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Week 6
Parts of speech 1
Nouns—persons, places, thing, & ideas
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Abstract Nouns—ideas
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Fear
Cleverness
Misery
Civilization
Honor
Concrete Nouns—persons, places, and things that
can be seen, heard, smelled, tasted, or touched
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Trumpet
Street
Tortilla
Golden Gate Bridge
Nouns
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Common Nouns
◦ General persons, places, or things
◦ Do not capitalize
 city
 turnpike
 war
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Proper Nouns
◦ particular persons, places, or things
◦ Always capitalize
◦ Sometimes more than one word (like in a title)
 Sioux Falls
 New Jersey Turnpike
 the Civil War
nouns
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Collective Nouns—name a group of people,
animals, or things
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squad
class
flock
association
Compound Nouns—consist of 2 or more words,
sometimes hyphenated, sometimes written as one
word, and sometimes written as 2 words
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great-aunt
one-fourth
horseradish
postal worker
junior high school
nouns
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Noun Phrase—noun and its modifiers
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The young girl
Several children
The yellow tulip
Sweet as chocolate
Writing Hint: Nouns can signal possession. When you’re working with plural nouns,
add either an apostrophe or ‘s, depending on the last letter of the plural nouns. If
the last letter is –s, use just an apostrophe; if the last letter is not –s, use ‘s.
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Winners’ blue uniforms
The Kennedys' fame
The children’s shrieks
The mice’s cheese
In-class assignment
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With a partner, improve the weak
paragraph in Exercise 6.1by replacing the
italicized words with specific nouns or
noun phrases.
Pronouns
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words that take the place of nouns or other pronouns
Usually refer to something previously mentioned, called
an antecedent
◦ Identify the pronouns in the sentence below:
 Inez and her friend are newspaper staff members.
They go to an editorial meeting each Tuesday. It is
held in Mr. Chavez’s office.
◦ What are the antecedents for each pronoun?
Pronouns
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Personal Pronouns, and their possessive
forms, are most common
◦ She was the first to arrive because her train was early
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Indefinite Pronouns express an amount or
refer to an unspecified person or thing
◦ Many came despite the rain, and few were disappointed
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Demonstrative Pronouns point to specific
people or things
◦ This is the reserved section; those over there are available
Pronouns
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Relative Pronouns introduce some
subordinate clauses
◦ Suki, who lives farthest from the school, has never been absent.
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Interrogative Pronouns are used in
questions
◦ To whom are you speaking? What did you say?
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Reciprocal Pronouns express mutual action
or relation
◦ Teammates rely on one another for support during a game.
Pronouns
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Reflexive and Intensive Pronouns end in –
self and –selves
◦ Reflexive Pronouns refer to an earlier
noun or pronoun
 I love myself.
◦ Intensive Pronouns add emphasis
 The principal herself taught the class.
In-class assignment
With a partner, underline all the pronouns
in Exercise 6.2, including possessive
pronouns.
 Challenge: After you identify the
pronouns, label each pronoun with the
appropriate type of pronoun (personal,
indefinite, demonstrative, relative,
interrogative, reflexive, intensive, or
reciprocal).
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Verbs—express an action or state of being
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Action Verbs communicate an observable action
◦ Describe what people do or what people feel
 Frank Lloyd Wright designed and built homes and other structures. His clients
admired his style.
◦ Verbs take a variety of forms to communicate time
 The hiker shivers. The hiker shivered. The hiker was shivering.
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Linking Verbs link the subject of a sentence with a word that tells
more about it
◦ The surgeon appeared confident. The surgeon is an innovator.
But wait! It isn’t always that simple. 
 Some words can be action verbs in one context and linking verbs in
another.
◦ If a form of be can substitute for the verb, the verb is functioning as a
linking verb
 The performer looked nervously at the audience. (Action)
 The performer looked nervous. (Linking)
verbs
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Verb Phrases are verbs preceded by one or more
helping (auxiliary) verbs
◦ Hasn’t anyone here seen the remote? I have been looking for it for an
hour.
 Not (or in its contraction form, n’t) is never part of the verb phrase
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NOTE: Beware of verbals, which look like verbs but
function as a noun, adjective, or adverb
◦ People enjoying the play. (sentence fragment because enjoying describes the
people)
◦ People enjoyed the play. (complete sentence because enjoyed describes what
the people did)
In-class assignment
Identify every verb and verb phrase in the
sentences below:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Anyone can create music with the natural instrument we call the
voice.
As musical expression developed, people joined voice groups.
Gregorian chant, or plainsong, which arose in the early Middle
Ages, was one early form of choral performance.
In chant, all participants sing or hum one melody in unison; the
technical term for this is monophony.
In the late Middle Ages, composers experimented and gave
different voices different musical lines within the same piece of
music.
Soon, variations in rhythm and harmony led to the diverse
polyphonic music we are familiar with today.
Adjectives
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Modifiers that give information about the
nouns and pronouns they modify
What kind?
◦ Red flower, straight road, high-altitude climb,
surprise visit
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How many?
◦ Four days, few entries
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How much?
◦ More space, some effort
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Which one?
◦ Third response, that shirt, worst joke, last
month
Adjectives
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Writers sometimes use more than one adjective to
modify a single noun.
◦ Example: The long, steep, strenuous climb back to the
rim loomed before them.
A and an are adjectives but are also called indefinite
articles. They refer to any one member of a group
and so are indefinite. Similarly, the is an adjective but is
called the definite article because it points out a
particular noun.
 Proper adjectives are derived from proper nouns.
They always begin with a capital letter.
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◦ Japanese food
◦ Confederate troops
◦ Jackson democracy
Adjectives
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Predicate adjectives are adjectives that
come after the word they modify.
◦ The smoked salmon tastes salty.
◦ The manager is stern but fair.
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Sometimes, when a noun or a possessive
pronoun modifies another noun, it is called
an adjective.
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Motel room
Mother’s pie
Corn pudding
School auditorium
Adverbs
Like adjectives, adverb add clarity to sentences
Adverbs modify verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs
They answer when, where, and how questions.
Intensifiers are adverbs that answer the question to
what extent or how much
 When?
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◦ Today, we began rehearsals for the play.
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Where?
◦ They walked here from the station.
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How?
◦ The actor spoke clearly and loudly.
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To what extent?
◦ We thoroughly enjoyed the performance.
Adverbs
Many adverbs, sometimes called adverbs of
manner, end with the suffix –ly.
 Adverbs can modify prepositions and prepositional
phrases.
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◦ They arrived here just after dinner.
◦ Her hand reached almost to the top.
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Adverbs can modify subordinate clauses and
complete sentences.
◦ I’ll play the tape again only if you want me to.
◦ Surely, he didn’t mean to put the car in reverse.
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Many negatives—for example, not, n’t, barely, and
never—are adverbs; they can interrupt parts of a verb
phrase.
◦ He should not have moved backward.
Week 6 quiz
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Pick up and begin your quiz at the bell.