PARTS OF SPEECH
Noun:
A person, place or thing.
Examples: John walked over to the house.
A cat sat on the fence.
Pronoun:
Is used in the place of a noun. Try to use pronouns in order to avoid repetitiveness
in your writing.
Example: Jane was happy with her new house. She loved the flowers that grew in the
garden. (Jane is the noun; her and she are the pronouns)
Adjective:
A description word, used to describe the noun or pronoun.
Example: The famous chef prepared the main dish. (famous is an adjective that
describes the noun chef)
Verb:
This is also known as the “action word”.
Examples: The ball rolled along the floor.
The dog walked along the sidewalk with me.
Adverb:
Modifies a verb or an adjective.
Example: The vibrantly red roses sat on my windowsill. (vibrantly is the adverb that
modifies the adjective red)
Preposition:
Used to link nouns, pronouns and phrases to other words in the sentence. (e.g. on, in,
at, over, under, beside)
Example: The movies are on the television stand.
The popcorn is in the bowl.
Conjunction:
You can use a conjunction to link words, phases and clauses. Use the acronym
FANBOYS (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so) to remember the conjunctions.
Example: I love dogs, and I love cats.
I like baseball, but I would rather watch football.
Interjection:
An interjection is a word added to a sentence to convey emotion.
Examples: Ouch, that really hurt!
Hey, stop that!
Content words are open – they can be anything, and new ones are created all the time (Lexical).
Content words include:
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Nouns
Verbs
Adjectives
Adverbs
Grammar – function words are a fixed set of words (Non-Lexical).
Function words include:
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Conjunctions
Prepositions
Pronouns
Articles
Interjections
Developed by: The Communications Centre / Michelle Morrow / January 2008