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The classification of the words of a sentence according to their roles in the sentence and the meaning they add to the overall meaning of the sentence is called “Parts of Speech” which include:
1.Nouns. The main types of nouns include:
A: Common nouns: teacher, boy, school.
B: Proper nouns: John, Britain, The Euphrate.(always capitalized)
C: Compound nouns: textbook, classroom, suitcase.
D: Abstract nouns: happiness, intelligence, philosophy.
E: Collective nouns: family, police, tribe.
A plural noun is a noun that indicates more than one. Generally, they are formed by adding an s (cars, fans, books) but there are irregular noun plurals as well. They are mainly created as follows
1. The plural of nouns ending in ch, sh, x or s are usually formed by adding es: watch-watches, bush-bushes, fox-foxes, mass-masses.
2. The plural of nouns ending in a consonant and y are formed by changing the y into an i and adding es: baby-babies, party-parties, family- families.
3. The plural of nouns ending in an f are formed by turning the f into v and adding es: leaf-leaves, wolf-wolves, thief-thieves (there are exceptions such as brief- briefs).
4. There are more exceptions to these the previous rules. Examples: man-men, woman-women, child- children, tooth- teeth, foot-feet, medium-media, thesis-theses.
5. There are other exceptions where there is no change between singular and plural such as: sheep.
Nouns can be divided into two main categories:
1.Countable nouns:nouns that can be counted: people, egges, boys etc (they can be preceded by definite and indefinite articles).
2. Uncountable nouns: nouns that cannot be counted (sugar, coffee, rice, milk etc)
2. Adjectives: they describe nouns: A tall man. An old house. The beautiful woman.
Adjectives are often used in clusters or groups. The last one is separated from the preceding ones by “and”: The garden is small, clean and beautiful.
The arrangement of the adjectives describing a noun takes the following order: size, age, colour, material/shape. It is advised to use an order which would seem natural in the context we are teaching.
To compare people or things we use the comparative forms of adjectives.
We use the following pattern with one-syllable adjectives, we use the following pattern : adjective+ .. er than
Example: Allan is taller than Martin.
In some adjective ending in y, the y is changed into i and er is added.
Examples: easy-easier, happy-happier, early-earlier.
In some other adjectives the last consonants d, g, n, and t are doubled if preceded by a single short vowel: sad- sadder, big-bigger, sad-sadder, hot- hotter.
When using an adjective of two or more syllables, the adjective is preceded by “more”:Sasha is more beautiful than Ellina.
When comparing more than two people or things we use the superlative form of the adjective as follows:
1.With one-syllable adjectives, we use the following pattern:
the adjective+ .. est
Examples: George is the tallest student in our class, Sarah is the smartest girl I have ever met.
In some adjective ending in y, the y is changed into i and es is added.
Example: This is the busiest street in the city.
2.When using an adjective of two or more syllables, the adjective is preceded by “the most”: Tokyo is the most expensive city in the world.
There are irregularities in respect to the formation of comparative and superlative adjectives.
Examples: good-better-best, bad-worse-worst, little-less-the least, far-farther-the farthest,many-more-the most.
3. Articles. We have two types of articles in English: definite (the) and indefinite (a and an).
“The” is used as follows:
1.When we are referring to unique things: the White House, the theory of relativity, the Sun.
2. With Names of rivers, seas and oceans: the Nile, the Caspian sea, the Pacific.
3. With points on earth: the Equator, the North Pole.
4. With geographical areas: the Middle east, the west.
5. With deserts, forests, gulfs and peninsulas: the Sahara, the Black Forest, the Persian gulf, the Iberian peninsula.
6. With uncountable nouns that are made more specific by adding a limiting or modifying phrase or clause: The coffee in my cup is too hot to drink.
An and a are used as follows:
1.a is used with nouns beginning with consonant sounds (a boy, a train)and an is used with nouns beginning with vowel sounds (an elephant, an umbrella)
2.I a noun is modified by an adjective, the choice between a and an depends on the initial sound of the adjective that immediately follow the article (an Asian country, a European style, a rolling stone).
We do not use the before:
names of countries (except some such as the Netherlands, the United States etc).
names of cities.
names of streets.
names of lakes (except groups of lakes such as the Great Lakes)
names of mountains (except ranges of mountains chains such as the Andes)
names of continents.
names of islands (except with island chains such as the Canary islands)
We do not use the for general ideas about countable nouns when the noun is always pluralized (People are strange, lions are dangerous)
There is a number of countable nouns that are often treated like uncountable nouns and used without an article: in/at/to college, in/into/out of bed, in/into/out of prison, to/in/out of hospital,to/at/from work, to/into/from town, by day, at night, by car/bus/train/plane.
4. Verbs: verbs are used with a subject to form the basis of a sentence. The can be action (go, watch, play, walk etc) verbs or state verbs (be, seem, appear, smell etc). They can also be transitive or intransitive. A transitive verb is a verb that is followed directly by an object (eat, cook, meet, contradict, unearth, watch etc). Intransitive verbs are verbs that cannot be followed directly by an object (go, fall, arrive, depart, come etc). Some verbs can be either transitive or intransitive (watch, speak, eat, loose, leave etc)
Infinitives are formed by preceding the base form of a verb by “to”.Some intransitive verbs are followed by an infinitive to denote a consequence of an action. Examples: (He hopes to come back. He promised to behave well.)
English verbs have four basic forms, namely; base form (go), past simple (went), past participle (gone) and present participle (going).
Many English verbs are irregular (become-became-become-becoming, go-went-gone-going, lose-lost-lost-losing … etc)
Auxiliary verbs (do, have, be) help form a tense or an expression. They are not carrying the main meaning.
5. Adverbs:adverbs generally add meaning or information to the action, quality or state to the verb.eeps
There are many types of adverbs:
manner: well, hard, slowly, quickly, strongly etc.
place: above, up, here, there etc.
time: now, soon, then, recently etc.
degree:very, much, really, quite etc.
frequency: once, twice, sometimes, always.
attitude/comment: actually, perhaps, surely, wisely etc.
linking:firstly etc.
viewpoint: mentally, morally, officially etc.
adding/limiting: also,either, else, only, too.
Most adverbs are formed by adding ly to the adjective. However there are exceptions: tidy-tidily, fast-fast (no change).
Adverbs are normally placed after the object of a transitive verb: He ate his meal quickly.
Adverbs are placed immediately after an intransitive verbs:He fell awkwardly in the playground.
Adverbs of frequency are placed between the subject and the verb or between the auxiliary verb and the verb: She always sleeps after lunch.
There is no hard and fast rule for the order of multiple adverbs that follow a verb but it is helpful to bear the following sequence in mind: place-manner-time: He will drive there slowly tomorrow.
6. Gerunds: a gerunds is the … ing form of a verb used as a noun as opposed to the present participle form of a verb as a verb structure. it is used in the same way as a noun i.e as a subject or an object.
7. Pronouns: pronouns are words that are used in place of more precise nouns or noun phrases. Pronouns are of many types:
Personal (I,me, you, he, him, she, her, they,them, we, us, it)
Possessive ( mine, yours, his, hers, ours, theirs, its)
Reflexive (myself, yourself, himself, herself, themselves, ourselves
Relative (who, which, that, whose)
8. Prepositions/Conjunctions: prepositions show the relationship between a noun or a pronoun and some other word in the sentence.
Main type:
Prepositions of time: at, on, by, before, in ,from, since, for, during, to, until, after, about.
Prepositions of movement:from, to, in, into, on, onto, by, off, out, through, over.
Prepositions of place or position:in, at, on, by, above, over, under, below, beneath, beside, between, near, next to, behind, in front of.
it and with do not fit into any of the above categories.
Conjunctions join word groups in a sentence.
Basically, they do two things:
Join words of the same class: and, or, but, not, yet, both .. and, either .. or,neither … nor, not only … but also.
Join clauses of sentences: as, as soon as, before, since, until, when, because, although, unless, so, in order that.
Under this classification of words, I am now able to keep track of the grammatical rules related to these major categories. It is like a mental map of all the rules that fall under each item in this classification. One new thing that I have learned here is the types of prepositions and conjunction according to they are working in sentences. I am already familiar with them, but I began to think of them in a systematic new way.
Thank you and regards
