic relationships
Coniunctio: a part of speech signifying through the mode of joining two other items
Praepositio: a part of speech signifying through the mode of syntactic construction with
a case inflected word, linking and relating it to an action
Interiectio: a part of speech signifying through the mode of qualifying a verb or a
participle, and indicating a feeling or an emotion. The specific association of the
interjection with verbs and participles springs from its earlier inclusion in the adverb
class by the Greek grammarians.