What is Grammar-land? Where is Grammar-land? Have you ever been to Grammar-land? In this lesson, learn about Grammar-land and the nine Parts-of-Speech.
Meet the first Part-of-Speech, Mr. Noun. He is a stout big fellow, very well dressed, for he does not mind showing that he is very rich. A noun is the name of an object. Nouns are words that can be used to refer to a person, animal, place, thing, phenomenon, substance, quality, or idea. For example, brother, mother, friend, dog, cat, ear, hand, bread, potato, desk, tree, and lamp are all examples of nouns. Nouns also include the capitalized names of people (Calista, Chris) and places (Canada, Paris, Lake Superior, Jupiter). There are two types of nouns. Proper nouns are nouns denoting a particular person, place, organization, ship, animal, event, or other individual entity. Common nouns are nouns that denotes any member, or all members, of a class; an ordinary noun such as 'dog' or 'city.'
Meet poor and ragged Little Article, who feels he is being cheated by the powerful and wealthy Mr. Noun. An article is a Part-of-Speech that indicates, specifies, and limits a noun (a, an, or the in English). Note how the articles are small words, containing at most 3 letters. The article 'an' is used before words starting with vowel sounds (e.g. a, e, i, o, u). The article 'a' is used before words starting with non-vowel sounds (e.g. s, t, n).
Meet Mr. Pronoun, a hard worker who labors for the rich and powerful Mr. Noun. Mr. Pronoun's words stand in the stead of the words of Mr. Noun, for Mr. Noun does not like his words to be overused. A pronoun is a type of noun that refers to another noun or noun phrase. Examples include I, you, him, who, me, my, each other.
Meet Mr. Adjective, a chatterbox who loves to describe and gossip all about the rich and powerful Mr. Noun's words. Mr. Adjective is accused of stealing words! Help the Judge by striking out all of the adjectives in first activity below. An adjective is a word that modifies a noun or describes a noun’s referent. Examples include big, fast, cold, yellow, old, beautiful, more, that, this, these, two, both, and all.
Poor Mr. Adjective is put on trial for stealing from Mr. Noun, but it is found that each Part-of-Speech steals from the other. An adjective is a word that modifies a noun or describes a noun’s referent. Examples include big, fast, cold, yellow, old, beautiful, more, that, this, these, two, both, and all. A noun is the name of an object. Nouns are words that can be used to refer to a person, animal, place, thing, phenomenon, substance, quality, or idea. For example, brother, mother, friend, dog, cat, ear, hand, bread, potato, desk, tree, and lamp are all examples of nouns.
The court learns that some words, such as my, thy, his, her, its, our, your, and their may be used as either adjectives or pronouns. Mr. Adjective and Mr. Pronoun decide to call these words Adjective-Pronouns and share them.
Meet Dr. Verb, a self-important, bustling sort, who quarrels with the rich Mr. Noun over who is the most important. A verb is a word that indicates an action, event, or state. Examples include speak, run, think, kick, and smile.
In Grammar-land, the judge and his court first discuss conjugated verbs. Conjugation is defined as varying the form of a word to express tense, gender, number, mood, or voice. Next, the court examines (simple) present, past, and future tense. Present tense refers to something happening now, past tense refers to something that happened in the past, and future tense refers to something that will happen in the future. Finally, they talk about first, second, and third person. First person is used to refer to the speaker or writer of the sentence (I, me, my, we, our). Second person refers to the reader or audience of the sentence (you, your). Third person refers to someone other than the speaker/writer or reader/audience (he, she, it, they, them, their, his, hers, theirs).
The Nominative Case is the case used for a noun or pronoun that is the subject of the verb. For example, in the sentence, 'Sally baked a pie,' 'Sally' is the nominative to the verb 'baked.' In the sentence, 'The stag runs,' 'stag' is the nominative to the verb 'runs.' A verb must agree with its nominative case in number and person.
Meet polite Adverb, who is fond of the self-important Dr. Verb. Unfortunately, Dr. Verb feels a bit smothered by Adverb. An adverb is a word that modifies a verb, adjective, other adverbs, or various other types of words, phrases, or clauses. Adverbs answer how, when, and where. Examples of adverbs include often, very, and many 'ly' words (slowly, warmly, sadly, quickly, poorly, swiftly, happily, etc.)
Meet dapper little Preposition, owner of a selection of little words such as to, from, and for. A preposition defines a relationship between the noun/platform that precedes it and another word in the sentence. Examples of prepositions include on, in, under, off, over, to, by, about, after, behind, and during.
Scandalized from being turned out of court, the Parts-of-Speech discuss the rule 'Whatever noun or pronoun a preposition is placed before and refers to, must be in the Objective Case.' The objective case is the form of nouns and pronouns when used as objects. For example, me, you, her, him, it, us, them, whom, and whomever.
Meet Conjunction! - a very excitable Part-of-Speech. Conjunctions are words used to join other words or phrases together into sentences. Examples of conjunctions include and, or, but, nor, because, yet, since, while, where, and although
Dr. Verb testifies that the nominative tells you who did the thing, and the objective tells you to whom the thing was done. When in active form the verbs govern the objective case. For example, for the sentence 'Harry kicked the cat.', the action of kicking applies to the poor cat. All active verbs require an objective case. When in active form, the subject of a verb carries out some action. So 'Harry,' the subject, carries out the action, 'kicked,' on the object, 'cat.'
The court learns of the possessive case. Possessive case is used to express direct possession, ownership, origin, etc. For example, 'Tommy's car,' 'Susan's daughter,' and 'The girl's book.'
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