Parts of speech are the basic types of words that English has. Most grammar books say that there are eight parts of speech: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, conjunctions, prepositions and interjections. This article only discusses five kinds of part of speech: Noun, Pronoun, Verb, Adverb, and Adjective.
1. NOUN
Noun is a kind of the word that shows the names of people, animals, objects, fruit, plants, places, objects and other abstract concepts. There are two types of noun:
A. Concrete Noun
Concrete noun refers to nouns which you can perceive through your five senses (can be touched and observed). There are five groups of concrete noun:
1) Proper Noun
Proper nouns always starts with a capital letter and refers to specific names of persons, places, or things. Proper noun used to name the institution, organization, day, month, nation, religion, and place.
(Ex: Della, Gunadarma University, World Health Organization, Europe, Merapi, November, etc.)
2) Common Noun
Common noun is the opposite of proper noun. Common noun is a noun for named a person, places, objects and things in general. Noun doesn’t use a capital letter at the beginning of the sentence, unless the word is the title of articles or placed at the beginning of a sentence.
(Ex: table, bag, fan, book, car, burger, bus, photo, cafeteria, etc.)
3) Countable Noun
Countable noun refers to anything that is countable, and has a singular and plural form.
(Ex: cat;<singular>/cats;<plural>, ball;<singular>/balls;<plural>, watch;<singular>/watches;<plural>, etc.)
4) Uncountable Noun
Uncountable noun is the opposite of countable noun. Uncountable noun is a noun that can’t be counted and and it needs to have “counters” to quantify it. The examples of counters are kilo, litre, cup, meter.
(Ex: sugar, rice, oil, flour, garter, etc.)
5) Collective Noun
Collective noun used to named a group or a set (consisting of more than one member). This noun can be a person, animal, object or abstract.
(Ex: committee, staff, flock, etc.)
B. Abstract Noun
Abstract nouns name things we cannot see, touch, or detect readily through our senses. Abstract nouns name ideas, measurement, emotions, or qualities.
(Ex: happiness, fear, beauty, freedom, courage, etc.)
2. PRONOUN
Pronoun is a part of a speech which functions as a replacement for a noun. There are several types of pronoun:
A. Personal Pronoun
Personal pronoun is used for people, animals, objects, or anything specific. The form of this pronoun is depending on the role (subject, object, possessive), quantity of something, and gender of the noun that was replaced. Here is a table to differentiate the roles of pronoun:
Number
|
Person
|
Case
| ||
Subjective
|
Objective
|
Possessive
| ||
Singular
|
1st
|
I
|
Me
|
Mine
|
2nd
|
You
|
You
|
Yours
| |
3rd
|
She, he, it
|
Her, him, it
|
Hers, his, its
| |
Plural
|
1st
|
We
|
Us
|
Ours
|
2nd
|
You
|
You
|
Yours
| |
3rd
|
They
|
Them
|
Theirs
| |
B. Demonstrative Pronoun
Demonstrative pronoun is a pronoun that uses a number of parameters (number) and distance (distance). Noun replaced generally in the form of objects, but can also be a person or thing.
(Ex: this, that, these and those.)
C. Interrogative Pronoun
Interrogative pronoun is a pronoun used to ask questions.
(Ex: who, whom, which, whose and what, as well as the pronoun with suffix -ever: whoever, whomever, whichever and whatever)
D. Relative Pronoun
Relative pronoun is to create the relative pronoun clause (subordinate clause that describes a noun in the main clause of a complex sentence). The relative pronoun can be subject, object, or possessive and does not represent the number (singular or plural) and gender (male or female) and those positions.
(Ex: who, whom, whose, which, and that and indefinite relative pronoun with suffix -ever, namely whoever, whomever, and whichever.)
E. Reflexive Pronoun
Reflexive pronoun is used to explain that the subject (such as people or animals) receives the action of the verb (reciprocal action) in a sentence.
(Ex: myself, yourself, herself, himself, itself (singular) and yourselves, ourselves, and themselves (plural).)
F. Reciprocal Pronoun
Reciprocal pronoun is used in sentence where two or more subjects do the same action against each other.
(Ex: each other and one another.)
3. ADJECTIVE
Adjective is used to describe a noun or a pronoun. It is located before a noun. Adjectives can specify the quality, the size, and the number of nouns or pronouns.
(Ex: beautiful, smart, big, tall, hot, polite, sweet, dirty, many, a lot of, any, some, etc.)
4. VERB
Verb is used to indicate the action of the subject, show events, or situation. Verb is the most important part of a speech, for without a verb, a sentence would not exist. There are several types of verbs:
A. Transitive and Intransitive Verb
Transitive is a verb followed by a direct object to take action from the subject, (ex: hit, touch, buy, etc.). Instead, Intransitive verb is a verb that is not followed by a direct object as the recipient of the action (ex: arrive, go, cry, etc.) because the actions taken not involved the direct object.
B. Regular and Irregular Verb
English verbs have 5 different forms, base form, simple present, simple past, present participle, and past participle. Based on changes in its shape, English verbs can be divided into regular and irregular.
Regular Verb, known also as weak verb, the verb is where the past tense and participle obtained by adding the suffix -ed to the base form. For example: studied, played, etc.
Irregular verbs or strong verbs, verbs that the past tense and participle obtained in various ways. There are different between the base form, past tense and participle. Most of the others is exactly have a same verb between past tense and participle.
VERB
| |||||
Regular
|
Irregular
| ||||
V1
|
V2
|
V3
|
V1
|
V2
|
V3
|
play
|
played
|
played
|
eat
|
ate
|
eaten
|
cry
|
cried
|
cried
|
drink
|
drank
|
drunk
|
watch
|
watched
|
watched
|
begin
|
began
|
begun
|
wash
|
washed
|
washed
|
bend
|
bent
|
bent
|
laugh
|
laughed
|
laughed
|
sing
|
sang
|
sung
|
5. ADVERB
Just like adjectives, adverbs are also used to describe words, but the difference is that adverbs describe adjectives, verbs, or another adverb. There are several types of adverb:
A. Adverb of Manner
This refers to how something happens or how an action is done. Most of it usually obtained by adding –ly.
(Ex: easily, happily, slowly, beautifully, actively, fast, hard, suddenly, carefully, etc.)
B. Adverb of Time
This refers to “when” something happens or “when” it is done.
(Ex: yesterday, now, soon, recently, before, after, last night, today, last week, etc.)
C. Adverb of Place
This refers to “where” something happens or “where” it is done.
(Ex: here, there, on the table, in Padang, in my house, etc.)
D. Adverb of Degree
This refers to the intensity or the degree to which a specific thing happens or is done.
(Ex: very, so, too, well, quite, just, only, slightly, extremely, fairly, almost, etc.)
E. Adverb of Frequency
This refers to how often something happens or how often it is done.
(Ex: always, usually, frequently, never, often, sometimes, seldom, rarely, etc.)
References:
Sukur, Silvester Goridus. 2007. Complete English Grammar For The Toefl® Test Langkah Jitu Melejitkan Score Toefl® Test. Yogyakarta : Indonesia Cerdas.
http://web2.uvcs.uvic.ca
http;//partofspeech.org
http://en.wikipedia.org
http;//www.englishclub.com
