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The ancient work on the grammar of the Tamil language, Tolkāppiyam, argued to have been written around 2nd century CE, [8] classifies Tamil words as peyar (பெயர்; noun), vinai (வினை; verb), idai (part of speech which modifies the relationships between verbs and nouns), and uri (word that further qualifies a noun or verb).
English parts of speech are based on Latin and Greek parts of speech. [40] Some English grammar rules were adopted from Latin , for example John Dryden is thought to have created the rule no sentences can end in a preposition because Latin cannot end sentences in prepositions.
The Ancient Greek equivalent was ónoma (ὄνομα), referred to by Plato in the Cratylus dialog, and later listed as one of the eight parts of speech in The Art of Grammar, attributed to Dionysius Thrax (2nd century BC). The term used in Latin grammar was nōmen. All of these terms for "noun" were also words meaning "name". [5]
The component stems of a compound may be of the same part of speech—as in the case of the English word footpath, composed of the two nouns foot and path—or they may belong to different parts of speech, as in the case of the English word blackbird, composed of the adjective black and the noun bird.
The parts of speech that form closed classes and have mainly just functional content are called functional categories: Lexical categories Adjective (A) and adjective phrase (AP), adverb (Adv) and adverb phrase (AdvP), noun (N) and noun phrase (NP), verb and verb phrase (VP), preposition and prepositional phrase (PP)
Pronouns are the only part of speech with a dual form in some Polynesian languages, including Samoan, [26] Tuvaluan, [27] [a] and Māori. [29] In Maltese , the dual only exists for about 30 specific nouns, of which it is obligatory for only 8 (hour, day, week, month, year, once, hundred, and thousand).
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In modern grammar, a particle is a function word that must be associated with another word or phrase to impart meaning, i.e., it does not have its own lexical definition. [citation needed] According to this definition, particles are a separate part of speech and are distinct from other classes of function words, such as articles, prepositions, conjunctions and adverbs.