EXERCISE: IDENTIFYING PARTS OF SPEECH

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 504.

Exercise: Identifying parts of speech

Practice 2: Parts of Speech

(Word Classes, Lexical Categories, Morphosyntactic Categories)

Here is a list of English word classes (such lists differ slightly from author to author and from book to book. The traditional 'eight parts of speech' taught in most school grammars is not quite enough to cover the reality of English): Name of part of speech

Examples

Noun dust, figure, idea, flute, happiness

Verb dust, figure, fail, know, reciprocate

Adjective tall, unknown, flimsy, gleeful, blue

Adverb slowly, soon, carefully, down, first

Preposition in, at, above, for, down, near, up, between

Pronoun (Proform) we, she, there, then, so, like that

Determiner a, the, some, my, his, all, that, those

Qualifier (aka Intensifier; Degree-word) very, somewhat, quite, rather, really, hardly

Conjunction and, but, or, for, because, although, while

Particle pick up, turn on, drop off, fool around

Expletive () it, there

Interjection Rats! Dang! Wow! Hey! Yo!

Use the four tests below to find out which of the following words are nouns, verbs, adjectives, or adverbs. Make sure the word passes the meaning test ("more than one", "action underway" for each suffix as well as being able to take the suffix. For practice's sake, put each word through all the tests for each part of speech. If the word passes the tests for more than one category, that means it belongs to more than one category. If a word passes only a few or no tests for any particular category, make a note of it. This means the word belongs to some other category than the four you are testing for. When you are done, check your answers against the key at the bottom of the page. Also, check your answers against a dictionary. Do the dictionary's categorizations differ from yours for any words?

1. fight 4. organize 7. party 10. green 13. high

2. survey 5. together 8. shoot 11. brotherly 14. eagerly

3. very 6. nation 9. draw 12. concise 15. certain