Word Classes (Parts of Speech): Lecture Notes

To begin at the beginning in terms of discussing grammar, we need to start at the level of
individual words and consider their function within sentences. I don’t ever take for granted what
people do or do not know about English grammar; for some of you, this material may be review
while for many others it will be new.

Remember that in order to learn to write better, you need to begin to acquire both a functional
understanding of how we construct correct and effective sentences and an appropriate set of
terms with which to discuss our writing. That said, the goal for me in teaching this material is
always functionality. Don’t get bogged down in too much unnecessary terminology from the
assigned readings this week. Right now, I want and need you only to be able to identify the
function of underlined words in a given sentence; that is what the first portion of the first quiz
will require you to do.

To that end, we can identify 8 distinct classes of words (parts of speech) in English:

NOUNS
Conceptually, nouns name people/places/things (eg: university, gift, teacher, Toronto, professor,
cats [or even abstract things, such as liberty or justice, or illness]).

Grammatically, nouns are subjects and/or objects.

The subject is the who/what we are talking about in any sentence. In the sentence “Western is an
excellent university,” Western is the subject: the thing about which I’m making a statement. An
object is anything affected—indirectly or directly—by the action name in a sentence. In the
sentence “Liam gave a terrible gift to his teacher,” both “gift” and “teacher” are objects, thus
nouns. There are also what we call object of prepositions, and these are nouns that follow
prepositions (about which we have more to say below, so stay tuned). For now, note only that
any subject or object must be a noun (or a pronoun, which is a noun equivalent. Again, see
below).

PRONOUNS
These words stand in place of and refer back to nouns.

We can usefully divide pronouns into several subcategories, which include possessives (his,
her/hers, my/mine, its …), personal pronouns (I, you, she, they…), reflexive pronouns (himself,
herself, myself …), demonstratives (this/that, those …), and relative pronouns (that/which/who).
This last subcategory of pronoun is particularly important going forward to our discussion of
clauses and phrases, as the posted notes on that topic should suggest.

The nouns for which pronouns stand in place and to which they refer back are called
antecedents. In the sentence “John is glad that he goes to Western,” the antecedent of the
pronoun “he” is the noun “John.” Likewise (but less intuitively), in the sentence “Because she
took Writing 2130F, Regan is now a more confident communicator,” the antecedent of the
pronoun “she” is “Regan” even though the pronoun actually comes before the noun in this
construction.

Effective writers seek always to establish and maintain very clear relationships between
pronouns and antecedents. That task isn’t so difficult in the case of the personal pronouns used
in the simple examples above, but it can be more of a challenge when we use (as we too often
do) demonstrative pronouns in overly broad, imprecise ways: “Those must be completed before
you leave the office tonight” (those what?), or “This again demonstrates how much of the recent
research into AI focuses on the wrong things” (what does?).

Both of these sentences depend heavily on context to be clear and effective. The reader needs to
have some understanding of just what it is “Those” or “This” refers to for the meaning of the
statements to be conveyed accurately. Including appropriate nouns after demonstrative pronouns-
-nouns that name the antecedent in question—is almost always a good choice with respect to
writing with clarity and precision (ie: “Those forms must be completed …” or “This statement
again demonstrates…”)

VERBS
Verbs are usually action words (like “jump” or “learn”), and they signal the predicate portion of
clauses: the portion of a statement that tells us something about the subject by naming an action
the subject undertakes (as in “Juan walks his dog frequently”) or describing a state of being the
subject experiences (as in “Venthusha seems unhappy today”). Note that the verbs such as seem,
feel, be, and appear that describe states of being (rather than naming actions) are called linking
verbs (or copulas).

Note too that when we change the form of a verb to indicate when the named action was or will
be accomplished or the state of being was or will be experienced (the verb’s tense—past, present,
or future), sometimes we will have to use an extra helper (or auxiliary) verb like should, would,
will, might, have/had/has, or is/are: “My doctor might reduce her hours this week,” or “You
should think harder about that decision” or “Miguel will have finished his homework by
tomorrow morning.” Again, don’t get bogged down in unnecessary terminology concerning
tense and aspect as you review the assigned reading on verbs; I want you only to recognize when
you see or use them that any and all of these helper words are verbs, even though they don’t
always name actions/states of being.

Verbals constitute a subcategory of verbs. These words look like verbs (and they are verbs), but
they function grammatically as something else: either modifiers (adjectives or adverbs) or nouns.
They will always be infinitives (to smoke), present participles (smoking), or past participles
(smoked). Infinitives (to ) and present participles (-ing) are easy enough to recognize. To
determine a past participle form, think of the past tense form you would use in conjunction with
the auxiliary (or helping) verb “had.” Thus, for the verb “to speak,” the past participle is not
“spoke,” but rather “spoken” (as in “I had spoken). Likewise, for “to run,” the past participle is
not “ran” (as in “I ran”), but rather “run” (as in, “I had run”).

Let’s talk a bit more about how each of these verbals works grammatically in a sentence.
Infinitives can be used as either nouns or modifiers.

In the sentence “To err is human; to forgive is divine,” the subject in each clause is an infinitive
verb form (ie: to err … to forgive). Thus, in both clauses, we have an infinitive acting as a noun.
In the sentence “My wife loves to shop,” an infinitive verb form is again acting as a noun, this
time an object (a thing affected or acted upon by the main verb “loves”). Here, “to shop” is a
thing; you can swap it out for, say, “cats” or “shoes” (which are both quite obviously things:
nouns). In this sentence, “to shop” is a noun too; it’s just trickier to conceive of it as such
because it looks like a verb. That’s why verbals can seem a bit odd and confusing.

For an example of an infinitive acting as a modifier, consider the sentence “John went to the
library to study.” Here, the infinitive “to study” answers the question “why?” and thus (as we
will see below) acts as an adverb. In the sentence “Wednesday night is our night to party,” the
infinitive (“to party”) again acts as a modifier—this time an adjective. It answers the question
“which/what kind?” in relation to the noun “night.”

Similar to infinitives, present participles can also be either nouns or modifiers.

When we write that “The detective finally discovered the smoking gun,” we are using an –ing
verb form (“smoking”) as an adjective modifying the noun “gun.”
And when we write that “Smoking is considered a health hazard,” or “My wife loves shopping,”
we are again using in each instance an –ing verb form as a noun: “Smoking” is the subject in the
first sentence, and “shopping” is an object in the second. Conceptually, in both examples the –
ing verb form names a thing (though in form it might look like it names an action). When present
participles are used in this way as nouns, they are referred to as gerunds.

Unlike present participles, past participles will only function as modifiers. Consider this
sentence: “The defeated army retreated across the border.” In this construction, “defeated”
modifies “army” (a noun), and thus it functions as an adjective.

This is important: in all instances, remember that verbals are still verbs; they are not their own
word class. It is just that they are verb forms that will be doing something in a sentence other
than naming an action the subject undertakes or a state of being the subject experiences. Thus,
they are one class in form (verbs) and another in function (nouns or adjectives/adverbs). And
remember, our concern in this class needs to be with understanding words in terms of their
function.

ADJECTIVES
These words modify nouns/pronouns, and they answer the questions ‘which one/what kind?’
Here’s an example: in the sentence “My former student just sent me a nice message.” (Which
student? My former student. What kind of message? A nice one.)
Articles (definite = the, and/or indefinite = a/an) fall under this category because they always
precede and are tied to nouns (ie: the tree, an egg, a book), though they don’t really answer
which one/what kind in any useful, specific way.

ADVERBS
These word modify verbs, adjectives, other adverbs—anything other than nouns/pronouns. They
answer the questions ‘how/by what means/ how often/ when/to what extent?’ In the sentence
“Roy frequently wears a bright green shirt,” green is an adjective modifying the noun shirt,
while frequently is an adverb modifying the verb wears, and bright is an adverb modifying the
adjective green.

Note that adverbs are flexible in terms of where we can locate them in a given sentence;
adjectives are not. This is an important thing to remember. Adjectives need to stay close to the
nouns/pronouns they describe. For example, “The bald man jogged home from work frequently,”
still makes sense if/when we re-write it with the adverb frequently in different spots:
“Frequently, the bald man jogged home from work,” or “The bald man frequently jogged home
from work.” It doesn’t make sense anymore, however, if we try to move the adjective: “The man
bald jogged home from work,” or “The man jogged bald home from work,” or “The man jogged
home from work bald.”

One subspecies of adverb is the conjunctive adverb. This term describes those important and
necessary logical markers such as however, thus, therefore, moreover, consequently,
nevertheless. These words are at once conjunctions (linking/connecting words) in that they relate
one idea/statement to another and adverbs in that they can be moved to several different places
within a given sentence without altering the sense/meaning of that sentence.

Consider this example: “Lisa has taken several Writing courses; therefore, she is a more
confident communicator.” Here, therefore defines a particular logical relationship between the
second idea/statement and the first. And the sentence can be re-written to say/mean the same
thing despite therefore being moved to different places in the second clause (a fact which
demonstrates the adverbial nature of therefore): “Lisa has taken several Writing courses; she is,
therefore, a more confident communicator.” “Lisa has taken several Writing courses; she is a
more confident communicator, therefore.”

PREPOSITIONS
These are connecting words that link (pre-position) a noun/pronoun (called the object of the
preposition) to another word or group of words in a clause. Necessarily, they are always
followed by a noun/pronoun (the object of the preposition).

Together with their objects, prepositions make phrases that work as modifiers. Often,
prepositions are words of ‘position’ – behind, above, into, to, from, under. There are many others
prepositions that are more difficult to recognize, however: according to, as, of, aside from,
beyond, by, concerning, like, in spite of, throughout ….
See pgs. 120-21 in your CWH textbook for a useful list of common prepositions.

CONJUNCTIONS
Conjunctions are linking words, and they are divided into two groups: those that join
words/sentence elements of equal value/conceptual important – coordinating conjunctions [for,
and, nor, but, or, yet, so—memorable by means of the acronym FANBOYS] , and those that join
unequal elements – subordinating conjunctions [because, though, although, unless, since, until,
whatever …]).

See pg. 126 in your CWH textbook for a list of common prepositions and subordinating
conjunctions, respectively.

INTERJECTIONS
These are words of emotional outburst, usually punctuated separately (often with an exclamation
point) from the statement of which they are meant to be part: Oh! Ouch! Wow! Darn! Hey!
Oops!

Generally speaking, interjections are rarely employed in formal (ie: academic or professional)
writing.

One last, general note on word classes:

In the phrase “Those trees,” the demonstrative pronoun “those” functions as an adjective
describing “trees.” If you were asked to identify “those” in terms of its class (on its own), you’d
say pronoun. If you were asked to identify it in terms of its grammatical function, however, you’d
say adjective. Likewise with the possessive pronoun “your” in the sentence “You had better call
your mother.” In terms of function, “your” is an adjective here, as it tells us which one/what kind of
mother.