The 8 Parts of a Speech

Learn these eight parts of a speech, so your sentences will always be complete.

When discussing grammar, there are exactly eight parts of a speech. Each word in a sentence falls into one of eight classes that are namely nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections. On their own, they are parts of a speech, but together they create complete sentences.

Nouns

A noun is the name of a person, place, animal, or thing. The word thing in this context describes all objects that you can see, hear, taste, touch, or smell. In addition to being an entity that you can think of but cannot discern by the senses.

Example: Phillip took the plane to Canada.

The example above has three different nouns, each belonging to a specific type. Phillip is the name of a person, a plane is the name of a thing, and Canada is the name of a place.

Pronouns

Pronouns are words that you can use as a substitute for a noun. They are gender-specific and plural as well. These include I, you, him, his, her, she, he, their, they, we, us, and it.

Instead of: Jessica does a great job on the guitar.

You can say: She does a great job on the guitar.

In the example above, the pronoun (she) is a substitute for the noun (Jessica).Replacing a noun with the correct pronoun doesn’t change the logic of the sentence. The pronoun her is also feminine, however, it is not the grammatically correct option for the example above. The pronoun her shows ownership, as you can see in the example below.

Example: Jessica does a great job playing her guitar.

The pronouns he, him, and his are masculine, which means that you can use them as replacements for male Nouns. The pronouns their, they, we, and us represent a group of nouns, regardless of gender. These plural pronouns are further subdivided into inclusive or exclusive representations. Us and we are substitutes for a group of nouns that includes the speaker, while their and they are substitutes for a group of nouns that does not include the speaker.

Adjectives

The purpose of an adjective (also known as a describing word) is to add greater meaning to a noun (naming words). Adjectives typically appear immediately before a noun. They ask questions like “which one?”, “what kind?”, or in instances where you use number adjectives “how many?”

Example: Sarah is a smart girl.

In the example above, the word smart is an adjective. The sentence would still be complete without the adjective. However, because of the adjective, you now know what type of girl Sarah is.

Verbs

Verbs are action words. They signal the performance of an action, the occurrence of an event, or the presence of a condition.

Example: Kim works from home.

In the example above, the word works is a verb. It shows the action that Kim does.

Verbs can also demonstrate a change in time, through the change of the word itself.

Example: Paul steals apples every day.

Example: Paul stole apples every day.

In the examples above, the words “steals” and “stole” are different tenses of the same verb. One (steals)indicates the present, and the other (stole) indicates the past.

Adverbs

Adverbs modify verbs. They tell the how, when, and where. In many instances, you can transform an adjective into an adverb by simply adding “ly” to the end of the word.

Example: Jennifer walks briskly.

In the example above, the adverb briskly follows and modifies the verb. You now know exactly how Jennifer walks.

Conjunctions

Conjunctions are words that you can use to join other words, phrases, or clauses.

Example: The zoo had a lion and a tiger.

The word and is a popular coordinating conjunction, which joins words or groups of words that have equal grammatical significance. Some other commonly used conjunctions include for, but, or, nor, so, and yet. There are four types of conjunctions namely coordinating, subordinating, correlative, and conjunctive adverbs.

Prepositions

A preposition shows the relationship between a noun (or pronoun) and another word in a sentence.

Example: The mother of the missing girl was on the news.

The preposition (of) shows the relationship of the mother to the missing girl. Other popular prepositions include in, onto, among, along, toward, with, opposite, above, against, and from. A preposition can be a single word, but it can also be a collection of words or a phrase.

Compound Preposition Example: Jessica went to the beach along with the new girl.

Interjections

An interjection can take the form of a word or a phrase and expresses strong emotions (such as joy, surprise, pain, confusion, or delight) or exclamation.

Surprise Example: Oh my! I thought you weren’t coming until July.

Joy Example: Ah, this is the life.

As you can see in the examples above an interjection generally doesn’t have a grammatical connection to the other words in the sentence, and they are usually separated from the rest of the sentence using a comma or exclamation mark.