2.Parts of Speech Table

part of speech	function or "job"	example words	example sentences
Verb	action or state	(to) be, have, do, like, work, sing, can, must	Vkontakte.ru is a web site. I like ice-cream.
Noun	thing or person	pen, dog, work, music, town, London, teacher, John	This is my dog. He lives in my house. We live in London.
Adjective	describes a noun	a/an, the, 69, some, good, big, red, well, interesting	My dog is big. I like big dogs.
Adverb	describes a verb, adjective or adverb	quickly, silently, well, badly, very, really	My dog eats quickly. When he is very hungry, he eats really quickly.
Pronoun	replaces a noun	I, you, he, she, some	Tara is Indian. She is beautiful.
Preposition	links a noun to another word	to, at, after, on, but	We went to school on Monday.
Conjunction	joins clauses or sentences or words	and, but, when	I like dogs and I like cats. I like cats and dogs. I like dogs but I don't like cats.
Interjection	short exclamation, sometimes inserted into a sentence	oh!, ouch!, hi!, well	Ouch! That hurts! Hi! How are you? Well, I don't know.

Many words in English can have more than one job, or be more than one part of speech. For example, "work" can be a verb and a noun; "but" can be a conjunction and a preposition; "well" can be an adjective, an adverb and an interjection. In addition, many nouns can act as adjectives:

My work is easy. - I work in London.

John came but Mary didn't come. - Everyone came but Mary.

LECTURE 4: THE USE OF ARTICLES IN ENGLISH

1. Main functions of articles.

The article is a function word, which means it has no lexical meaning and is devoid of denotative function.

There are two articles in English: the definite article “the” and the indefinite one “a/an”. It has become a tradition to also single out the so-called “zero” article, which is found in the contexts where neither the definite nor the indefinite article is used.

1)The Use of Articles as Determiners

The invariant function of all the articles (i.e. the function all of them are used in) is that of determination. In synthetic languages, like Ukrainian and Russian the same function is performed by inflexions.

2)The Use of Articles as the Theme-and-Rheme Markers

The second function the articles can be used in is that of the theme-and-rheme markers. As you know, the theme is the information already known, and the rheme is the semantic focus of the utterance, the new idea that is being introduced:

1. This is a cat.

2. The cat is very fat.

3)The Use of Articles as Generalizers

The object denoted by the word is called the “referent”. Referents can be concrete, if something is said about a concrete object or phenomenon, and general, if what we say is true for the whole class of objects:

I have a dog at home (a concrete dog). The dog is man’s friend (any dog).

In the second sentence the definite article is used as a generalizer. The generalizing function can be performed by both the definite, the indefinite and the zero article. The zero article is used in the plural or with uncountable nouns, for example:

Conscience and cowardice are really the same things. Iron is metal.

When concrete nouns are used in generic sense, they are usually preceded by the definite article. The indefinite article may be used when two classes of objects are compared, for example:

A dog is stronger than a cat.

4) The Use of Articles as Concretizers

The generalizing function of articles is opposed to that of concretization. The latter is realized through some specific functions which are different for definite, indefinite and zero articles.