Gramatica

República Bolivariana de Venezuela
Universidad Pedagógica Experimental Libertador
Instituto Pedagógico de Barquisimeto
“Luís Beltrán Prieto Figueroa”

Grammar I
Unit II – Parts of Speech

Part A. Theory


Traditional grammar classifies words based on eight parts of speech: the verb, the noun, the pronoun, the adjective, the adverb, the preposition, the conjunction, and theinterjection. Each part of speech explains not what the word is, but how the word is used. In fact, the same word can be a noun in one sentence and a verb or adjective in the next. In the following lines we will classify these eight parts, explaining their characteristics.


Noun


A noun is a word used to name a person, animal, place, thing, and abstract idea. Nouns are usually the first words weusually learn when we are acquiring a language. The bold words in the following sentences are all nouns:

Last year our neighbors bought a goat.
Portia White was an opera singer.
A noun can function in a sentence as a subject, a direct object, an indirect object, a subject complement, an object complement, or an appositive.
Many common nouns, like "engineer" or "teacher," canrefer to men or women. Once, many English nouns would change form depending on their gender, for example, a man was called an "author" while a woman was called an "authoress" -- but this use of gender-specific nouns is very rare today. Those that are still used occasionally tend to refer to occupational categories, as in the following sentences.
David Garrick was a very prominenteighteenth-century actor.
Sarah Siddons was at the height of her career as an actress in the 1780s.
The manager was trying to write a want ad, but he couldn't decide whether he was advertising for a "waiter" or a "waitress"
Most nouns change their form to indicate number by adding "-s" or "-es", as illustrated in the following pairs of sentences:
When Matthew was small he rarelytold the truth if he thought he was going to be punished.
Many people do not believe that truths are self-evident.
As they walked through the silent house, they were startled by an unexpected echo.
I like to shout into the quarry and listen to the echoes that return.
He tripped over a box left carelessly in the hallway.
Since we are moving, we will need many boxes.There are other nouns which form the plural by changing the last letter before adding "s". Some words ending in "f" form the plural by deleting "f" and adding "ves," and words ending in "y" form the plural by deleting the "y" and adding "ies," as in the following pairs of sentences:
The harbor at Marble Mountain has one wharf.
There are several wharves in Halifax Harbour.Warsaw is their favourite city because it reminds them of their courtship.
The vacation my grandparents won includes trips to twelve European cities.
The children circled around the headmaster and shouted, "Are you a mouse or a man?"
The audience was shocked when all five men admitted that they were afraid of mice.
In the possessive case, a noun or pronoun changes its formto show that it owns or is closely related to something else. Usually, nouns become possessive by adding a combination of an apostrophe and the letter "s."
You can form the possessive case of a singular noun that does not end in "s" by adding an apostrophe and "s," as in the following sentences:
The red suitcase is Cassandra's.
The miner's face was covered in coal dust.
You canform the possessive case of a singular noun that ends in "s" by adding an apostrophe alone or by adding an apostrophe and "s," as in the following examples:
The bus's seats are very uncomfortable.
The bus' seats are very uncomfortable.
You can form the possessive case of a plural noun that does not end in "s" by adding an apostrophe and a "s," as in the following examples:...