1 There’s No Place like Rome

The Parts of Speech and Their Function

If you were an architect, you wouldn’t talk about a building you’ve designed without mentioning its parts—bricks, girders, glass, and so on. In much the same way, grammarians discuss sentences in terms of their parts and the functions of those parts.

Both the grammarian and the architect find it convenient to use a specialized vocabulary in discussing their subjects. Architects speak of joists and bearing walls; grammarians speak of verbsand participles—the language of grammar.