Week 1

Parts of Speech

Every sentence in English is made of a bunch of words, each of which plays their own role in it. See below and the video at right for more information.

• nouns - people, places, things, or ideas (e.g. mouse, virtue)

• verbs - actions or states of being (e.g. to want, to read)

• adjectives - modifications or descriptions of nouns or pronouns (e.g. happy, yellow, two)

• pronouns - stand-ins for nouns based on their attributes, so you don't say the same word a million times (e.g. he, yours, these)

• adverbs - modifications or descriptions of verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs (e.g. quickly, fast, sadly)

• prepositions - introductions to prepositional phrases which modify some other part of a sentence (e.g. in, on, under, with)

• conjunctions - words that conjunct clauses in a sentence (e.g. but, because, while)

• interjections - exclamations, usually outside of the rest of a sentence (e.g. hoorah!, oh no!)

Roles of Nouns and Pronouns

Every sentence in English has at least one noun or pronoun, and the role these nouns and pronouns play with relation to a verb, some prepositional phrase, or some apostrophe-s construction is critical to understanding the sentence's meaning. See below and the video at right for more information.

Let's look at the following sentence. The nouns and pronouns are bolded.
I gave my brother's friend gelato with a cherry atop.

These are the main roles nouns and pronouns can play in a sentence:

• subjects - the one doing a verb's action. Here, I is the subject of the verb gave.

• objects of possession - the one that another word is attributed to. Here, brother is an object of possession for the noun friend, since friend is attributed to it.

• indirect object - the one the action of the verb was done to or for. Here, friend is the indirect object of the verb gave.

• direct object - the one the verb's action is done to. Here, gelato is the direct object of the verb gave.

• object of a preposition - the one a preposition is acted on. Here, cherry is the object of the preposition with.

We will see more and more of these types of analyses going forward, because in Latin we give nouns different ending depending on which of these categories the nouns or pronouns play.