POS Worksheet

Work Sheet for Parts of Speech
and Sentence Functions

Predicate & Subject Practice:

Work through the following, answering the questions as you come to them.

“We arrived for work quite late.”

What is the subject of the sentence? ________. To check and see if the word you have decided upon is really the subject, try deleting the word from the sentence. Your deleted subject sentence should be: “arrived for work late.” Obviously, “we” is the subject of the sentence. The subject must be either a noun or pronoun. “We” is a ___________. "We"is substituting for an unnamed group of people; therefore, it is a pronoun. “Arrived” is a verb which tells what the subject is doing, has done, or will do. Which word would be the next word to figure out? It would probably be easiest to decide on "quite." Can “quite” be deleted from the sentence without destroying it? _________ Yes. So "quite" IS NOT a noun or a main verb. That only leaves adjectives, propositions, adverbs, and conjunctions to consider.

Now, the next logical step is to decide what “quite” is modifying or changing the meaning of. Is “quite” talking about “we?” ___________ What about “arrived?” ______________ Since the answer to both is "no", you might want to jump to conclusions and say that “quite” is either a preposition or a conjunction, since it’s neither modifying a noun, nor pronoun (function of an adjective) and since it’s not modifying the verb “arrived” (one of the functions of an adverb). But if “quite” were a conjunction, it would be joining together words that are same parts of speech (noun and noun, verb and verb, etc.). Is “quite” doing this? _____________ “Work” is a noun and “late” is a _____________. Right. “Late” is talking about “when we arrived for work” so it’s an _______________. (If you said adjective instead of adverb that is understandable; remember adverbs will generally answer some kind of question like when, how, how much, how often, etc., and adjectives describe, usually, rather than answer a particular question). So, if “late” is an adverb and “quite” is talking about it, “then” quite must be an _____________.

Remember adverbs modify verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs. (“Quite” can’t be moved because adverbs that modify other modifiers can’t be moved unless you move the word they are modifying with them: “Quite, we arrived for, work late”----No. “Quite late, we arrived for work”----OK, “We arrived quite late for work"----OK, though neither of the latter two sentences sound exactly “right.”)

Our last remaining word is “for”. Can “for” be deleted?____________. Can “for work” be deleted?____________ That is not as mysterious a violation of our rules as it might seem. What is “for” doing in the sentence? It is relating the noun “work” and the verb “arrived,” so it is not a conjunction. Is “for” a word that changes the description of the noun? Does it modify “work?” _______________ No, because if you modify something you change the description of the modified word: “easy work,” “hard work.” Both “easy” and “hard” change the mental image of the word “work;” therefore, they are _______________? Since “for” alone can’t be deleted it is an _____________ or _____________. But “for work” can be deleted.

Now, what part of speech is “work?” _____________. Right, it is a noun. ("Work" can’t be deleted and it is the name of someTHING that you do.) Since ”for” does not modify (change the mental image of “work”) and can’t, by itself be deleted, it must be a _____________. Remember it is relating “work” to the rest of the sentence and that is the function of ___________. Right, prepositions.

There is another way to approach identifying prepositions. If you have a word that you know is a noun and you have word that is doing something to that noun (you’re not sure what), try deleting that word. If the word is an adjective then your sentence will not be harmed. If the word is a preposition, then your sentence will not work correctly: “We arrived work quite late.” Another final check that you might make for prepositions is to delete the preposition (or word you suspect to be a preposition and the noun).

Usually, prepositions and their objects (the object of a preposition is always a noun) can be deleted without ruining the sentence: “We arrived quite late”----- the sentence does not convey the same information, but it is grammatically correct.

Let’s try another one.

"Two fat, feathered ducks wandered across the great highway very slowly."

1. Find the main verb_______________.
2. The subject is _________________.
3. The subject is always a _______________.
4. Are there any words that describe the noun/subject?___________________
5. These words are ___________ _______________.
6. Can they be deleted without hurting the sentence?_______________
7. “Fat and “feathered are __________________?
8. “Feathered” is also called something else which you will learn about later.
9. Is there a noun associated with “across” (look for articles)______________?
10. Can “across” be deleted______________?
11. Can “across” and the noun associated with it be deleted?
(remember to delete all the words “across” helps connect to the sentence.
All the modifiers associated with the noun, too.) ___________
12. Your sentence should now read: The ducks wandered very slowly.
13. “Wandered” is a _____________.
14. “Highway” is a ______________.
15. Does “across” modify “highway?”_____________
16. Can an airplane fly across a cloud?_____________
17. “Highway” is the ______________ of across?
18. “Across” is a ______________?
19. “Very” is modifying________________?
20. “Slowly” has an _____________on the end.
21. “Slowly might be an_______________.
22. Does “slowly” say something about wandered?____________.
23. How do the duck wander?________________.
24. “Wander” is a verb so “slowly” is an ________________.
25. Can “slowly” be moved around in the sentence?________________.
26. Can “slowly” be deleted? (very, too).
27. “Slowly” can be deleted (if you delete “very” with it), can be moved around, and says something about wandered, so it must be an ____________.
28. If “slowly” is an adverb and “very” modifies it, then “very” must be an ___________.
29. Adverbs modify ____________, ______________, _____________.

Use the same approach on this sentence:

"Joe could always find his way home, but even he was lost during the Great Cullowhee Blizzard."

1. “Joe” is a ______________.
2. What kind of ______________ is “Joe?”
3. “Could” is a ______________ and “find” is a _____________.
4. “Find” is the __________ and “could” is the ______________.
5. “Always” is an ______________ because it can be __________,_________,_________, and it answers the question_______________ of the verb “___________”.
6. “His” is a _______________because it is substituting for _________.
7. “Way” is kinda tough, but it is saying something about___________. "Way" might also be a _____________ because both "way" and "home" can be _____________ and "way" does relate "home, his and Joe." There is a special name for this type of construction that you will learn later.
8."Home" is a ____________.
9."But" is a __________ and even is probably also a _____________.
10."He" is a ________________.
11."Was" and "lost" are______________.
12. "During" has a special name that you will learn later, but it does seem to act like a ________________ because it related __________ __________ _____________ back to "lost."
13. "Great Cullowhee Blizzard" is a ____________ ___________ because the adjectives have also become part of the name of a thing, a very specific thing. Another name that works something like that is the Purple Gang, Over-the-Hill Gang, Hanging Dog, Long Branch, etc.

Using Articles to Find Nouns

Another, rather sneaky, way to find nouns is to look only for articles. "The" is the ___________ article and a and an are ___________ articles. Articles are always associated with nouns, and nouns are always associated with adjectives—if you have them. There is one exception to this and that is when the adjectives appear in the predicate.
These are called _____________ adjectives or complements and they always follow a ___________verb. (is, are, was, were, smell, tasted, etc.). Reading from left to right, articles will always signal the presence of a noun or adjective immediately to the ____________ of them. Adverbs do not appear between articles and nouns and neither do prepositions or verbs. Only adjectives and nouns appear immediately to the right of articles.
Work on the following sentence:

"The three old men went on a long journey out to the coast."


Use the articles to find the nouns and adjectives. The nouns are _________, ___________, ____________. The adjectives are _____________, _____________, ______________. In the phrase "The three old men" you have an article (the-what kind of article is it?____________) and immediately to the right of it you have the _______________ "three" and "old". Men is the noun that the articles are marking the presence of. Remember adjectives can be deleted and still you would have a good sentence, but you must have a noun to have a sentence. Now look at the article a (which is an _____________article). Next to a is the _______________"long" and next to it is the noun "journey." Now look to the article "the" ("the" is a ____________ ____________). The word next to it is ___________. You do not have to have adjectives between articles and nouns.

Pronouns: Articles are not associated with pronouns. You would never say "The she was pretty." English forces us to say "She was pretty" (no articles). You would not say An anybody can find it. You would simply say Anybody can find it. So if you’re trying to decide if a word is a noun or pronoun, try using the word with an article and see how it sounds.

"Everyone": use this with an article and maybe an adjective around it. "The happy everyone?" Now, you will also notice that adjectives never sit right next to pronouns. "The smart he? " "The short she?" When adjectives are used with pronouns they are always predicate adjectives (complements). "Everyone was happy." "He was smart." "She is short," etc. Try it with some other pronouns. Try this sentence for fun and see if you can identify what part of speech the nonsense words are: (your're actually not supposed to use a colon after a non-action verb but we'll let it slide for now...)

"The tansik druk scrumped tibbly dre sk an olid rusit and thog urt trib fuzob."

It’s not as hard as it seems! Figure out the nouns, etc. by using the articles and what you know about English sentence patterns.

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