What is a Part of Speech? We can categorize English words into 9 basic types called "parts
of speech" or "word classes". It's quite important to recognize parts of speech. This helps you to analyze sentences and understand them. It also helps you to construct good sentences. This is a summary of the 9 parts of speech*. You can find more detail if you click on each part of speech.
Parts of Speech Table
part of speechfunction or "job"example wordsexample sentences Verb
action or state
[to] be, have, do, like, work, sing, can, must
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Noun
thing or person
pen, dog, work, music, town, London, teacher, John
This is my dog. He lives in my house. We live in London.
Adjective
describes a noun
good, big, red, well, interesting
My dogs are big. I like big dogs.
Determiner
limits or "determines" a noun
a/an, the, 2, some, many
I have two dogs and some rabbits.
Adverb
describes a verb, adjective or adverb
quickly, silently, well, badly, very, really
My dog eats quickly. When he is very hungry, he eats really quickly.
Pronoun
replaces a noun
I, you, he, she, some
Tara is Indian. She is beautiful.
Preposition
links a noun to another word
to, at, after, on, but
We went to school on Monday.
Conjunction
joins clauses or sentences or words
and, but, when
I like dogs and I like cats. I like cats and dogs. I like dogs but I don't like cats.
Interjection
short exclamation, sometimes inserted into a sentence
oh!, ouch!, hi!, well
Ouch! That hurts! Hi! How are you? Well, I don't know.
* Some grammar sources traditionally categorize English into 8 parts of speech. Others say 10. At EnglishClub, we use the more recent categorization of 9 parts of speech. Examples of other categorizations are:
- 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 adjectives, instead of being a separate part of speech.
Parts of Speech Examples
Here are some examples of sentences made with different English parts of speech:
Stop! |
John | works. |
John | is | working. |
She | loves | animals. |
Tara | speaks | English | well. |
Tara | speaks | good | English. |
She | ran | to | the | station | quickly. |
She | likes | big | snakes | but | I | hate | them. |
Here is a sentence that contains every part of speech:
Well, | she | and | my | young | John | walk | to | school | slowly. |
Words with More Than One Job
Many words in English can have more than one job, or be more than one part of speech. For example, "work" can be a verb and a noun; "but" can be a conjunction and a preposition; "well" can be an adjective, an adverb and an interjection. In addition, many nouns can act as adjectives.
To analyze the part of speech, ask yourself: "What job is this word doing in this sentence?"
In the table below you can see a few examples. Of course, there are more, even for some of the words in the table. In fact, if you look in a good dictionary you will see that the word "but" has six jobs to do:
- verb, noun, adverb, pronoun, preposition and conjunction!
work | noun | My work is easy. |
verb | I work in London. | |
but | conjunction | John came but Mary didn't come. |
preposition | Everyone came but Mary. | |
well | adjective | Are you well? |
adverb | She speaks well. | |
interjection | Well! That's expensive! | |
afternoon | noun | We ate in the afternoon. |
noun acting as adjective | We had afternoon tea. |