Parts of Speech: Adverbs, Prepositions, Interjections - English Grammar (3/3)

Hi everyone. It's Jennifer. Are you ready to finish our look at the parts of speech in English?

Let's review what we've talked about so far. As we look at each part of speech, we identify two things:

function and placement. We look at what a word does and where it goes in a sentence.

We looked at nouns as subjects, objects, and complements.

Statements the word order is subject + verb.

My family traveled.

Objects can follow a verb or a preposition. We visited national and state parks.

Complements follow linking verbs.

First on our stop was Mount Rushmore.

We know that pronouns can replace nouns and function the same way in a sentence.

Do you know the four presidents on Mount Rushmore? Can you name them?

Determiners help us specify what or who we're talking about.

Determiners go before a noun or before a pronoun as in: a monument,

the presidents,

the one on the left.

Verbs express an action or a state.

Verbs usually follow a subject, but in a question, we invert the word order or switch them.

Usually it's a helping verb that comes first. For example: Do you know Mount Rushmore?

Some verbs are transitive and take an object as in: We visited South Dakota.

Some verbs are linking verbs and they link a complement to a subject, as in: Mount Rushmore was beautiful.

Beautiful is an example of an adjective. Adjectives describe nouns and pronouns, meaning people or things.

Adjectives can appear before a noun or after a linking verb.

We saw lots of big buffalo.

The prairie dogs were cute.

Remember the order in a noun phrase:

determiner, adjective, and then noun.

Adjectives follow determiners and never go before as in: lots of big buffalo,

those cute prairie dogs.

Conjunctions are words that join. We can build phrases,

lists, and longer sentences with the help of conjunctions.

In Part 3, we'll now look at the remaining parts of speech:

adverbs, prepositions, and interjections.

Adverbs can modify or give more information about verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs.

Adverbs are often single words like "suddenly," but they can also be a phrase like "of course."

Adverbs answer the basic questions how where, and when?

Adverbs can also perform bigger jobs and modify a clause or a whole sentence

Because adverbs can modify different

elements in a sentence,

it's no surprise that adverbs can have different positions within a sentence.

They can appear at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end.

If an adverb modifies a single word, it generally sticks close to that word with little or no separation.

In terms of word order, you'll see these common combinations:

verb + adverb

adverb + adjective

With a smaller number of adverbs, you'll see the combination adjective + adverb.

Other combinations are adverb + adverb and

adverb + a clause.

How can you recognize adverbs? Remember I said you can't always tell the part of speech by looking at a word.

It's true that many adverbs end in -ly. These adverbs usually answer the question HOW?

How do you run? Quickly. How do they talk? Excitedly.

So in many cases, we can form adverbs by adding the suffix -ly to an adjective.

But some adjectives end in -ly.

So don't make the mistake of thinking that all words that end in -ly are adverbs.

If I talk about friendly people and lovely landscapes, I'm describing people and landscapes with adjectives.

Some adjectives and adverbs share the same form. "Fast" and "slow" are two examples.

Here's another example: high.

Devils Tower is really high.

Hikers can climb high in the Badlands.

Note that in informal American English, we also use the words "real" and "good" as adverbs.

Grammar books may say that's wrong, but you'll hear these uses in everyday conversation.

So what kinds of adverbs are there?

There isn't always agreement on groupings or names.

Some sources list four types of adverbs: manner, place, time, and degree.

Others add a fifth type because they distinguish between time and frequency.

I'm going to list seven types of adverbs. I could go up to eight, nine, or even ten.

I agree with the approach of combining types of adverbs when it's logical

There's a lot of terminology,

but remember our main goal is to understand function and syntax.

Knowing how to use all of these adverbs is more important than remembering the exact names.

But we need to use the terminology now to talk about how language fits together

Here's our list of the seven types of adverbs.

First, circumstance adverbs, which include adverbs of manner,

adverbs of place, and adverbs of time.

Next, we have adverbs of degree. Then additive and restrictive adverbs.

Viewpoint and comment adverbs.

And finally, linking adverbs, which are also called conjunctive adverbs.

Let's go through these seven types of adverbs.

The first three types of adverbs fall into a larger group called circumstance adverbs because they all give

information about the circumstances of an action: how, where, when.

In other words, adverbs of manner,

adverbs of place, and adverbs of time.

Adverbs of manner often end in -ly:

happily, suddenly.

Adverbs of place include: here, there, and far. They give information about position,

direction, and distance.

Adverbs of time include: now, then, today, often, never.

Adverbs of time can give information about frequency and duration.

Let's talk about syntax for circumstance adverbs.

Adverbs of manner usually follow a verb, but other positions are possible.

If we have adverbs of place and time together, then place usually goes before time as in: we got there early.

Place and time adverbs usually go at the end.

But you'll also see initial positions, especially in fiction and informal writing.

I think adverbs of time and frequency are closely related, so I'm putting them together in one group.

Here's a quick note on the syntax for adverbs of frequency.

Adverbs of frequency can have an initial, middle, or final position in a sentence,

This happens both in speaking and in writing.

Adverbs of frequency follow the verb BE:

I was never there. I'm occasionally away on business.

Recall that certain adverbs of time are used with particular verb forms.

Circumstance adverbs are often but not always single words, and simple adverbs often have comparative and superlative

forms just like descriptive adjectives.

We use the suffixes -er and -est with those short adverbs that look like adjectives, and then we can use MORE or LESS

MOST or LEAST with those longer adverbs that end in -ly.

Some but not all adverbs of place and time can have comparative forms.

Consider these examples.

So after manner, place, and time, we could look at our fourth type of adverb: adverbs of degree.

These adverbs answer the question how much? Or to what extent?

Adverbs of degree help us talk about how strong or how weak equality is.

When we start talking about degrees, we get into amplifiers and diminishers,

or intensifiers and downtoners.

Those are just fancy names for adverbs that help us increase or decrease the strength of a word.

Adverbs of degree go before adjectives or other adverbs.

Here are some common amplifiers.

And these are common diminishers:

Now for our fifth type: additive in restrictive adverbs. They help us add or restrict information.

Additive adverbs can have different positions. Can you find them? Look.

Here they are.

Only, just, and especially are examples of restrictive adverbs, which can focus our

attention on different parts of a sentence. For that reason, these are also called focus adverbs.

These focus adverbs go before the noun (or other word) they modify.

As our sixth type, we have viewpoint and comment adverbs, which can help us express things like certainty,

opinion, and attitude.

Some call these stance adverbs because they can show a person's position on a matter.

What you need to know is that viewpoint and comment adverbs modify a whole idea,

meaning a clause, a sentence. For that reason, they're also known as sentence adverbs.

Viewpoint and comment adverbs often have an initial position. If we write them, then we follow them with a comma.

Viewpoint and comment adverbs are common in speaking.

They're often added in or even added on. For that reason, they can have a middle and final position in a sentence.

If you'd like practice with intonation patterns for introductory phrases

or words and phrases that interrupt the flow of a sentence or that we tag on, check out my playlist on intonation.

I'll put that link in the video description.

Here are some other common viewpoint and comment adverbs.

Last but not least we have our seventh type of adverb: linking adverbs.

They connect ideas and for that reason they go by other names:

conjunctive adverbs,

transition words, and even sentence connectors.

Linking adverbs connect two complete ideas. Their position in a sentence varies, and the punctuation

also varies. Take a look.

Here's a list of common linking adverbs. Note this isn't a complete list.

Okay. Now is a very good time to move on to the next part of speech:

prepositions. And that's because you'll see some similarities between prepositions and adverbs.

Prepositions are usually short words like at, to, with, from.

There are more complex prepositions, for example, in front of, due to.

Prepositions must have an object, which is a noun or anything that behaves like a noun.

So a preposition + a noun makes a prepositional phrase.

Prepositional phrases generally function two different ways: as adjectives and as adverbs.

When used like adjectives, prepositional phrases answer the question which one?

When prepositional phrases behave like adjectives, they follow the noun they modify.

When prepositional phrases function like adverbs, they answer the questions how where, when, and why?

When prepositional phrases behave like adverbs, they often go at the end of the sentence as adverbials.

As you may know, sentences can have more than one adverbial.

We can talk more specifically about prepositions of time,

reason, location, but I think it's simpler just to remember that prepositional phrases

function either as adjectives or adverbs.

Prepositions and their objects can help describe or identify people and things, and these prepositional phrases can also give more

information about how, when, where, and why things happen.

What's probably the trickiest thing about prepositions is remembering the common combinations

they have with verbs, nouns, and adjectives. I cover a lot of these

collocations in my playlist on prepositions. I'll put the link in the video description.

For now, here's a quick check see if you know these collocations with prepositions.

Guess what? We're ready to talk about the final part of speech: interjections. Yay!

I just gave you your first example. Yay! is something that we say when we're excited and happy.

Interjections our short words - things that we say when we feel a strong emotion like surprise, anger, and happiness.

Interjections are mostly spoken,

but if we write them we often follow them with an exclamation point to express that strong sudden emotion.

I have a lesson on interjections. I'll include the link in the video description.

For now, let's look at a short list of interjections.

Okay. Now let's see if you can use some of those interjections appropriately.

Before we end, I want to explain something interesting about the parts of speech.

Do you know that we can separate them into open and closed word classes?

I'll explain via little game. Listen.

Okay. Question one. Back in the 1980s, my classmates and I would use the word "psyched," for example:

Are you psyched about tonight's game? Yeah? I'm totally psyched.

What do you think "psyched" meant back then?

Well, to someone of my generation "psyched" means "excited."

What part of speech is it?

An adjective. It's a participial adjective: psyched, excited.

But guess what? My kids told me that no one uses "psyched" today.

Question two. In my hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,

we sometimes tell children to red up, as in red up the room.

That's because the room is messy.

So what do you think "red up" means?

To clean up. Right?

What part of speech is "red up"?

A verb or a phrasal verb: red up, clean up, tidy up, but outside of western, Pennsylvania, no one says "red up."

Question three. Well, the other day my son was in a silly mood.

And he was talking about how good he was at a game or how good he could be at a game.

And I jokingly criticized and said, "Enough of the me fest!"

I don't think I ever heard "me-fest" before. I don't know why I made it up.

It just came out. But how was I using it?

Well, I was imagining like this festival where he was celebrating himself: "Enough of the me-fest."

Festival, fest, enough of the me-fest.

How was I using the made-up word "me-fest"?

Well, it was like a little festival where he was celebrating himself.

So me-fest, fest, festival. What part of speech?

Noun, and I was using it like a noun. compound noun. or noun phrase: a me-fest.

You won't find that in the dictionary. It just came out of my mind.

Question 4. Here's a word I heard my kids use the other day: laggy. They complained about a video being laggy.

Do you understand the meaning?

If there's a lag in a video, it's slow. So "lag" is a verb. What's "laggy"?

An adjective.

You might actually see "laggy" in a dictionary, but it would be listed as an informal adjective, I think.

So nouns, verbs,

adjectives, and adverbs are open word classes. New words can be added and sometimes words fall out of use.

Some slang never makes it into a dictionary, but there are cases when a popular word or a new meaning of a word

becomes officially recognized.

The other parts of speech are considered closed word classes because new words are not added easily or relatively often.

In past centuries, English speakers used THOU and THEE to refer to "you."

Today we only have the subject and object pronouns "you."

We'll end our review here.

I hope you found it useful to go over all the parts of speech in English. If you know someone who could also

benefit from this three-part lesson, please share the links.

As always, thanks for watching and happy studies.

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