Lecture 4

Presentation theme: Parts of Speech.
The
notional parts of speech
The Parts of Speech PLans to be discussed:
 - brief history of grouping words to parts of
speech
 - contemporary criteria for classifying words
to parts of speech
 - structural approach to the classification of
words (the doctrine of American descriptive
School) - notional and functional parts of
speech
Parts of
Speech
Learning about the parts of speech is the first step
in grammar study just as learning the letters of
the alphabet is the first step to being able to read
and write. From learning
the parts of speech we begin to understand the
use or function of words and how words are joined
together to make meaningful
communication.
To understand what a part of speech is, you
must understand the idea of putting
similar things together into groups or
categories. Let's look at some
examples of categories.
COLORS FRUITS DRINKS LANGUAGES
blue banana milk Spanish
red apple water Arabic
yellow orange soda Japanese
green grape beer English
black lemon coffee Korean

Colors, fruits, drinks, and languages are
categories.
The parts of speech are categories used to
organize or classify words according to how
they are used.
We use parts of speech as a way to make it easier
to talk about language.
The philosopher Aristotle and later scientists
studied animals and classified them according
to what they have in common.
For example, eagles, robins and sparrows are
kinds of birds; sharks, salmon and tuna are
kinds of fish; and dogs, horses and elephants
are kinds of mammals. Aristotle and others
also studied language and classified words
according to what they have in common.
We usually use 8 categories or parts of speech
to classify all the words we use in English. This
classification is not perfect. Sometimes it is
hard to tell which category a word belongs in.
The same word may belong in different
categories depending on how it is used.
There may be better ways to classify English
than by using the 8 parts of speech. But this
classification has been used for a long time and
many grammar books use it, so it is easier to
keep on using it. It is possible to speak or learn
a language without knowing
the parts of speech, but for most of us, knowing
about parts of speech makes things
easier.
Look at the sentence:
The man surreptitiously entered the room.
You probably don't know the meaning of the word

surreptitiously, but if you know about parts of
speech, you will recognize that it is an adverb and
that it tells you something about how the man
entered the room.
You may still not understand the exact meaning
of the word, but you can understand the whole
sentence better than if you did not know about
parts of speech.
example
part of function or example
sentence
speech "job" words
s
(to) be, have,
Ve action or do, like, work, EnglishClub.com
rb state sing, can, must is a web site. I
like
pen, dog, work,
EnglishClub.com.
This is my dog.
music, town,
Noun thing or He lives in my
London,
person house. We live in
teacher,
London.
John
a/an, the, 69, My dog is big.

Adjectiv describes a
e some, good, I like big
noun
big, red, well, dogs.
interesting
My dog eats
describes a quickly, silently, quickly. When he
Adver verb, adjective well, badly, is very hungry,
b or adverb very, really he eats really
quickly.
function example
part of speech example words
or "job" sentence
s
I, you, he, Tara is Indian.
Pronoun replaces a noun
she, some She is beautiful.
We went
links a noun to to, at, after,
Preposition to school
another word on, but
on
Monday.
I like dogs and
joins clauses I like cats. I
Conjunction or sentences and, but, when like cats and
or words dogs. I like
dogs but I
don't like cats.
short
Ouch! That
exclamation,
oh!, ouch!, hurts! Hi! How
Interjection sometimes
hi!, well are you? Well,
inserted into
I don't know.
a sentence
Verbs may be treated as two different parts
of speech:
Lexical Verbs (work, like, run)
Auxiliary Verbs (be, have, must)
Determiners may be treated as a separate

part of speech, instead of being categorized
under Adjectives
REMEMBER……..
Each part of speech explains not what the word is,
but how the word is used. In fact, the same word can
be a noun in one sentence and a verb or adjective
in the next.
Resources:
www.englishclub.com/grammar/parts-of
- speech.htm
www.writingcentre.uottawa.ca/hypergrammar/par
tsp.html
eslus.com/LESSONS/GRAMMAR/POS/pos.htm

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Presentation theme: Parts of Speech.

blue banana milk Spanish

red apple water Arabic

yellow orange soda Japanese

green grape beer English

black lemon coffee Korean

You probably don't know the meaning of the word

a/an, the, 69, My dog is big.

Determiners may be treated as a separate

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