Parts of Speech in English

Parts of Speech in English

The Noun (n)

A noun is a word which gives a name to something, in some cases you might hear them referred to as a ‘naming word.’ There are various different subcategories of nouns such as the proper noun, the collective noun, the possessive noun and the common noun. Each one of these serves a different purpose, let’s look at this a little more closely.

Noun Examples : 

1.The Proper Noun

The proper noun is used to name a specific item, for example the names of places or people or perhaps a movie or song title.

Examples : 

• The capital of India is New Delhi.
• Saritha is beautiful.

2.The Collective Noun

A collective noun is used to refer to a group of nouns, for example people or animal groups.

• The swarm of bees were headed straight towards our picnic.
• At church on Sunday, the choir sings loudly.

3.The Possessive Noun

A possessive noun is used to show ownership of something, this is done by adding an apostrophe and an s, like in the following examples.

• This is my dog’s ball.
• That is Sarah’s friend.

4.The Common Noun

A common noun is the most simple form of a noun and gives a name to an item.

• Here is a cup.
• Do you want a cake?

This is a summary of the 9 parts of speech*. You can find more detail if you click on each part of speech.

part of speech	function or "job"	example words	example sentences
Verb	action or state	(to) be, have, do, like, work, sing, can, must	EnglishClub is a web site. I like EnglishClub.
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