In grammar, a part of speech (also a word class, a lexical class, or a lexical category) is a linguistic category of words (or more precisely lexical items), which is generally defined by the syntactic or morphological behaviour of the lexical item in question. Common linguistic categories include noun and verb, among others. There are open word classes, which constantly acquire new members, and closed word classes, which acquire new members infrequently if at all.
Almost all languages have the lexical categories noun and verb, but beyond these there are significant variations in different languages. For example, Japanese has as many as three classes of adjectives where English has one; Chinese, Korean and Japanese have nominal classifiers whereas European languages do not; many languages do not have a distinction between adjectives and adverbs, adjectives and verbs (see stative verbs) or adjectives and nouns, etc. This variation in the number of categories and their identifying properties entails that analysis be done for each individual language. Nevertheless the labels for each category are assigned on the basis of universal criteria.
Read more about Part Of Speech: History, Controversies, English, Functional Classification
Famous quotes containing the words part of, part and/or speech:
“... in no part of the world is genteel visiting founded on esteem, in the absence of suitable furniture and complete dinner-service.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“As she laughed I was aware of becoming involved in her laughter
and being part of it, until her teeth were only accidental stars with
a talent for squad-drill.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“our concern was speech, and speech impelled us
To purify the dialect of the tribe
And urge the mind to aftersight and foresight,”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)