PARTS OF SPEECH

Lead – in
de·worm [dee wúrm]
(past and
Above is anpast participle
entry of a wordde·wormed, presentCan
in the dictionary. participlede·worm·ing,
you interpret it? 3rd person
present singularde·worms)
Transitive verb
Rid of worms: to cure an animal of an infestation of worms
-de·worm·er, noun

Dictionary usually gives the information on the part of speech of a particular word. For
that reason, in this unit you will learn what parts of speech are, their functions and common
affixes embedded with certain parts of speech.
Look at the sentences below. Can you identify an error in each sentence?
i. The buffalo and the bison are like except for the size and shape of the head and shoulders.
ii. In a solar battery, a photosensitive semi conducting substance such as silicon crystal is the
source of electric.
iii. The mystery bookstore was large a phenomenon of the last decade.

A. Parts of Speech
Parts of speech are type of words, which have their own function in the sentence. There
are nine parts of speech in English, those are:
1. Noun
Noun is naming word. It is usually positioned as subject and/or object of a sentence.
We can categorize noun into:
a. Proper noun: name of people, name of city, name of month, name of place and so
on. Proper noun is usually capitalized in a sentence.
Example:
I was born in July.
Indonesia commemorates its 65th independence day in August 2010.
My brother admires Will Smith when he starred in the movie Independence Day.
b. Common noun is the ordinary nouns, such as chair, book, car, kitchen, girl, etc.
c. Collective noun is noun which represents a group of things or people, such as team,
government, staff, crew, etc. This type of noun takes singular verb. This type also
 includes what is called always plural verb, such as socks, jeans, scissors, shears,
pants, gloves, shoes, etc. This type of noun takes plural verb.
d. Abstract noun, which we cannot see or touch such as beauty, wisdom, knowledge,
happiness, air, humidity, etc.
Noun can be specified based on other categories, such as plural/singular and
countable/uncountable.
2. Verb
Verb is an action word. In a sentence, it functions as predicate which shows you what is
done by the subject of a sentence.
Example:
Dan goes to school on foot.
The students study mathematics.
3. Adjective
Adjective is used to modify noun or pronoun. It is usually placed before the noun
modified or after linking verb (be, seem, look, appear, sound, taste, etc).
Example:
She is very beautiful.
I prefer to buy the red one to the green one.
4. Adverb
Adverb is used to modify verb, adjective, other adverb or the whole sentence.
Example:
He works hard to finish the paper.
His sister is a very generous person.
She drives really fast to run after the thief.
5. Pronoun
Pronoun is noun substitute, such as I, me, myself, you, it, they, she, etc.
6. Preposition
Preposition is usually used to precede adverb of time or adverb of place. It can also
follow verb to make phrasal verb. The examples of preposition are in, on, at, between, above,
down, etc.
7. Conjunction
It is used to connect or join words, phrases, clauses, sentences, and ideas, such as and,
but, so, for, nor, yet, although, because, however, etc.
8. Article
Article is sometimes used to precede noun, such as a, an, the.
9. Interjection
Interjection is commonly used just to show emotional state and it has no meaning.
Take, for example ouch!, oh my God!, well!, ah!, etc.

B. Word Family
It is very often that we encounter that a certain word can produce another word by
adding specific affixes. This is what we call word family which includes only content words,
namely noun, verb, adjective and adverb.
By adding a particular affix, we can get another word with different part of speech out
of a specific word. Below are some affixes, which signify a certain part of speech.

Noun:
-ion/ation : organization -ing : playing
-ness : happiness -al : proposal
-ence/-ance: independence, arrogance-ment: department
-or : actor -ity : nationality
-ian/-an: comedian -hood : brotherhood
-ure : failure -er : singer
-ish : Swedish, British-age : heritage

Verb:
-ize : prioritize
-ify: beautify
-en : lengthen
en- : enlarge
be- : beware
im- : imprison
ac- : acknowledge
em-: empower

Adjective:
-y : cloudy -less : careless -al/-ial : historical, remedial
 -ly : friendly-ing : exciting -ent/-ant: independent, arrogant
-ed : excited -like : fatherlike -ous: dangerous
-ish: childish -able/-ible: comparable/responsible
-ile : sterile -wide : nationwide-ive: sensitive
-some : troublesome-ful: wonderful -ic: heroic

Adverb:
Adverb is composed from: adjective + ly, for example: silent + ly silently.

Exercise
1. Find the word family of the words in the table.
Noun Verb Adjective Adverb
Honest
Importantly
Complete
Calculation
Impressive
Violence

2. The passage below contains some mistakes. Find and correct them.
The finance firm Dow Jones and Company computers business statistics every hour
on the hour of each of the business days of the year, and these statistics are known as the
Dow Jones averages. They are based on a select group of stocks and bonds that are traded
on the New York Stock Exchange. The Dow Jones averages are compositional of four
differ types of averages: the average price of the common stock of thirty industry firms, the
average price of the common stock prices of twenty transportation companies, the average
price of the common stock prices of fifteen utilize companies, and an overall average of all
the sixty-five stocks are usage to compute the first three averages.