POTUS? President of the United States.
POS? Parts of speech.
Yes, I know you learned the parts of speech in school, but we are going to review and then have a “challenge.”
It depends whom you ask as to how many parts of speech there are in the English language. I say eight. It is usually about eight. I guess it depends how you group some of them.
The parts of speech are the categories into which words are put, depending on the role they play in a sentence (or a phrase). Many words fall into more than one category, depending on how they are used in a particular sentence. Here are the eight parts of speech:
1. Noun – Person, place, thing, or idea (you probably remember that one!): school, dog, boy, computer, happiness; proper nouns: Golden Gate Bridge, California , Susan
2. Verb – Action or state of being: to run, to study, to eat, to be, to look, to think.
3. Pronoun – (not to be confused with a proper noun, which begins with a capital letter and is a noun) A word that takes the place of a noun: he, them, us, everyone, this, those, himself, what, which.
*All you need to have a complete sentence is a noun (or pronoun) and a verb: I read. Actually, you don’t even need the noun or pronoun in the case of a command: Sit. In this case the subject is implied and is you (You sit.)*
4. Adjective – Describes a noun or another adjective: red, pretty, terrible, this, many. I group the articles (a, an, and the) with the adjectives, since they do modify nouns.
- blue dress (describes a noun)
- bright blue dress (describes another adjective)
5. Adverb – Describes a verb, another adverb, or an adjective. Tells how, where, when, to what extent: slowly, then, now, too, very
- talk slowly (describes a verb)
- very slowly (describes another adverb)
- very blue (describes an adjective)
6. Preposition – Always appears as part of prepositional phrase. The phrase tells what kind, where, or when: in, out, below, with, by, for, along, to, at.
- in the house
- out the door
- down the slide
- along the river
- at school
- by the same author
- after the party
- with stripes
7. Conjunction – Joins two words, phrases, clauses, or sentences: for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so (FANBOYS)
- tiny, yet strong
- Jack and Jill
- chicken or fish?
- I can’t go, so you can have my ticket.
8. Interjection – Usually an exclamatory word, but can be followed by a comma or an exclamation point: gosh, well, oh, darn, yikes, wow
- Wow! Look at the size of that cat!
- Oh, I have seen that cat before.
As I said earlier, many words can function as two or more different parts of speech,depending on how they are used:
play
- I saw a play last night. (noun)
- I play tennis every weekend. (verb)
- I set up a play date for Jimmy. (adjective)
well
- Timmy’s in the well! (noun)
- I did well on the test. (adverb)
- Well, how did you figure that out? (interjection)
So, that is our POS review. Here is the challenge: I used to teach the parts of speech to my 7th graders — not that they hadn’t learned it before — and to make it more fun, I had to give them something interesting to do.
Can you make a sentence that uses each part of speech only once? Your sentence would be eight words. Well, if you really think, you can see why this might not be possible. You can do it in 10 or 11 words because something has to repeat. Or does it? HINT: If you break a grammar rule — one that is sort of okay to break these days, you can do it. When you have figured it out, and written your eight-word sentence, scroll down for the answer:
Oh, so sneaky Nancy secretly waited for him.
- Oh – interjection
- so – conjunction
- sneaky – adjective
- Nancy – noun
- secretly – adverb
- waited – verb
- for – preposition
- him – pronoun
Problem: The major problem is the conjunction, which connects things, meaning you might have to put in two nouns. The rule that I broke is starting the sentence with the conjunction (so) instead of having it connect two things. It is sort of breaking a rule, but in informal writing, it’s fine to do.
But look:
Well, wait for her and very tall Joe.
Here, I avoided the issue by writing a command. That way I could avoid using the noun or pronoun as the subject and could use them as the prepositional objects and not have to repeat a noun or pronoun. So that is another way to do it.
Such challenges keeps the brain in good working order! If you have any other solutions or just sentences you have created, just send a comment!
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Grammar Diva News:
I will be the guest speaker at the March 8 meeting of the Napa Valley Writers, a chapter of California Writers Club. Looking forward to it!
With all due deference I would like to offer an alternative analysis, one in the spirit of Occam’s Razor and the principle that it is the duty of observation to question received authority.
My most basic premise is that form class (POS) is classified entirely by function.
I see ten Parts of Speech in five pairs. Each pair is distinguished by markedness, and executes a Grammatical Function (GF).
The five GFs are: naming, modifying, integrating, connecting and emphasizing.
Naming
The two naming POSs are nouns and pronouns. Despite the fact that pronouns are commonly defined as taking the place of a noun, this is definitionally inaccurate. Impersonal and 1st and 2nd person pronouns do not replace nouns. The difference between the two is that nouns are marked (specific) while pronouns are unmarked (general).
Modifying
Adverbs and adjectives are the modifiers of English. They are single argument predicates. Adjectives are marked as being exclusively the modifiers of noun phrases (NP). The default (unmarked) adverbs modify anything else. Adjectives do not modify other adjectives, but rather the NPs of which the noun is the head. This is why serial adjectives often require a strict order; each one modifies everything innermore within the phrase, a Russian nested doll.
Integrating
Integration is what I call the licensing of clause (and thus sentence) creation. The verb is often defined as an ‘action word’, despite a plethora of counterexamples. This is hedged with a statement of ‘state or action’. The truth of the matter is that the verb is the entity (predicate) around which complete predications are constructed. Moreover the verb is not a part of speech—it’s two! Counterdistinct to modifiers, verbs are variable argument predicates. This means that a verb can have a variable number of arguments, up to three. The similarities and differences between transitive and non-transitive verbs are analogous to those between the other pairs. Transitive verbs are the default (unmarked) because the language actually provides a systemic method for de-transitivizing them; the passive (and middle) voices. The non-transitive verbs have no corresponding system. Some cannot be transitivized at all. Others can be on a case-by-case basis.
Connecting
Conjunctions and prepositions are the connecters of English. The former is the default partner. Prepositions, like adjectives, are specialized to NPs. The terms ‘prepositional phrase’ and ‘object of a preposition’ are standard, but misleading. In all other instances, ‘X phrase’ where X is a POS, the phrase acts as a multi-word POS. Not so with the ‘prepositional phrase’. Similarly, calling an oblique argument an object of a preposition entails that this form class is a predicate. It is not. A ‘prepositional phrase’ is actually an oblique (not direct or dative) argument connected by a preposition. An example of an analytically consistent prepositional phrase is ‘over and above’. Here, multiple words (a phrase) function as a preposition.
Emphasizing
The final pair represent the two most extensionally extreme, yet functionally congruent of all the form classes. Interjections and exclamations do the same thing in the same way. The only difference is that interjections are a marked, extremely limited set of words which have no other meaning or function. No one worships gosh! Exclamations, on the other hand are basically universal. Any word of any POS can serve as an exclamation. It’s important to remember that language is fluid. Does ‘wow’ lose its status as an interjection because it’s been backformed into a verb (wows, wowed, wowing)? This analysis also provides a more elegant, consistent explanation for exclamatory sentences than the demonstrably false claim of equivalency with declarative, interrogative and imperative sentences. The latter three are morphosyntactically distinct. They can all also be rendered exclamatory through prosody or punctuation.
Phrases and Clauses
The above characteristics dictate how the distinct POSs interact to form phrases and are thus phrase structure rules. These rules can be superseded by clause structure rules where the two conflict. This is premised on the clause being the universal unit of discourse. Grammatical context and parsimony can also account for apparent exceptions. Suffice to say the above is little more than a thumbnail.
Thank you.
“Alternatives” are always welcome (if they are real facts, LOL). My post was in line with my books, the purpose of which is to make things as simple and easy to read as possible – for those who may not know what morphosyntactically means.
Well they can learn ! Taking the easy trip can leave you feeling ‘rootless’ or even ‘route-less’- – or in other vernacular of our unfortunate times, dumbing down is cheating people out of ‘continuing educationj’ throughout their lives. Those who pander to the ‘simple and easy’ categorisation of learning and teaching are perhaps themselves those who have not ventured further or more deeply into realms of systems and functions of communication. Let’s allow sophistication and intellectual curiosity to rear their lovely heads now and again, eh?
Wow, so you finally saw beautiful Cher at dinner.
Great – perfect except for the two nouns — but one is proper and the other isn’t, so OK!
However, my evil mind always tries to, right?
That is a challenging one! I guess however is the conjunction and right is the interjection? My can be called a possessive adjective there, but it can also be a pronoun, so that’s good. But the to as used there isn’t a preposition; it is part of an infinitive, I think. But good! Thanks!