Editing Part of speech (section)

=== <span class="anchor" id="Types of Part of Speech"></span>Classification ===
Works of [[English grammar]] generally follow the pattern of the European tradition as described above, except that participles are now usually regarded as forms of verbs rather than as a separate part of speech, and numerals are often conflated with other parts of speech: nouns ([[Cardinal number (linguistics)|cardinal numeral]]s, e.g., "one", and [[collective numeral]]s, e.g., "dozen"), adjectives ([[Ordinal number (linguistics)|ordinal numeral]]s, e.g., "first", and [[Multiplier (linguistics)|multiplier numeral]]s, e.g., "single") and adverbs ([[English numerals#Multiplicative adverbs and adjectives|multiplicative numerals]], e.g., "once", and [[Distributive number|distributive numeral]]s, e.g., "singly"). Eight or nine parts of speech are commonly listed:

* [[Noun]]
* [[Verb]]
* [[Adjective]]
* [[Adverb]]
* [[Pronoun]]
* [[Preposition]]
* [[Grammatical conjunction|Conjunction]]
* [[Interjection]]
* [[Determiner]]

Some traditional classifications consider articles to be adjectives, yielding eight parts of speech rather than nine. And some modern classifications define further classes in addition to these. For discussion see the sections below.

Additionally, there are other parts of speech including [[Grammatical particle|particle]]s (''yes'', ''no''){{efn|name=yes no|1=Yes and no are sometimes classified as interjections.}} and [[postposition]]s (''ago'', ''notwithstanding'') although many fewer words are in these categories.

The classification below, or slight expansions of it, is still followed in most [[dictionaries]]:
;Noun (names): a word or lexical item denoting any abstract (abstract noun: e.g. ''home'') or concrete entity (concrete noun: e.g. ''house''); a person (''police officer'', ''Michael''), place (''coastline'', ''London''), thing (''necktie'', ''television''), idea (''happiness''), or quality (''bravery''). Nouns can also be classified as [[count noun]]s or [[mass noun|non-count nouns]]; some can belong to either category. The most common part of speech; they are called naming words.
;Pronoun (replaces or places again): a substitute for a noun or noun phrase (''them, he''). Pronouns make sentences shorter and clearer since they replace nouns.
;Adjective (describes, limits): a modifier of a noun or pronoun (''big, brave''). Adjectives make the meaning of another word (noun) more precise.
;Verb (states action or being): a word denoting an action (''walk''), occurrence (''happen''), or state of being (''be''). Without a verb, a group of words cannot be a clause or sentence.
;Adverb (describes, limits): a modifier of an adjective, verb, or another adverb (''very, quite''). Adverbs make language more precise.
;Preposition (relates): a word that relates words to each other in a phrase or sentence and aids in syntactic context (''in, of''). Prepositions show the relationship between a noun or a pronoun with another word in the sentence.
;Conjunction (connects): a syntactic connector; links words, phrases, or clauses (''and, but''). Conjunctions connect words or group of words.
;Interjection (expresses feelings and emotions): an emotional greeting or exclamation (''Huzzah, Alas''). Interjections express strong feelings and emotions.
;Article (describes, limits):a grammatical marker of definiteness (''the'') or indefiniteness (''a, an''). The article is not always listed separately as its own part of speech. It is considered by some grammarians to be a type of adjective<ref>''The Oxford Dictionary of English Grammar'' by Bas Aarts, Sylvia Chalker & Edmund Weine. OUP Oxford 2014. Page 35.</ref> or sometimes the term '[[determiner]]' (a broader class) is used.

English words are not generally [[marker (linguistics)|marked]] as belonging to one part of speech or another; this contrasts with many other European languages, which use [[inflection]] more extensively, meaning that a given word form can often be identified as belonging to a particular part of speech and having certain additional [[grammatical category|grammatical properties]]. In English, most words are uninflected, while the inflected endings that exist are mostly ambiguous: ''[[-ed]]'' may mark a verbal past tense, a participle or a fully adjectival form; ''[[-s (disambiguation)|-s]]'' may mark a plural noun, a possessive noun, or a present-tense verb form; ''[[-ing]]'' may mark a participle, [[gerund]], or pure adjective or noun. Although ''[[-ly]]'' is a frequent adverb marker, some adverbs (e.g. ''tomorrow'', ''fast'', ''very'') do not have that ending, while many adjectives do have it (e.g. ''friendly'', ''ugly'', ''lovely''), as do occasional words in other parts of speech (e.g. ''jelly'', ''fly'', ''rely'').

Many English words can belong to more than one part of speech. Words like ''neigh'', ''break'', ''outlaw'', ''laser'', ''microwave'', and ''telephone'' might all be either verbs or nouns. In certain circumstances, even words with primarily grammatical functions can be used as verbs or nouns, as in, "We must look to the ''hows'' and not just the ''whys''." The process whereby a word comes to be used as a different part of speech is called [[conversion (word formation)|conversion]] or zero derivation.