Basic English Grammar – Parts of Speech

Parts of speech consist of 8 parts:

  1. Nouns: names of anything
  2. Pronouns: words standing instead of nouns
  3. Adjectives: words limiting the meaning of nouns
  4. Verbs: words expressing a action or state of being
  5. Adverbs: words limiting the meaning of verbs
  6. Conjunctions: joining words
  7. Prepositions: words used with nouns or pronouns to make phrases
  8. Interjections : words used to express a sudden feeling

Parts of speech will be seen in a sentence.

Example:

The words:WATCH

  1. My father gave me a new watch for my birthday.
  2. I am going to watch a football match.
  3. No thieves can come to our house because we have a good watch dog.

Exercise

  1. Use a big hammer for those nails.
  2. Hammer the nails in well.
  3. Nail the picture on the wall.
  4. I can answer that question.
  5. Give me the answer to the question.
  6. We are going to stay in Athens.
  7. Our stay there will be for only a week.
  8. We drink tea from tea cups.
  9. Will you come and have a drink?
  10. My father likes to smoke a pipe.

Basic English Grammar – Nouns 1

NOUNS

Nouns: is the name of anything.

Nouns are COMMON or PROPER

  • Proper Nouns

: are the names of specific people,place, or occasions, and they usually begin with a capital letter

Example:Shakespeare,Chicago, January, Christmas, Ramadan.

Names may consist of more than one word:The Hague, The New York Times, Heathrow Airport, Captain Andrews, MountEverest.

  • Common Nouns

: are nouns that are not names.

Example: The capital city of Indonesia is Jakarta

The word capital is the common nouns

Common nouns can be subclassified in two ways:

  1. Type of referent: concrete or abstract

Concrete nouns refer to people, places, or things: girl, kitchen, car.

Abstractnouns refer to qualities, states, or actions: humour, belief, honesty.

  1. Grammatical form: count or non-count
  2. Count nouns refer to entities that are viewed as countable. Count nouns thereforehave both a singular and a plural form and they can be accompanied bydeterminers that refer to distinctions in number:

Example:

-A student

-Ten students

  • Non-count nouns refer to entities that are viewed as an indivisible mass thatcannot be counted; for example, information, furniture, software. are treated as singular and can be accompanied only by determiners that do notrefer to distinctions in number.

Example:

-Much information

-Your information

COUNT NOUNS

Count nouns make a distinction between singular and plural. The regular plural endsin -s. This inflection (grammatical suffix), however, is pronounced in one of threeways, depending on the sound immediately before it. Contrast these three sets:

1. buses, bushes, churches, pages, diseases, garages

2. sums, machines, beliefs, days, toes, potatoes, babies, photos

3. tanks, patients, wives, shocks, notes,

Note:

Most nouns use –s (songs, boys, flowers)

Final -es is added to nouns that end in -sh, -ch, -s, -z, and –x (boxes, lunches)

The plural of words that end in a consonant + -y is spelled – ies (babies)

Some nouns that end in -o add -es to form the plural (echoes, potatoes)

Some nouns that end in -o add only -s to form the plural (autos, kilos)

Some nouns that end in -o add either -es or -s to form the plural. (zeroes/zeros)

Some nouns that end in -f or -fe are changed to -ves to form the plural (knives,shelves)

There are a few irregular plurals that reflect older English forms:

man – men mouse – mice

woman – women louse – lice

foot – feet brother – brethren (in special senses)

goose – geese child – children

tooth – teeth ox – oxen

There are a large number of classes of other irregular plurals, many of themhaving foreign plurals (e.g. stimulus – stimuli; curriculum – curricula; crisis – crises).

NONCOUNT NOUNS

Many noncount nouns refer to a “whole” that is made up different parts.

  1. Furniture : some chairs, tables, and desk
  2. Sugar: represent the whole masses made up of individual particles or elements.

Example :

Noncount : Anna has brown hair.

Tom has a hair on his jacket.

Some common noncount nouns :

  1. Whole groups made up of similar items : baggage, clothing, food, fruit, jewelry,makeup
  2. Fluids : water, coffee, tea
  3. Solids: ice, bread, butter, cheese, iron
  4. Gases: oxygen, steam, air
  5. Particles: rice, corn, grass, hair
  6. Abstractions: beauty, luck,advice, homework
  7. Language: Arabic, Chinese, English
  8. Recreation: baseball, tennis
  9. Fields of Study: Chemistry, history
  10. Activities : swimming, hiking, walking
  11. Natural phenomenon: weather, hail, heat