Parts of Speech (Extract from ARiSE 1)

There is still much debate among language experts about how to classify and analyze words, but most analyses depend on some common distinctions and well-known categories. Generally speaking, words can be classified into two broad categories: content words and function words. Content words communicate the main content or ideas of a text. Here, the well-known categories (sometimes referred to as parts of speech) include nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. Nouns point to people, objects, or ideas in the world that we want to talk about such as student, laboratory, or theory. Alternatively, verbs describe some relation or interaction between these people, objects, and ideas, such as observe, analyze, or propose. Adjectives identify some characteristic of the people, objects, or ideas such as logical or rational. Finally, adverbs identify some characteristic of the relations or interactions described by verbs such as completely or falsely.

Function words, on the other hand, show the structure of a text and how content words relate to one another. Pronouns, like nouns, point to people, objects, or ideas, but specifically, ones that have been identified or implied in the context such as it, they, or this. Prepositions are difficult to define but include words that show relations to or interactions with people, objects, and ideas and often identify a direction or a connection such as to, against, by, or since. Conjunctions are words that connect various structural units of a text from simple nouns or verbs all the way up to whole sentences into larger structural units such as and, but, or or. Finally, articles is a small, but important category that includes words that indicate whether the person, object, or idea is general or specific, such as a(n), the, or some.