| Kenneth G. Wilson (1923–). The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. 1993. |
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| PARTS OF SPEECH |
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| Grammars generally classify words and word groups as parts of speech according to meaning, form, function in the sentence, or some other criterion or combination of criteria. The traditional grammar’s eight parts of speech are noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, adverb, conjunction, preposition, and interjection. Nearly all grammatical systems describe the first five of these parts of speech, but some make many further distinctions, distinguishing articles or determiners from adjectives, intensives or intensifiers from adverbs, and auxiliaries from verbs, and listing several other small groups of parts of speech under the broad heading of “function words.” One of the reasons parts of speech sometimes baffle the layperson is variation in terminology, but another is that English readily applies functional shift to change a word’s part of speech without any change in form: We study after supper. The study is my favorite room. My study habits are poor. | 1 |
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| | | The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. Copyright © 1993 Columbia University Press. |
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