OBS. 4.—­I have elsewhere sufficiently shown why ten parts of speech are to be preferred to any other number, in English; and whatever diversity of opinion there may be, respecting the class to which some particular words ought to be referred, I trust to make it obvious to good sense, that I have seldom erred from the course which is most expedient. 1. Articles are used with appellative nouns, sometimes to denote emphatically the species, but generally to designate individuals. 2. Nouns stand in discourse for persons, things, or abstract qualities. 3. Adjectives commonly express the concrete qualities of persons or things; but sometimes, their situation or number. 4. Pronouns are substitutes for names, or nouns; but they sometimes represent sentences. 5. Verbs assert, ask, or say something; and, for the most part, express action or motion. 6. Participles contain the essential meaning of their verbs, and commonly denote action, and imply time; but, apart from auxiliaries, they express that meaning either adjectively or substantively, and not with assertion. 7. Adverbs express the circumstances of time, of place, of degree, and of manner; the when, the where, the how much, and the how. 8. Conjunctions connect, sometimes words, and sometimes sentences, rarely phrases; and always show, either the manner in which one sentence or one phrase depends upon an other, or what connexion there is between two words that refer to a third. 9. Prepositions express the correspondent relations of things to things, of thoughts to thoughts, or of words to words; for these, if we speak truly, must be all the same in expression. 10. Interjections are either natural sounds or exclamatory words, used independently, and serving briefly to indicate the wishes or feelings of the speaker.

OBS. 5.—­In the following passage, all the parts of speech are exemplified, and each is pointed out by the figure placed over the word:—­

  1 2 9 2 5 1 2 3 9 2 1 2 6
“The power of speech is a faculty peculiar to man; a faculty bestowed 9 4 9 4 3 2 9 1 3 8 7 3 on him by his beneficent Creator, for the greatest and most excellent 2 8 10 7 7 5 4 5 4 9 1 3 9 uses; but, alas! how often do we pervert it to the worst of
   2
purposes!”—­See Lowth’s Gram., p. 1.

In this sentence, which has been adopted by Murray, Churchill, and others, we have the following parts of speech:  1.  The words the, a, and an, are articles. 2.  The words power, speech, faculty, man, faculty, Creator, uses, and purposes, are nouns. 3.  The words peculiar, beneficent, greatest, excellent, and worst, are adjectives. 4.  The words him, his, we, and it, are pronouns. 5.  The words is, do, and pervert, are verbs. 6.  The word bestowed is a participle. 7.  The words most, how, and often, are adverbs. 8.  The words and and but are conjunctions. 9.  The words of, on, to, by, for, to, and of, are prepositions. 10.  The word alas! is an interjection.