Refresh Your English

It's time to refresh your English. For many of us who are in the process of learning a new language, we may have forgotten some of the technical points of our native tongue English.

Like many of you it's been a very long time since I sat in a class on English.

So here couched in the language of poetry are provided the nine parts of speech and other points in English to remember.

 

Nine Parts of Speech 

Three little words you often see

Are articles a, an, the.

A noun’s the name of anything.

As school or garden, hoop or swing.

Adjectives tell the kind of noun,

As great, small, pretty, white on Brown.

Instead of nouns pronouns stand---

Her head, his face, your arm, my hand.

Verb’s tell of something to be done---

To read, count, sing, laugh, jump or run.

How things are done, the adverbs tell,

As slowly, quickly, ill or well.

Conjunctions couple words together

As clear and cold but pleasant weather.

  

The preposition stands before

A noun, as in, or through a door.

The interjection shows surprise,

As Oh! How pretty, Ah! How wise.

The whole are called nine parts of speech,

Which reading, writing, speaking teach.

  

Adjectival--- (like an adjective)-- A word which is used as an adjective but which regularly functions as another part of speech is called an adjectival.

 

Adjective--- a part of speech regularly used to modify (qualify) describe or limit a noun or pronoun. An adjective may also modify a gerund.

 

Adverb--- a part of speech regularly used to modify a word or word group other than a noun or a pronoun.

 

Adverbial--- (like an adverb) a word which is used as an adverb but which regularly functions as another part of speech is called an adverbial.

 

Antecedent--- The name given to a word or group of words to which a pronoun refers.

 

Clause--- A group of related words that contains both a subject and predicate and that functions as a part of a sentence.

Phrase--- a group of related words without a subject and a predicate and functioning as a single part of speech.

 

Gerund---A nonfinite verb that ends in---ing and functions as a noun. Gerunds may take objects, compliments, or modifiers.

 

Modifiers--- any word or word group functioning as an adjective or an adverb.

 

Participle--- A participle is a word that is formed from a verb but that functions as an adjective. A word such as across, after, in, up, off, on, down, over, or out that is not inflected.

 

Predicate--- a grammatical division of a sentence. A predicate is the part of the sentence comprising what is said about the subject.

 

Preposition--- a part of speech (often called a function word) that is used to show the relation of a noun or noun equivalent (the object of the preposition) to some other word in the sentence.

Words commonly used as prepositions include across, after, as, at, because of, before, between, by, for, from, in, in front of, in regard to, like, near, of, on over, through, to together with, under until, up, and with.

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