Parts of speech: the job a word does, nouns and pronouns

The eight parts of speech (word classes):

• Noun: names a person, place, thing or idea (soldier, Delhi, river, courage).
• Pronoun: stands in place of a noun (he, it, they, myself, who).
• Adjective: describes a noun (a tall tower, the road is narrow).
• Verb: an action or a state (run, think, is, seems).
• Adverb: tells how, when, where or how much about a verb, an adjective or another adverb (ran quickly, very tall).
• Preposition: links a noun or pronoun to the rest of the sentence (in, on, under, through).
• Conjunction: joins words or parts of a sentence (and, but, because).
• Interjection: a sudden cry of feeling that stands outside the sentence (Alas! Hurrah!).
• Article: a, an and the. They stand before a noun.

Two more terms:

• Subject: who or what does the action (The boys played).
• Object: who or what receives the action (The boys played cricket).

The method:

• Find the underlined word and the words right next to it.
• After a, an, the, his, my or a describing word? It is naming something: noun.
• After a subject, or after will, can, could not, to? Does it take an object? It is an action: verb.
• Describing a noun? Adjective. Telling how, when or where about an action? Adverb.
• Then strike the options that do not fit and pick the plain class that does.

The kinds of noun:

• Common noun: the general name of a person, place or thing (statue, river, city).
• Proper noun: the name of one particular person or place; it starts with a capital letter (Delhi, Cauvery, Ramesh).
• Abstract noun: the name of a quality, feeling or state that you cannot touch (happiness, honesty, courage).
• Collective noun: the name of a group taken as one (team, army, jury, flock).
• Compound noun: a noun made of two words joined (playtime, fountainhead, bottomline).
• Countable noun: can be counted and has a plural (one opportunity, two opportunities).
• Uncountable noun: cannot be counted and has no plural (honesty, water, advice).
• The + adjective can work as a plural noun for a class of people: the poor, the rich, the righteous. It takes a plural verb (the righteous emerge victorious).
• A noun phrase is a group of words built round a noun (the wonderful statue). If only one word is underlined and it names a thing, the answer is Noun.

The kinds of pronoun:

• Personal: I, you, he, she, it, we, they (and me, him, her, us, them). It stands for a person or thing already named.
• Reflexive: myself, himself, themselves. The action comes back to the subject (I hurt myself). Remove it and the sentence breaks.
• Emphatic: the same -self forms used only to stress the noun (The secretary himself visited). Remove it and the sentence is still complete.
• Impersonal 'it': 'it' that stands for no noun at all, used for time, weather and distance (It is raining; It is ten o'clock).
• Indefinite: does not point to a particular person or thing: one, none, someone, anybody, everything.
• Distributive: takes the members of a group one at a time: each, either, neither.

Terms:

• A clause is a group of words with its own subject and verb (he called).
• A relative clause describes a noun. It opens with a relative pronoun.
• The antecedent is the noun the relative pronoun stands for (the man who called).

The forms:

• who: for people, when it is the subject of its clause (the man who won).
• whom: for people, when it is the object, or after a preposition (the man whom we met; the person to whom you spoke).
• whose: shows possession (the girl whose bag was lost).
• which: for things and animals (the struggle which paved the way).
• that: for people or things, but never straight after a preposition.

The method:

• Find the antecedent. Person or thing?
• Read the clause. Does the pronoun do the action (subject) or receive it, or follow a preposition (object)?
• Person + subject = who. Person + object = whom. Thing = which or that.