Exploring Language
Daily Language Investigations for English Language Arts
Lesson 3.2 Analyzing Parts of Speech
Lesson 1.1 also made use of nonsense/made-up words. Let’s investigate a bit more about what the knowledge is that we make use of when we are able to label parts of speech.
Look at this sentence containing some made-up words.
The snordling kuttles glinked a lornful scaladity.
Determine the part of speech of each word, and then talk with each other to explain how you know. Remember, you can’t rely on meaning here at all since these words have no established meaning!
As you identify the parts of speech of the words, think of other “real” words that have the same affixes. When you come up with those, write them down.
[Teacher Notes: Students may instinctively want to relate their knowledge to meaning. But remind them that they can’t, for example, say that kuttles is a thing. They may know that, but they know it because of its –s ending (which can attach to nouns to pluralize) and because of its position in the sentence in relation to the other words. You may ask them how they know that kuttles isn’t a verb here since -s also attaches to verbs (she sings). They know because of its position in the sentence in relation to the other words; it’s a typical noun position preceding the verb, glinked.
affixes they should discuss:
-ing This affix occurs on both verbs and adjectives. Here it’s an adjective because of its position following the and preceding a noun.
-s Discussed above.
-ed This is a past tense affix that only occurs on verbs.
-ful This is an affix that attaches to nouns to make adjectives (awful, sinful, wonderful)
-ity This is an affix that attaches to nouns or adjectives to make other nouns (acidity, fluidity, probability).]
key words: parts of speech, noun, verb, adjective, adverb, morphology, syntax
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.L.3.1a Explain the function of nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs in general and their functions in particular sentences.
Here is this lesson as a pdf.