SECTION VIII GRAMMATICAL REVIEW 1 THE PARTS OF SPEECH I. The Definitions of the Parts of Speech. A. A Noun is the name of any person, place, or thing. 1. A Proper noun is the name of some particular person, place, or thing or of a particular class, -John, Pittsburgh, Ceylon, Frenchmen. 2. A Common noun is the name of any class of person, place, or thing, -person, city, tea, desk, chair. 3. A Collective noun is the name of any collection of persons, places, or things, crowd, army, tribe. 4. An Abstract noun is the name of a quality or condition of a person, place, or thing, — sweetness, distance, happiness. B. A Pronoun is a word used in place of a noun (a substitute for a noun). The word to which it refers is called its antecedent. 1. A Personal pronoun is one that refers to a person, - I, thou, you, he, she, it, we, they. 2. A Relative pronoun is one that connects; it may refer to a person, a place, or a thing. a. The relative pronouns are who, which, what, that, as, and their compounds whoever, whosoever, whatever, whatsoever, whichever, which soever. 1 The student should carefully note the tabulation of the various major and minor headings in this section. 3. An Interrogative pronoun is the pronoun used in asking a question, who, what, which. 4. An Adjective pronoun is a pronoun that points out or limits the noun or nouns for which it stands. There are two classes of adjective pronouns : a. Demonstrative or definite pronouns, which point out; such as, this, that, these, those. which limit, either, b. Indefinite pronouns which neither, both, each, all, some, few, any, one, none. C. An Adjective is a word that modifies a noun or a pronoun. 1. A Descriptive adjective is one that denotes the quality of some object, the sweet apple, the ugly street. 2. A Numeral adjective is one that denotes number. There are two classes of these: a. Cardinal, -one, two, three, four, etc. b. Ordinal, first, second, third, etc. 3. A Pronominal adjective is a pronoun that is used to modify a noun or pronoun, instead of as a substitute for it. There are three classes of pronominal adjectives: a. Interrogative, — which, what, whose; as, Which book do you want? Whose hat have you? b. Definite, former, latter, such, same, that, these, those. c. Indefinite, (those named under B, 4, b, when used as modifiers.) 4. The Articles are a, an, and the, the first two the indefinite articles; the last, the definite article. A and an are contractions of one and are therefore always singular; an being used before vowel sounds, a before con sonant. A and an are used in the sense of any; hence they are indefinite. The, on the other hand, points out some particular person, place, or thing, or class, and is therefore called definite. 5. A Proper adjective denotes some particular quality or class of the word modified, —— French, Turkish, etc. D. A Verb is a word that names or asserts action, talk, run, jump, see, think, throw, hurt, delay. 1. A Regular or Weak verb is one that designates action as in past time by the addition of ed or t, talked, jumped, past or passed. 2. An Irregular or Strong verb is one that designates action as in past time by some change in the vowel of the root, not by an added syllable, ran, saw, threw. 3. An Auxiliary verb is a verb that helps to designate the time or quality of action in a verb. phrase. The common auxiliaries are, shall, will, may, can, must, be, might, have, has, had, do, did. a. Shall and will denote future time. May and might denote persuasion or possibility. Do and did denote emphasis. Can and could denote power or ability. Be denotes the time or condition of the action. 4. A Principal verb is that part of the verb phrase that denotes the main action, I have seen. "Seen" is the principal verb; 'have," the auxiliary. I was hurt, I can go, I must resign, etc. 5. A Copulative verb is one that takes a predicate nominative or predicate adjective, -be, feel. E. An Adverb is a word that modifies a verb, an adjective, or another adverb. There are: 1. Adverbs of time or order, - again, last, first, secondly, yesterday, there. 2. Adverbs of manner, - politely, severely, truly, well. 3. Adverbs of place and motion, - there, in, out, up, down, here. 4. Adverbs of degree, very, too, hardly, wholly, surely, so, enough, quite. 5. Adverbs of reason or cause, why. (This relation is established usually by phrases and clauses rather than by single words.) 6. Adverbs of negation, not, never. 7. Adverbs of connection, where, while, because, etc. (See Chapter III, page 57.) F. A Preposition is a word that connects a noun, a pronoun, a phrase, or a clause with some word which the phrase thus formed modifies. The part following the preposition is called the object of it. 1. The Simple prepositions are, — at, after, by, but, 3. The Phrasal prepositions are, instead of, on G. A Conjunction is a word or group of words that connects words, clauses, phrases, and sentences. 1. A Coördinate conjunction is one that connects words, phrases, or clauses of equal rank. a. The Simple Coördinates are, and, but, or, nor, also, moreover, etc. (See Chapter III, page 48.) b. The Double or Correlative Coördinate conjunc 2. A Subordinate conjunction is one that connects words, phrases, and clauses of unequal rank. (See Chapter III, page 58 for list and definition of these.) Subordinate conjunctions which denote place, time, manner, or degree relations are called Adverbial conjunctions. H. An Interjection is a word used in an exclamatory manner to denote strong feeling, - ugh! Oh! Ah! Alas! 1. The interjectional phrase is sometimes used in place of the single word, "Well I never!" "Did you ever!" "Never again!" etc. II. The Properties of the Parts of Speech. The use of a word in a sentence very largely determines what part of speech it is. Moreover, the relation of one word to another in the expression of our thoughts oftentimes necessitates a change in the form of the word, known as inflection. Hence, by our title above, two things are indicated: the uses of words, and the inflection of words as required for correct speech. A. The Properties of Nouns and Pronouns are Gender, Number, Person, and Case. 1. Gender denotes sex. |