While verbs, nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections get most of the spotlight, the English language has several other hardworking grammatical elements. Let’s explore ten of these:
- Articles: These small but mighty words signal whether a noun is specific or general.
- Example: a dog, the park
- Determiners: A wider group of words that help specify or quantify nouns.
- Examples: this car, some people, several houses, my pen
- Numerals: Words that express numbers or quantities.
- Examples: three, first, hundredth
- Quantifiers: Words that indicate amounts without precise numbers.
- Examples: many, few, a lot of
- Demonstratives: These pin-point specific people, places, things, or ideas.
- Examples: this, that, these, those
- Auxiliary Verbs: Helping verbs that add meaning to main verbs by changing tense, mood, or voice.
- Examples: be, do, have, can, will
- Modal Verbs: A specific type of auxiliary verb that expresses possibility, ability, obligation, or permission.
- Examples: can, could, should, might
- Infinitive Markers: The word “to” often signals an infinitive form of a verb.
- Examples: to run, to swim, to sing
- Participle Markers: The words “having” and “been” often accompany participles, which are verb forms that function as adjectives.
- Examples: having eaten, been seen
- Expletives: Words that fill grammatical space but don’t have specific meaning. Examples: it in “it is raining” or there in “there are many books”.
Understanding these parts of speech adds depth and nuance to your grammatical understanding and enriches your communication skills.
Note: Some linguists debate whether certain words fit into only one of these categories or shift roles depending on context. The beauty of language lies in its complexity!