When you think of grammar, what do you think about? Do you think of teachers with rulers, hitting the hands of young, impressionable minds for incorrect answers to questions about grammar? Do you see big red ‘Fs’ on worksheets, lists of comma rules that are too much for an attorney to master? What if I told you that grammar is actually more simpler than that. In fact, grammar is based on speech, not vice versa. There are eight parts to this speech. There are nouns, adjectives, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, conjunctions, prepositions, and interjections.
What is the point of all of this? Well, we basically use language to describe ourselves and the world around us. We need to be able to identify something, whether this is a desire, idea, chair, or rock and say something about it. The things that we identify are typically called ‘subjects’. These are the things that sentences are about. The part of speech that falls under the subjects of sentences and the things we typically want to say something about are nouns.
Nouns
You’re starting to remember this now, huh? A noun is a…uh…person, place, or thing. You got that correct, but a now, could also be an idea, feeling, or concept. Somewhat may think that the only ‘things’ are the ones with physical qualities. “All nouns can be described in physical terms,” you might say, but this isn’t true. For example, what is an idea? Could you describe it by its height, shape, or color? I can’t, so you probably can’t either. The category of nouns then cover both physical and non-physical things.
Pronouns
Remember what would happened in school when your teacher was sick with the flu or out for jury duty? The school would replace them with a sub or substitute teacher. Well, some parts of speech do this as well. We call these pronouns. Look at the following sentence.
Ex 1: “Jimmy didn’t swim.”
Ex 2: “He didn’t swim.”
Example one has a noun–‘Jimmy’. Example two has a pronoun–‘He’. ‘He’ can substitute for ‘Jimmy.’ ‘He’ is a pronoun. It can replace the ‘Jimmy’. It is his substitute. ‘his’ in the previous sentence was also a pronoun. There are different types.
Adjectives
Now, once we know what we want to talk about. Once we know what person, place, or thing we want to report on or describe, then we need speech that describes or reports on it. When we describe a person, place, or thing, then we are using adjectives to do so.
Ex 3: “The giant man could reach and grab the street light.”
Here, I am describing the noun ‘man’ (a thing) by saying that he was ‘giant’. ‘Giant’ here is an adjective. I am providing more information about this man using an adjective. I could have use one of many English adjective words–tall, massive, huge, gigantic, giraffe-like, etc. Anyone of these words could have been used to describe the said man in example 3. This word choice is what creates speaking and writing styles. We all use language uniquely, even though many of us speak the same language. We say things in different ways. This creates clear communication in some and confusion in others. If you communicate in a way that someone can understand, then you have communicated successfully. This raises the question of the goal of communication. The goals or objective of communication is to use words in a way that reflects one’s mind or the impression that one wants to create in the mind of the receiver.
Verbs
When we report on the condition or action performed by a person, place, or thing (or idea), then we use verbs. Verbs are words that show action or a state of being.
Ex 4: “The big red dog ran.”
‘ran’ is a verb. It tells you what the red dog did. It ran. Verbs can also tell something about the condition of things.
Ex. 5: “The man is sleeping.”
Here, the man is in a condition of sleep. Verbs like ‘is’ are clues that this is the type of verb that indicates a state of being. The most exciting usage of verbs tends to be action verbs, rather than verbs that indicate a state of being. There are many books that promote the usage of action verbs to add spice to your writing.
Adverbs
Just like adjectives provide the receiver of communication with more information about a noun, adverbs provide a receiver of communication with more information about how some verb was performed.
Ex 6: “The man was sleeping hard.”
In the above example, the word ‘hard’ is being used to describe the verb ‘is’. It tells you how the man is. It modifies or provides more information about the type of sleep that the man in the example is getting. Here is another example.
Ex 7: “The dog ran swiftly through the field to his owner.”
Here, the dog is said to perform the action of running. This is the verb–‘ran’. But this action is described with an adverb– ‘swiftly’.
Conjunctions
Conjunctions are like lego blocks that you stick on words and groups of words. You actually stick them in between words. They can go between nouns —
Ex 8: “Jack and Jill went up the hill.”
The nouns are ‘Jack’ and ‘Jill’. The conjunction is ‘and.’ There is a short abbreviation that students learn in school. It is called FANBOYS. The abbreviation stands for
F — for
A — and
N — nor
B — but
O — or
Y — yet
S — so
These are the most common conjunctions. Conjunctions can join two verbs —
Ex 9: “The man yelled and screamed at the dogs eating his cat.”
The action is two-fold. The man a) yelled and b) screamed at the dogs. The conjunction has joined two verbs. Conjunctions can join two adverbs:
Ex 10: “The man yelled loudly and angrily.”
‘Loudly’ and ‘angrily’, two adjectives, are joined by the conjunction ‘and’. I think you get it now. So, conjunctions can join words together, but they can also join groups of words together, called clauses or phrases, which we will cover in later posts. One example for ya:
Ex 11: “The man slept all day, and he did not eat dinner.”
There are certain rules of comma usage that go with combining groups of words. For example, in the above example, if we remove the comma and create the following sentence–
Ex 12: “The man slept all day and he did not eat dinner.”
This is the grammatical error known as a run-on sentence. Likewise, if I keep the comma and remove the conjunction, then I’ll have a comma splice:
ex 13: “The man slept all day, he did not eat dinner.”
Just as there are categories for the different types of nouns, verbs, pronouns, etc., there are different kinds of conjunctions. More on this later.
Prepositions
There are other words that bring words together, but not like conjunctions. Prepositions show relationships of space and time. What do I mean? I think that I can show you better than I can tell you.
Ex 14: “Jacob swam in the pool. “
Here, the preposition is ‘in’. This is showing a relationship of space between the two nouns ‘Jacob’ and ‘pool’. Another example:
Ex 15: “The pencil fell on the floor.”
Here, the preposition is…(can you guess?)…….Yes, that’s right, I hope. The answer is ‘on’. The two nouns it combines ‘pencil’ and ‘floor’. Again, this is a relationship of space. Let me show you an example of time.
Ex 16: “Joseph’s alarm rang at noon.”
Here, the preposition is ‘at’. The two nouns joined are ‘alarm’ and ‘noon’. What is the relationship between these two nouns? That is correct! There is a relationship of time. Also, I did just write that I would give you an example of time.
Stay tuned for the next article. If this helps you, comment below. If you have a question, let me know in the comments.
Interjections
Interjections are your words that express emotion, like ‘hooray’ and ‘O’, etc. These are words that have no grammatical relationship to the words in the sentence. Notice how many times I’ve used ‘Well’ to start my sentences, which is a practice that you want to avoid; however, I want to give this a personal tone, so I’m writing just like I speak. Yes, I say ‘however’ when I speak.
Ex 17: ” Well, I guess I’m done with that test.”
or
Ex 18: “Ugh! I hate pretzels.”
‘Well’ and ‘Ugh’ are examples of interjections above.
If you’ve read to this point, I love you…just kidding. I hope that you’ve learned something about grammar. It is really simple. Stay tuned. I will write more posts about each part of speech. But this is a general overview to wet your appetites. Leave a comment, ask a question, share my posts, and put in your email to get email notifications. Would you like to see me cover a specific topic? Let me know.