NOUNS: people, places and things.

Common Nouns Proper Nouns

A river the Passaic River

The doctor Doctor Horrible

VERBS: Add movement to the nouns,

Transitive: Take the action on the object. If you remove the object from these sentences, they
don’t make sense:

 He will lay the book on the table. (lay is the verb; the book is the necessary object)
 She gave the pearl to the wizard (Gave is the verb, the pearl is the necessary object)

Intransitive: Don’t need an object, they can take action all by themselves.

 He ran.
 She sits.

Action Verbs (exp. run, jump and swim)

Linking Verbs: describe a state of being (exp. verb to be)

 Some verbs are both Action and linking verbs. You will noticed If you can replace the
verb with a form of to be. “he smells bad – he is bad” NOT “ He smells badly – He is
badly” this last one doesn’t make sence.

(Appendix 1)

SUBJUNCTIVE VERBS:

Imperative (commanding): Don’t Talk to me!

Indicative ( matter-of-fact): Squiggly ate too much

Subjunctive (doubtfull or wishful): I wish I were a rock star.

VERBALS:

Gerunds: If you add ing to the end of a verb and use that word as a noun, it’s called a gerund.
For example, take the verb act and add ing to get acting. You can use it as the name of a
profession- a noun:

 Acting isn’t as easy as it looks.

 Aardvark’s singing almost deafened Squiggly

Participles:

If you add ing to the en of a verb and use that word as an adjective, then it’s called participle.
  Acting Lessons helped Aaardvark land the lead role in the school play.

Adding ing to regular verbs makes present participles, and adding d, ed, n, en, or t to
regular verbs makes past participles.

 The fallen leaves made striking pattern.

Infinitives

An infinitive is a combination of the word to and a bare form of a verb: to go, to run, to split,
and so on.

 To act was his secret desire. (infinitive as noun)

 It is his time to shine. ( Infinitive as adjective: to shine modifies time)
 He sprinted the last 10 years to secure the win(infinitive as adverb: to secure modifies
sprinted).

You can also split them:

 Squiggly decided to quickly remove Aardvark’s cats. (in this case quickly splits the
infinite to remove: to quickly remove)

If you try to unsplit the verb, you might actually change the meaning:

Squiggly decided quickly to remove Aardvark’s cats. (Squiggly made a decision quickly)

Squiggly decided to remove Aardvark’s cats quickly. (you can rewrite without lose the original
meaning)

PRONOUNS: He, It, she, we, they… etc.

I threw the beach ball. (I is the subject taking the action)

Squiggly threw me. (Me is the object getting thrown)

Possessive pronouns: yours. Mine and ours. Some possessive nouns can stand alone, such as
mine, yours, his, hers, ours, and theirs. Some people call these strong possessive pronouns.

 The cat is hers.

Some possessive pronouns (such as my, your, his, her, our, and their) need a noun. Some
people call these weak possessive pronouns or possessive adjectives.

 That is her cat

Gerunds usually need a possessive pronoun:

 Aardvark thought him singing was atrocious. (nope)

 Aardvark thought his singing was atrocious. (yeap)

 We didn’t know that was his singing. (possessive-We couldn’t tell if what he was doing
was singing or making some other kind of noise.
 We didn’t know that was him singing. (objective-It could have been someone else
singing.)
 Do you mind my leaving. ( possessive- you want to know if the reader is bothered by
your action of leaving)
 Do you mind me leaving. (objective-you want to know if the reader is bothered by you
when you are leaving.

That’s why gerunds usually take possessive pronouns: when you use a gerund, it’s usually the
action you want to know about, not the person or thing.

Indefinite pronouns: such as everyone and anybody, represent an indefinite number of nouns.
They often sound like a lot of people but are usually treated as singular.

 Everyone is wondering what Squiggly is doing here.

 Anybody can see that the skating rink is closed.

Demostrative pronouns: this, that, these and those. When they are acting like a nouns and
you can pointing at something when you use them.

 That is the ticket I lost.

 Those are my favorite shoes.

These words can also be adjectives when they come right before a noun: That ticket had been
lost for days.

Reciprocal pronouns: each other and one another. They refer to the members of a larger
group.

 Squiggly and Aardvark gave each other coffe mugs.

 The chess team gave one another high-fives for winning the tournament.

The rule: pronouns fallowing prepositions are always in the objective case. Prepositions
(between, at, above, over and including) describes a relationship or show possession, they
don’t act alone; they often answer questions like Where? And When?
  Keep that secret between you and me (between describes where the secret is to be
kept)
 I’ll tell you that secret at dinnertime (at describes when the secret will be revealed)

Reflexive pronouns: myself, herself, yourself, itself, ourselves and themselves. Yo can use
myself when you are both the subject and the object of a sentence. (you’re the object of your
own action)

 I see myself playing maracas

 I’m going to treat myself to a mud bath.

RP can also be used to add emphasis to a sentence.

 I myself saw the horrible crash

 I wrote the song myself

Relative and interrogative pronouns:

Relative pronouns (that, which, who, whom, whose) introduce subordinate clauses.

 Here is a tree that fell on my car

 She is the girl who won the spelling bee.

Interrogative pronouns (what, which, who, whom, whose) introduce questions.

 Who went to the party?

 Which car did you take?

ADJECTIVES AND ADVERBS: describe nouns, verbs, pronouns, and in some cases one another.

Adjective: describes a noun (or pronoun) by telling you which one, what kind, or how many.
The words can be as vague as this, huge, and some, or they can be as specific as soft, twelve
and wet.

 Aardvark threw some pillows at Squiggly.

 Aardvark threw a square pillow at Squiggly.

Adverb: It can describe verbs, adjectives, other adverbs, clauses, and whole sentences. You can
easily remember the connection between adverbs and verbs because the word verb is inside
the word adverb. Then note that adverbs are busy like verbs because they modify a bunch of
other things too. Something that is active (like an adverb) can cover a lot of ground (other
parts of speech).

 Squiggly deftly dodged the pillows. (the adverb deftly dodged modifies the verb
dodged)
 Squiggly quite deftly dodged the pillows. (the adverb quite modifies the adverb deftly,
which itself modifies the verb dodged)
 Squiggly dodge the unusually hard pillow. (the adverb unusually modifies the adjective
hard, which modifies the noun pillow)
The adverb tells you where, when, and how (how often and how much). And adverb can be as
vague as now, then, sometimes, and hardly, or it can be as precise as inside, today, coldly, or
hourly.

Adjectives follow linking verbs and Adverbs modify action verbs: When you’re dealing with
sensing verbs, such as taste, smell, look, or feel:

 I feel bad (expressing an emotion-you feel bad-It’s an adjective describing the pronoun
I. Also it have a linking verb because you can replace feel with a form of to be: I am
bad)
 I feel badly (The adverb badly describes the action verb feel. Feel can imply “to touch
things”, so you’re saying that something is wrong with your sense of touch.

Comparatives and Superlatives: Sometimes you need to compare one noun to another noun
or one verb to another verb. Comparing is a job of adjectives and adverbs.

When you compare two items, you use what’s called a comparative, and you use more before
the adjective or adverb, or the suffix er on the end of it.

 More peculiar (It was more peculiar choice, given the limited options)
 Taller (Aardvark chose the taller tree of the remaining pair)
 Faster(Squiggly ran faster than Aardvark)

When you compare three or more items, you’re using a superlative, and you use most before
the adjective or adverb, or the suffix est on the end of the adjective or adverb.

 Most peculiar (It was the most peculiar choice of the day)
 Tallest (Someone else had already chosen the tallest tree)
 Fastest(Bob ran fastest)

APPENDIX
1.