Advanced Parts of Speech

Infinitives

An infinitive is made up of “to” plus a verb (ex: to sing, to drive, to talk). Most of the time you’ll see infinitives used as nouns, but sometimes they are used as adjectives or adverbs.

To + verb= infinitive

How to identify an infinitive:

A gerund is a word that begins with a verb and ends in –ing. A gerund acts like a noun (this is, it names a person, place, or thing) in a sentence. Like a noun, a gerund can be used as the subject, the direct object, indirect object, object of the preposition, appositive, or the predicate nominative of a sentence.

Example:

A verb is a word that expresses an action or a state of being.  Therefore, verbs that express actions are called “action verbs.”  These types of verbs are the most common and the easiest to identify.

Example: Bella jumped for joy when Dash called her.

Jumped and called are the “action verbs” since they show action.

There is also a sub group of verbs called linking and helping verbs. These types of verbs are words that express a state of being.  

There are three degrees of comparison adjectives: positive, comparative, and superlative. The positive form is the base form of the adjective. The comparative form expresses a higher degree of some quality and can only be used when comparing two things. The superlative form expresses the highest degree and is only used when comparing three or more things. You can identify which degree an adjective is by following these rules: 

The positive degree (or regular adjective):

Each verb has two simple indicative forms: present and past.  

Present verbs include: I am, you walk, they buy.

Past tense verbs include: I was, you walked, they bought.

Verbs are easy to use in the present and past tense forms.  There are not many conjugations and, unless the verb is irregular, you just ad –ed to the end to make it past tense.  

The words a, an, and the, are special adjectives called articles. Articles are words that modify a noun or pronoun.  ‘A’ and ‘an’ are called indefinite articles because they don’t indicate anyone or anything specific (a door, an elephant).  ‘The’ is called a definite article because it names someone or something specific (the bus, the girl).

Example: 

Nouns are words that represent people, places or things.  The name you give anything you can touch (and a lot of things that you can) is probably a noun.  Look around you.  Do you see a pencil? Paper? A phone? Glasses?  A human?  All of those words, pencil, paper, phone, glasses, human, are nouns.

There are two main kinds of nouns.

There are common nouns, which represent general things, like glasses, football, and boy.

Nouns represent people, places, and things.

Singular nouns refer to one person, one place, or one thing.

teacher, city, apple

Plural nouns refer to more than one person, more than one place, or more than one thing.

teachers, cities, apples

Typically, we make plural nouns by adding -s to the end of a word.

apes, bottles, calculators, Cheerios, phones

In English, all verbs have several forms and conjugations.  We use the different forms and conjugations to show who does an action and when an action takes place.

The most basic, unconjugated, form of a verb is the infinitive, which starts with “to.”

 Infinitive verbs include: to be, to walk, to buy.

Each verb has two simple indicative forms: present and past (preterite).  

Subject/Object Pronouns

As you know (if you don't, review the lesson on pronouns), pronouns take the place of common nouns and proper nouns.  What can sometimes be tricky is figuring out which pronoun to use.