UNDERSTANDING THE PARTS OF SPEECH

It is remarkable that words of the English language are so many, but their many uses are so few. All the words in the English language are arranged within eight classes called Parts of Speech.

This simple arrangement makes English grammar possible. To be good writers and grammarians, we do not need to know what to do with 400,000-600,000 English words—we only need to know what to do with eight classes of words.

All speech, like all music, falls into octaves. We might represent each part of speech by a letter of the musical scale, such as:

A - Noun
B - Pronoun
C - Adjective
D - Verb
E - Adverb
F - Preposition
G - Conjunction
H - Interjection

Now we can represent any sentence by an arrangement of these letters, just as composers use an arrangement of letters of the musical scale to write music. Let us represent by letters, as above, this little sentence: "Time is fleeting."

A — D — C
Noun — Verb — Adjective

We may put any noun in the place of A, any verb in the place of D, and any adjective in the place of C. We may change the meaning of the sentence in many ways, and yet use only the same three parts of speech: noun, verb, adjective. The sentences we make might contradict in meaning, but grammatically they will be all alike, as long as we use only these three parts of speech: noun, verb, adjective.

For example:



The above seven statements, so different in meaning, are alike grammatically. Each statement consists of a noun, verb, and adjective — A, D, C.

These seven statements contain twenty-one words, but grammatically they contain only three parts of speech: noun, verb, adjective. To know the grammar of these seven sentences with their twenty-one words, we only need to know the grammar of the three parts of speech.

We could go on and make long sentences containing all the Parts of Speech. Still, to know the grammar of those long sentences, we do not need to know the hundreds of words they might contain, but only the eight parts of speech.

English grammar—with its eight parts of speech— is easy to learn. We have only eight things to learn. When we know all about a noun, pronoun, adjective, verb, adverb, preposition, conjunction, and interjection, we know all about grammar! When we have mastered the eight parts of speech, we can understand sentence structure.