Parts of speech have a prominent place in the school curriculum. But why study them in such detail? This is necessary in order to correctly build your speech, both written and oral. Therefore, students should know what grammatical categories certain groups of words have.
Concept of part of speech
Most words have a lexical meaning, that is, they have a specific meaning embedded in them, which distinguishes them from other words in Russian. For instance:
Spring is the time of year between winter and summer.
A store is a building specially equipped for the sale of goods or the provision of services.
If you look exclusively at the lexical meaning, there is nothing in common between these words. But in terms of grammar, they can be combined into one group. They answer one question - “what?”. They are inclined, and in the sentence they can play the same syntactic role. Based on these general characteristics, words can be grouped into specific groups.
So, part of speech is a category of words that have common morphological and syntactic features.
Independent and official
We have already found out that most of the words we use have a lexical meaning. When we try to convey a certain thought to the audience, they play the main role. However, in the Russian language it is impossible to use only such words, otherwise the speech would have sounded like this: "Les Masha will find a lot of Russula mushrooms." Obviously, firstly, the words must be put in the correct grammatical form, and secondly, it is necessary to add a preposition and a union.
Some parts of speech in Russian are called objects, actions, processes, signs or quantity, and questions can be posed to them. In the sentence, they play a certain syntactic role. These are the basic bricks from which phrases and sentences are built. There are six such categories in our language.
However, building sentences only from independent parts of speech will not work, therefore, they also distinguish official ones. They have no lexical meaning, but serve to express the relationship between full words. They help combine them into sentences or add shades of meaning. They themselves do not fulfill a syntactic role. Official words include prepositions, conjunctions, and particles.
A separate group of words is interjection. They have no lexical meaning, and also do not express the relationship between full words. This part of the speech conveys the speaker's feelings. They can convey joy, fear, delight, pain, etc., for example, “ah”, “hurray”, “oh”, “ah”. They also serve for onomatopoeia: “meow”, “mu”, “tik-tak”, “crow”.
Thus, in the Russian language ten parts of speech are distinguished.
Noun
Nouns denote objects or persons and answer the questions “who?” or "what?". They possess grammatical categories of gender, number and case.
In a sentence, nouns can play any syntactic role, but more often it is a subject and an addition.
For instance:
The poet writes poetry. - “Poet” plays the role of subject, and “poetry” - additions.
Success is the result of hard work. - “Result” plays the syntactic role of the predicate.
The boy sat at the table. - “At the table” plays the role of circumstance.
He bought a shirt with a collar. - “With a collar” serves as a definition.
Adjective
Adjectives indicate the sign of a person or object. They answer the questions “what?”, “Whose?”. They vary by gender, number, and case, as do nouns. Most often play the role of definitions.
However, one thing to consider. What part of the speech is the word “sick”? The answer seems obvious: adjective. But in the sentence: “The patient follows the doctor’s recommendations” - this is already a noun. Adjectives tend to move to other parts of speech. However, note that grammar categories are retained. That is, such words will be inclined as adjectives, and not as nouns.
Verb
Verbs indicate an action or condition. They answer the questions "what to do?", "What to do?"
Grammatical categories:
- type - perfect, imperfect;
- person - first, second, third;
- gender - male, female, middle;
- the number is singular, plural;
- mood - indicative, subjective, imperative;
- time - present, past, future;
- the pledge is active, passive.
Special forms of verbs are distinguished: infinitive, participle and participle. However, there is no unequivocal opinion regarding the last two. Some linguists raise the question of whether it is possible to consider such words as parts of speech, rather than verbal forms.
Numeral
Numerals indicate the number or order of objects and answer the questions “how much?”, “Which?”.
The following categories are distinguished:
- quantitative
- fractional
- collective
- ordinal.
Numerals are inclined in cases. At the same time, ordinal ones also have categories of number and gender. In the nominative and accusative cases, quantitative numerals play the same syntactic role with nouns. This rule does not apply to ordinals.
Pronoun
Pronouns are used to refer to objects, features or quantities, but are not specifically named. Accordingly, they play the role of subject, additions and circumstances.
Adverb
Adverbs indicate signs of action. They answer the questions “where?”, “When?”, “Where?”, “How?” and others. Examples of adverbs: long, quiet, early, here, all day, in the morning.
Adverb is an unchangeable part of speech. The sentence most often plays the role of circumstances.
Service words and interjections
As we already know, there are three service parts of speech:
- preposition - denotes the relationship between objects ("in", "y", "above", "without", "during", "thanks");
- union - binds together the homogeneous members of a sentence and parts of a complex sentence (“and”, “a”, “either”, “also”; “if”, “though”, “so what”);
- particle - gives an additional connotation to words or sentences (“same”, “neither”, “-also”, “would”, “yes”, “well”, “whether”).
Interjections express the emotional-volitional reaction of the speaker to events. The following groups are distinguished:
- non-derivatives - “ah”, “oh”, “ah”;
- derivatives - “horror”, “trouble”, “give up”;
- onomatopoeia - “tu-tu”, “tik-tak”, “woof-woof”.
Linguists often distinguish onomatopoeia in a separate category of words.
Difficult cases
It is not always easy to determine which category a particular word belongs to. This is especially true for immutable words. In such situations, you need to look at the offer as a whole.
For example, what part of speech is “how”? Here are the options:
- "How to learn the multiplication table?" - an adverb.
- “She laughed like a little child” - union.
- "How long have I been waiting for you!" - amplification particle.
Finally
Knowledge of the parts of speech allows a person to formulate sentences competently. The speaker will know what forms distinguish this word, whether it can be persuaded, etc. Thanks to this, he will not have to blush in front of friends or at business meetings.