Word Classes

Kinds of noun:

• Common: man, cat, table,word.
• Proper: Tiffany, New York, Friday, August, Concorde.
• Collective: jury,committee,government,crowd,team,herd.
• Abstract: attractiveness,belief.

Kinds of pronoun:

• Demonstrative: this, that, these, those, the former, the latter.
• Distributive: each, either, neither.
• Emphatic: myself, yourself, his/herself, ourselves (as in "Do it yourself").
• Reflexive: myself, yourself, his/herself, ourselves (as in "He hurt himself").
• Indefinite: one, some, any, someone, anybody, everybody.
• Interrogative: who, which, what (as in "Who are you talking about?).
• Relative: who, which, what, that (as in " The book which you ordered has arrived".)
• Personal: I, you, he/she, it, we, you (plural), they
• Possessive: mine, yours, his, hers, ours, theirs

Kinds of adjective:

• Demonstrative: this, that, these, those (as in "I want that book").
• Distributive: each, every, either, neither (as in "Either knife will do).
• Interrogative: which? what? ("as in Which kind of book do you prefer?).
• Numeral: one, two etc.
• Indefinite: all, many, several
• Possessive: my, your, his, our, their
• Qualitative: (showing what kind) male, English, middle-class

Definition:

A verb is a word that indicates an action or a mental or physical state.

Kinds of verb

1. Strong - Strong verbs form their past tense and past participle by changing the vowel of the stem e.g ride, rode, ridden or swim, swam, swum.

2. Weak - Weak verbs form their past tense and past participle by adding the inflection - ed to the stem e.g walk, walked or prove, proved, proven.

They also have two voices: the active voice and the passive voice. When the subject of the sentence is doing this action, the verb is said to be in the active voice. When the subject of the sentence is having something done to him or her or it, the verb is said to be in the passive voice.

Definition:

An adverb is a word that limits or modifies (i.e tells us more about) the meaning of any part of speech except a noun or pronoun. Adverbs can therefore modify:

1. Adjectives: almost eighteen; very nice; fairly cheap; awfully expensive.

2. Other adverbs: she jogs quite frequently; he nearly always goes with her.

3. Prepositions: close by the lamp

Kinds of adverb:

• Time: now, then, soon, yesterday, recently, always, never, till
• Place: here, there, inside, outside, above, below, between
• Manner: slowly, quickly, angrily, calmly, eagerly, badly, well
• Degree: very, fairly, reasonably, almost, quite, too
• Number: once, twice, firstly, secondly, finally, again
• Certainty or uncertainty: certainly, surely, tentatively, perhaps, not
• Interrogative: How? When? Where? Why?

Definition:

A preposition is a word that shows the relationship between one noun and another noun or pronoun in a sentence.

Examples: on, by, to, in, down, out, round, into throughout, upon, from behind.

Kinds of conjunction:

1. Co-ordinating conjunctions: these join two or more main clauses e.g She was poor but she was honest.

2, Sub-ordinating conjunctions:  these join a dependent clause to a main clause e.g She was poor because she was honest.

Definition : The article is a kind of adjective.

Kinds of article

1. The definite article: the, is used to refer to some specific person or thing on which attention is being focused: e.g Pass me the paper please.

2. The indefinite article: a, is used when any one of a group of objects, not some particular one, will do: e.g Pass me a paper please.