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Parts of Speech

What are the parts of speech, a formal definition.

Table of Contents

The Part of Speech Is Determined by the Word's Function

Are there 8 or 9 parts of speech, the nine parts of speech, (1) adjective, (3) conjunction, (4) determiner, (5) interjection, (7) preposition, (8) pronoun, why the parts of speech are important, video lesson.

You need to dig a well . (noun)
You look well . (adjective)
You dance well . (adverb)
Well , I agree. (interjection)
My eyes will well up. (verb)
red, happy, enormous
Ask the boy in the red jumper.
I live in a happy place.
I caught a fish this morning! I mean an enormous one.
happily, loosely, often
They skipped happily to the counter.
Tie the knot loosely so they can escape.
I often walk to work.
It is an intriguingly magic setting.
He plays the piano extremely well.
and, or, but
it is a large and important city.
Shall we run to the hills or hide in the bushes?
I know you are lying, but I cannot prove it.
my, those, two, many
My dog is fine with those cats.
There are two dogs but many cats.
ouch, oops, eek
Ouch , that hurt.
Oops , it's broken.
Eek! A mouse just ran past my foot!
leader, town, apple
Take me to your leader .
I will see you in town later.
An apple fell on his head .
in, near, on, with
Sarah is hiding in the box.
I live near the train station.
Put your hands on your head.
She yelled with enthusiasm.
she, we, they, that
Joanne is smart. She is also funny.
Our team has studied the evidence. We know the truth.
Jack and Jill went up the hill, but they never returned.
That is clever!
work, be, write, exist
Tony works down the pit now. He was unemployed.
I will write a song for you.
I think aliens exist .

Are you a visual learner? Do you prefer video to text? Here is a list of all our grammar videos .

Video for Each Part of Speech

The Most Important Writing Issues

The top issue related to adjectives, the top issue related to adverbs.

Extremely annoyed, she stared menacingly at her rival.
Infuriated, she glared at her rival.

The Top Issue Related to Conjunctions

Burger, Fries, and a shake
Fish, chips and peas

The Top Issue Related to Determiners

The Top Issue Related to Interjections

The top issue related to nouns, the top issue related to prepositions, the top issue related to pronouns, the top issue related to verbs.

Crack the parts of speech to help with learning a foreign language or to take your writing to the next level.

This page was written by Craig Shrives .

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OASIS: Writing Center

Grammar: main parts of speech, definitions and examples.

The name of something, like a person, animal, place, thing, or concept. Nouns are typically used as subjects, objects, objects of prepositions, and modifiers of other nouns.

I = subject
the dissertation = object
in Chapter 4 = object of a preposition
research = modifier

This expresses what the person, animal, place, thing, or concept does. In English, verbs follow the noun.

It takes a good deal of dedication to complete a doctoral degree.
She studied hard for the test.
Writing a dissertation is difficult. (The "be" verb is also sometimes referred to as a copula or a linking verb. It links the subject, in this case "writing a dissertation," to the complement or the predicate of the sentence, in this case, "hard.")

This describes a noun or pronoun. Adjectives typically come before a noun or after a stative verb, like the verb "to be."

Diligent describes the student and appears before the noun student .
Difficult is placed after the to be verb and describes what it is like to balance time.

Remember that adjectives in English have no plural form. The same form of the adjective is used for both singular and plural nouns.

A different idea
Some different ideas
INCORRECT: some differents ideas

This gives more information about the verb and about how the action was done. Adverbs tells how, where, when, why, etc. Depending on the context, the adverb can come before or after the verb or at the beginning or end of a sentence.

Enthusiastically describes how he completed the course and answers the how question.
Recently modifies the verb enroll and answers the when question.
Then describes and modifies the entire sentence. See this link on transitions for more examples of conjunctive adverbs (adverbs that join one idea to another to improve the cohesion of the writing).

This word substitutes for a noun or a noun phrase (e.g. it, she, he, they, that, those,…).

they = applicants
He = Smith; that = ideas; those = those ideas

This word makes the reference of the noun more specific (e.g. his, her, my, their, the, a, an, this, these, … ).

Jones published her book in 2015.
The book was very popular.

Preposition

This comes before a noun or a noun phrase and links it to other parts of the sentence. These are usually single words (e.g., on, at, by ,… ) but can be up to four words (e.g., as far as, in addition to, as a result of, …).

I chose to interview teachers in the district closest to me.
The recorder was placed next to the interviewee.
I stopped the recording in the middle of the interview due to a low battery.

Conjunction

A word that joins two clauses. These can be coordinating (an easy way to remember this is memorizing FANBOYS = for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so) or subordinating (e.g., because, although, when, …).

The results were not significant, so the alternative hypothesis was accepted.
Although the results seem promising, more research must be conducted in this area.

Auxiliary Verbs

Helping verbs. They are used to build up complete verbs.

Primary auxiliary verbs (be, have, do) show the progressive, passive, perfect, and negative verb tenses .
Modal auxiliary verbs (can, could, may, might, must, shall, should, will, would) show a variety of meanings. They represent ability, permission, necessity, and degree of certainty. These are always followed by the simple form of the verb.
Semimodal auxiliary verbs (e.g., be going to, ought to, have to, had better, used to, be able to,…). These are always followed by the simple form of the verb.
primary: have investigated = present perfect tense; has not been determined = passive, perfect, negative form
The modal could shows ability, and the verb conduct stays in its simple form; the modal may shows degree of certainty, and the verb lead stays in its simple form.
These semimodals are followed by the simple form of the verb.

Common Endings

Nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs often have unique word endings, called suffixes . Looking at the suffix can help to distinguish the word from other parts of speech and help identify the function of the word in the sentence. It is important to use the correct word form in written sentences so that readers can clearly follow the intended meaning.

Here are some common endings for the basic parts of speech. If ever in doubt, consult the dictionary for the correct word form.

Common Noun Endings

Common verb endings, common adjective endings, common adverb endings, placement and position of adjectives and adverbs, order of adjectives.

If more than one adjective is used in a sentence, they tend to occur in a certain order. In English, two or three adjectives modifying a noun tend to be the limit. However, when writing in APA, not many adjectives should be used (since APA is objective, scientific writing). If adjectives are used, the framework below can be used as guidance in adjective placement.

Determiner (e.g., this, that, these, those, my, mine, your, yours, him, his, hers they, their, some, our, several,…) or article (a, an, the)
Opinion, quality, or observation adjective (e.g., lovely, useful, cute, difficult, comfortable)
Physical description
(a) size (big, little, tall, short)
(b) shape (circular, irregular, triangular)
(c) age (old, new, young, adolescent)
(d) color (red, green, yellow)
Origin (e.g., English, Mexican, Japanese)
Material (e.g., cotton, metal, plastic)
Qualifier (noun used as an adjective to modify the noun that follows; i.e., campus activities, rocking chair, business suit)
Head noun that the adjectives are describing (e.g., activities, chair, suit)

For example:

This (1) lovely (2) new (3) wooden (4) Italian (5) rocking (6) chair (7) is in my office.
Your (1) beautiful (2) green (3) French (4) silk (5) business (6) suit (7) has a hole in it.

Commas With Multiple Adjectives

A comma is used between two adjectives only if the adjectives belong to the same category (for example, if there are two adjectives describing color or two adjectives describing material). To test this, ask these two questions:

Does the sentence make sense if the adjectives are written in reverse order?
Does the sentence make sense if the word “and” is written between them?

If the answer is yes to the above questions, the adjectives are separated with a comma. Also keep in mind a comma is never used before the noun that it modifies.

This useful big round old green English leather rocking chair is comfortable . (Note that there are no commas here because there is only one adjective from each category.)
A lovely large yellow, red, and green oil painting was hung on the wall. (Note the commas between yellow, red, and green since these are all in the same category of color.)

Position of Adverbs

Adverbs can appear in different positions in a sentence.

At the beginning of a sentence: Generally , teachers work more than 40 hours a week.
After the subject, before the verb: Teachers generally work more than 40 hours a week.
At the end of a sentence: Teachers work more than 40 hours a week, generally .
However, an adverb is not placed between a verb and a direct object. INCORRECT: Teachers work generally more than 40 hours a week.

More Detailed Rules for the Position of Adverbs

Adverbs that modify the whole sentence can move to different positions, such as certainly, recently, fortunately, actually, and obviously.
Recently , I started a new job.
I recently started a new job.
I started a new job recently .
Many adverbs of frequency modify the entire sentence and not just the verb, such as frequently, usually, always, sometimes, often , and seldom . These adverbs appear in the middle of the sentence, after the subject.
INCORRECT: Frequently she gets time to herself.
INCORRECT: She gets time to herself frequently .
She has frequently exercised during her lunch hour. (The adverb appears after the first auxiliary verb.)
She is frequently hanging out with old friends. (The adverb appears after the to be verb.)
Adverbial phrases work best at the end of a sentence.
He greeted us in a very friendly way .
I collected data for 2 months .

Main Parts of Speech Video Playlist

Note that these videos were created while APA 6 was the style guide edition in use. There may be some examples of writing that have not been updated to APA 7 guidelines.

Mastering the Mechanics: Nouns (video transcript)
Mastering the Mechanics: Introduction to Verbs (video transcript)
Mastering the Mechanics: Articles (video transcript)
Mastering the Mechanics: Introduction to Pronouns (video transcript)
Mastering the Mechanics: Modifiers (video transcript)

Writing Tools: Dictionary and Thesaurus Refresher Video

Note that this video was created while APA 6 was the style guide edition in use. There may be some examples of writing that have not been updated to APA 7 guidelines.

Writing Tools: Dictionary and Thesaurus Refresher (video transcript)

Related Resources

Knowledge Check: Main Parts of Speech

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The 9 Parts of Speech: Definitions and Examples

Ph.D., Rhetoric and English, University of Georgia
M.A., Modern English and American Literature, University of Leicester
B.A., English, State University of New York

A part of speech is a term used in traditional grammar for one of the nine main categories into which words are classified according to their functions in sentences , such as nouns or verbs. Also known as word classes , these are the building blocks of grammar.

Parts of Speech

Word types can be divided into nine parts of speech:
prepositions
conjunctions
articles/determiners
interjections
Some words can be considered more than one part of speech, depending on context and usage.
Interjections can form complete sentences on their own.

Every sentence you write or speak in English includes words that fall into some of the nine parts of speech. These include nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, articles/determiners, and interjections. (Some sources include only eight parts of speech and leave interjections in their own category.)

Learning the names of the parts of speech probably won't make you witty, healthy, wealthy, or wise. In fact, learning just the names of the parts of speech won't even make you a better writer. However, you will gain a basic understanding of sentence structure and the English language by familiarizing yourself with these labels.

Open and Closed Word Classes

The parts of speech are commonly divided into open classes (nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs) and closed classes (pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, articles/determiners, and interjections). The idea is that open classes can be altered and added to as language develops and closed classes are pretty much set in stone. For example, new nouns are created every day, but conjunctions never change.

In contemporary linguistics , the label part of speech has generally been discarded in favor of the term word class or syntactic category . These terms make words easier to qualify objectively based on word construction rather than context. Within word classes, there is the lexical or open class and the function or closed class.

The 9 Parts of Speech

Read about each part of speech below and get started practicing identifying each.

Nouns are a person, place, thing, or idea. They can take on a myriad of roles in a sentence, from the subject of it all to the object of an action. They are capitalized when they're the official name of something or someone, called proper nouns in these cases. Examples: pirate, Caribbean, ship, freedom, Captain Jack Sparrow.

Pronouns stand in for nouns in a sentence. They are more generic versions of nouns that refer only to people. Examples: I, you, he, she, it, ours, them, who, which, anybody, ourselves.

Verbs are action words that tell what happens in a sentence. They can also show a sentence subject's state of being ( is , was ). Verbs change form based on tense (present, past) and count distinction (singular or plural). Examples: sing, dance, believes, seemed, finish, eat, drink, be, became

Adjectives describe nouns and pronouns. They specify which one, how much, what kind, and more. Adjectives allow readers and listeners to use their senses to imagine something more clearly. Examples: hot, lazy, funny, unique, bright, beautiful, poor, smooth.

Adverbs describe verbs, adjectives, and even other adverbs. They specify when, where, how, and why something happened and to what extent or how often. Examples: softly, lazily, often, only, hopefully, softly, sometimes.

Preposition

Prepositions show spacial, temporal, and role relations between a noun or pronoun and the other words in a sentence. They come at the start of a prepositional phrase , which contains a preposition and its object. Examples: up, over, against, by, for, into, close to, out of, apart from.

Conjunction

Conjunctions join words, phrases, and clauses in a sentence. There are coordinating, subordinating, and correlative conjunctions. Examples: and, but, or, so, yet, with.

Articles and Determiners

Articles and determiners function like adjectives by modifying nouns, but they are different than adjectives in that they are necessary for a sentence to have proper syntax. Articles and determiners specify and identify nouns, and there are indefinite and definite articles. Examples: articles: a, an, the ; determiners: these, that, those, enough, much, few, which, what.

Some traditional grammars have treated articles as a distinct part of speech. Modern grammars, however, more often include articles in the category of determiners , which identify or quantify a noun. Even though they modify nouns like adjectives, articles are different in that they are essential to the proper syntax of a sentence, just as determiners are necessary to convey the meaning of a sentence, while adjectives are optional.

Interjection

Interjections are expressions that can stand on their own or be contained within sentences. These words and phrases often carry strong emotions and convey reactions. Examples: ah, whoops, ouch, yabba dabba do!

How to Determine the Part of Speech

Only interjections ( Hooray! ) have a habit of standing alone; every other part of speech must be contained within a sentence and some are even required in sentences (nouns and verbs). Other parts of speech come in many varieties and may appear just about anywhere in a sentence.

To know for sure what part of speech a word falls into, look not only at the word itself but also at its meaning, position, and use in a sentence.

For example, in the first sentence below, work functions as a noun; in the second sentence, a verb; and in the third sentence, an adjective:

The noun work is the thing Bosco shows up for.
The verb work is the action he must perform.
The attributive noun [or converted adjective] work modifies the noun permit .

Learning the names and uses of the basic parts of speech is just one way to understand how sentences are constructed.

Dissecting Basic Sentences

To form a basic complete sentence, you only need two elements: a noun (or pronoun standing in for a noun) and a verb. The noun acts as a subject and the verb, by telling what action the subject is taking, acts as the predicate.

In the short sentence above, birds is the noun and fly is the verb. The sentence makes sense and gets the point across.

You can have a sentence with just one word without breaking any sentence formation rules. The short sentence below is complete because it's a command to an understood "you".

Here, the pronoun, standing in for a noun, is implied and acts as the subject. The sentence is really saying, "(You) go!"

Constructing More Complex Sentences

Use more parts of speech to add additional information about what's happening in a sentence to make it more complex. Take the first sentence from above, for example, and incorporate more information about how and why birds fly.

Birds fly when migrating before winter.

Birds and fly remain the noun and the verb, but now there is more description.

When is an adverb that modifies the verb fly. The word before is a little tricky because it can be either a conjunction, preposition, or adverb depending on the context. In this case, it's a preposition because it's followed by a noun. This preposition begins an adverbial phrase of time ( before winter ) that answers the question of when the birds migrate . Before is not a conjunction because it does not connect two clauses.

Sentence Parts and Sentence Structures
100 Key Terms Used in the Study of Grammar
Prepositional Phrases in English Grammar
The Top 25 Grammatical Terms
Foundations of Grammar in Italian
Pronoun Definition and Examples
What Is an Adverb in English Grammar?
What Are the Parts of a Prepositional Phrase?
Definition and Examples of Adjectives
Definition and Examples of Function Words in English
Lesson Plan: Label Sentences with Parts of Speech
Sentence Patterns
Nominal: Definition and Examples in Grammar
Constituent: Definition and Examples in Grammar
Adding Adjectives and Adverbs to the Basic Sentence Unit
The Difference Between Gerunds, Participles, and Infinitives

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Knowledge Base
Parts of speech

The 8 Parts of Speech | Chart, Definition & Examples

A part of speech (also called a word class ) is a category that describes the role a word plays in a sentence. Understanding the different parts of speech can help you analyze how words function in a sentence and improve your writing.

The parts of speech are classified differently in different grammars, but most traditional grammars list eight parts of speech in English: nouns , pronouns , verbs , adjectives , adverbs , prepositions , conjunctions , and interjections . Some modern grammars add others, such as determiners and articles .

Many words can function as different parts of speech depending on how they are used. For example, “laugh” can be a noun (e.g., “I like your laugh”) or a verb (e.g., “don’t laugh”).

Prepositions
Conjunctions
Interjections

Other parts of speech

Interesting language articles, frequently asked questions.

A noun is a word that refers to a person, concept, place, or thing. Nouns can act as the subject of a sentence (i.e., the person or thing performing the action) or as the object of a verb (i.e., the person or thing affected by the action).

There are numerous types of nouns, including common nouns (used to refer to nonspecific people, concepts, places, or things), proper nouns (used to refer to specific people, concepts, places, or things), and collective nouns (used to refer to a group of people or things).

Ella lives in France .

Other types of nouns include countable and uncountable nouns , concrete nouns , abstract nouns , and gerunds .

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A pronoun is a word used in place of a noun. Pronouns typically refer back to an antecedent (a previously mentioned noun) and must demonstrate correct pronoun-antecedent agreement . Like nouns, pronouns can refer to people, places, concepts, and things.

There are numerous types of pronouns, including personal pronouns (used in place of the proper name of a person), demonstrative pronouns (used to refer to specific things and indicate their relative position), and interrogative pronouns (used to introduce questions about things, people, and ownership).

That is a horrible painting!

A verb is a word that describes an action (e.g., “jump”), occurrence (e.g., “become”), or state of being (e.g., “exist”). Verbs indicate what the subject of a sentence is doing. Every complete sentence must contain at least one verb.

Verbs can change form depending on subject (e.g., first person singular), tense (e.g., simple past), mood (e.g., interrogative), and voice (e.g., passive voice ).

Regular verbs are verbs whose simple past and past participle are formed by adding“-ed” to the end of the word (or “-d” if the word already ends in “e”). Irregular verbs are verbs whose simple past and past participles are formed in some other way.

“I’ve already checked twice.”

“I heard that you used to sing .”

Other types of verbs include auxiliary verbs , linking verbs , modal verbs , and phrasal verbs .

An adjective is a word that describes a noun or pronoun. Adjectives can be attributive , appearing before a noun (e.g., “a red hat”), or predicative , appearing after a noun with the use of a linking verb like “to be” (e.g., “the hat is red ”).

Adjectives can also have a comparative function. Comparative adjectives compare two or more things. Superlative adjectives describe something as having the most or least of a specific characteristic.

Other types of adjectives include coordinate adjectives , participial adjectives , and denominal adjectives .

An adverb is a word that can modify a verb, adjective, adverb, or sentence. Adverbs are often formed by adding “-ly” to the end of an adjective (e.g., “slow” becomes “slowly”), although not all adverbs have this ending, and not all words with this ending are adverbs.

There are numerous types of adverbs, including adverbs of manner (used to describe how something occurs), adverbs of degree (used to indicate extent or degree), and adverbs of place (used to describe the location of an action or event).

Talia writes quite quickly.

Other types of adverbs include adverbs of frequency , adverbs of purpose , focusing adverbs , and adverbial phrases .

A preposition is a word (e.g., “at”) or phrase (e.g., “on top of”) used to show the relationship between the different parts of a sentence. Prepositions can be used to indicate aspects such as time , place , and direction .

I left the cup on the kitchen counter.

A conjunction is a word used to connect different parts of a sentence (e.g., words, phrases, or clauses).

The main types of conjunctions are coordinating conjunctions (used to connect items that are grammatically equal), subordinating conjunctions (used to introduce a dependent clause), and correlative conjunctions (used in pairs to join grammatically equal parts of a sentence).

You can choose what movie we watch because I chose the last time.

An interjection is a word or phrase used to express a feeling, give a command, or greet someone. Interjections are a grammatically independent part of speech, so they can often be excluded from a sentence without affecting the meaning.

Types of interjections include volitive interjections (used to make a demand or request), emotive interjections (used to express a feeling or reaction), cognitive interjections (used to indicate thoughts), and greetings and parting words (used at the beginning and end of a conversation).

Ouch ! I hurt my arm.

I’m, um , not sure.

The traditional classification of English words into eight parts of speech is by no means the only one or the objective truth. Grammarians have often divided them into more or fewer classes. Other commonly mentioned parts of speech include determiners and articles.

Determiners

A determiner is a word that describes a noun by indicating quantity, possession, or relative position.

Common types of determiners include demonstrative determiners (used to indicate the relative position of a noun), possessive determiners (used to describe ownership), and quantifiers (used to indicate the quantity of a noun).

My brother is selling his old car.

Other types of determiners include distributive determiners , determiners of difference , and numbers .

An article is a word that modifies a noun by indicating whether it is specific or general.

The definite article the is used to refer to a specific version of a noun. The can be used with all countable and uncountable nouns (e.g., “the door,” “the energy,” “the mountains”).
The indefinite articles a and an refer to general or unspecific nouns. The indefinite articles can only be used with singular countable nouns (e.g., “a poster,” “an engine”).

There’s a concert this weekend.

If you want to know more about nouns , pronouns , verbs , and other parts of speech, make sure to check out some of our language articles with explanations and examples.

Nouns & pronouns

Common nouns
Proper nouns
Collective nouns
Personal pronouns
Uncountable and countable nouns
Verb tenses
Phrasal verbs
Types of verbs
Active vs passive voice
Subject-verb agreement

A is an indefinite article (along with an ). While articles can be classed as their own part of speech, they’re also considered a type of determiner .

The indefinite articles are used to introduce nonspecific countable nouns (e.g., “a dog,” “an island”).

In is primarily classed as a preposition, but it can be classed as various other parts of speech, depending on how it is used:

Preposition (e.g., “ in the field”)
Noun (e.g., “I have an in with that company”)
Adjective (e.g., “Tim is part of the in crowd”)
Adverb (e.g., “Will you be in this evening?”)

As a part of speech, and is classed as a conjunction . Specifically, it’s a coordinating conjunction .

And can be used to connect grammatically equal parts of a sentence, such as two nouns (e.g., “a cup and plate”), or two adjectives (e.g., “strong and smart”). And can also be used to connect phrases and clauses.

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Grammar Tips & Articles »

Parts of speech, we have eight parts of speech in the english language: (1) nouns, (2) verbs, (3) adjectives, (4) adverbs, (5) pronouns, (6) conjunctions, (7) prepositions, and (8) interjections. every word you use in speech or writing falls into just one of these eight categories..

Conjunctions
Prepositions
Interjections

Conclusion to the Parts of Speech

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What are the parts of speech?

Today's the day for you to learn about this important grammatical concept! But first...let's see what the parts of speech have to do with your clothes.

Imagine that it's laundry day, and you've just finished washing and drying your clothes. You dump the contents of the laundry basket onto your bed, and you begin to organize everything. You fold matching socks together, you create a pile of perfectly folded shirts that you would be proud to show Marie Kondo, and you do the same thing with your pants, jackets, and everything else.

In the same way that we organize our clothes into groups based on each item's function and features, we organize our words into categories based on each word's function and features. We call these categories of words the parts of speech .

Some people categorize words into eight parts of speech, and some people categorize them into nine parts of speech. Neither one is wrong; they're just two ways of looking at things. We'll go over these categories below. Here at English Grammar Revolution, we categorize words into eight groups, but I'll tell you about the ninth one as well.

There's one important thing for you to know before we look at these categories: most words can function as more than one part of speech . They will only do one job at a time, but they can do different things in different sentences. Look at the word love in the following sentences.

My love of grammar inspired me to make this website.

Here, love is functioning as a noun. It's the subject of the sentence.

I love you.

Now, love is acting as a verb ! It's telling us an action.

The only way we can know how to categorize a word is to look at how it's acting within a sentence.

Okay, let's check out the parts of speech!

The 8 Parts of Speech

Nouns name people, places, things, or ideas. They're important parts of our sentences because they perform important jobs (subjects, direct objects, predicate nouns, etc.).

A peacock walked through our yard .

The dog howled during the night , and it woke up our whole family .

Sometimes people get bogged down with this part of speech because there are also many subcategories of nouns. This is similar to the way that we have subcategories for our clothes. You may have a whole drawer full of pants, but you may also have different types of pants that you use for different purposes (workout pants, lounge pants, work pants, etc.). This is similar to the way that we can further categorize nouns into smaller groups.

Here are a few of the subcategories of nouns: proper nouns, common nouns , collective nouns , possessive nouns , and compound nouns.

Tip : Other parts of speech also have subcategories. If you're studying this information for the first time, ignore the subcategories and focus on learning about each broader category.

2. Pronouns

Pronouns take the place of nouns. When most people hear the word pronoun , they think of words like I, we, me, he, she, and they . These are indeed all pronouns, but they're a part of a subcategory called personal pronouns. Know that there are other kinds of pronouns out there as well. Here are some examples: myself, his, someone , and who .

Here are a few of the subcategories of pronouns: reflexive pronouns , indefinite pronouns , possessive pronouns , and relative pronouns .

When we walked across the bridge, we saw someone who knows you .

I will fix the dishwasher myself .

Verbs show actions or states of being. They are integral elements of sentences .

The shuttle will fly into space.

The loving mother comforted and soothed the baby.

In the Montessori tradition of education, they use a large red circle or ball to symbolize a verb, and they often teach children to think of verbs as a sun providing the energy of a sentence. Isn't that a lovely way to think of verbs?

I know that you're getting tired of hearing about subcategories, but linking verbs, action verbs, and helping verbs are described on the verb page here .

Modal verbs are described on that link, and you can learn even more about action verbs and linking verbs from those links.

4. Adjectives

Adjectives describe, or modify , nouns and pronouns. I like to think of them as adding color to language. It would be hard to describe a beautiful sunset or the way a touching story makes us feel without using adjectives.

The wise, handsome owl had orange eyes.

The caring father rocked the baby.

One helpful strategy for learning about and identifying adjectives is to learn how they are diagrammed . Sentence diagrams are pictures of sentences that help us see how all of the words are grammatically related. Since adjectives modify nouns and pronouns, we diagram them on slanted lines under the nouns/pronouns that they are modifying.

My green and white book fell.

Book is a noun. It's the subject of this sentence. My, green , and white are all adjectives describing book , so we diagram them on slanted lines underneath book . Isn't that a great way to SEE what adjectives do?

Nine Parts of Speech

When people categorize words into eight parts of speech, they say that articles/determiners ( a, an, the, this, that, etc. ) are subcategories of adjectives.

When people categorize words into nine parts of speech, they say that articles/determiners make up their own category and are not a part of the adjective category.

Adverbs modify (describe) verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs. Adverbs are similar to adjectives in that they both modify things.

The extremely cute koala hugged its mom very tightly .

The dog howled loudly .

Sentence diagrams also make it really easy to see what adverbs do. Take a look at this diagram. What do you notice about the way the adverbs are diagrammed?

James ran very quickly.

Did you notice that the adverbs are diagrammed on slanted lines under the words that they are modifying?

Ran is a verb. Quickly is an adverb telling us more about the verb ran . Very is an adverb telling us more about the adverb quickly .

Doesn't the diagram make it easier to SEE what adverbs do?

6. Prepositions

Prepositions are probably the most difficult part of speech to explain, but people generally have an easier time understanding them when they look at lots of examples. So...let's start with some examples of commonly used prepositions!

in, for, of, off, if, until

The frog sat in the flower.

The baby cried for a long time.

I'm so convinced that memorizing some of the prepositions will be helpful to you that I'll teach you a preposition song .

Okay, now that we've looked at some examples, let's look at the definition of a preposition.

Prepositions show the relationship between a noun or a pronoun and some other word in the rest of the sentence.

Sentence diagrams will come to the rescue again to help us visualize what prepositions do. Think of prepositions as "noun hooks" or "noun bridges." In the diagram below, notice how the preposition down links the noun tree to the rest of the sentence.

The cat ran down the tree.

Since prepositions always function as "noun hooks," they'll always be accompanied by a noun. The preposition plus its noun is called a prepositional phrase .

If you find a word from the preposition list that's not a part of a prepositional phrase, it's not functioning as a preposition. (You remember that words can function as different parts of speech , right?)

7. Conjunctions

Conjunctions join things together. They can join words or groups of words (phrases and clauses).

The hummingbird sat and waited .

The conjunction and is joining the words sat and waited .

Do you live near the park or near the hospital ?

The conjunction or is joining the phrases near the park and near the hospital.

The two conjunctions we just looked at ( and and or ) belong to a subcategory called coordinating conjunctions, but there are other subcategories of conjunctions as well. The other one that we use most often is subordinating conjunctions . Subordinating conjunctions are a little trickier to learn because they involve a more complicated concept ( dependent adverb clauses ).

For now, just know that all conjunctions, no matter what type they are, connect things together. In fact, let's LOOK at how they do this by looking at a sentence diagram.

Here is a sentence diagram showing how the coordinating conjunction and connects two clauses.

She cooked, and he cleaned.

8. Interjections

Interjections show excitement or emotion.

Wow ! That jump was amazing!

Phew , the baby finally fell asleep.

They are different from the other parts of speech in that they're not grammatically related to the rest of the sentence, and the way that we diagram them reflects that. Look at how we diagram interjections :

Yes ! We won the lottery!

The interjection yes sit sits there on its own line floating above the rest of the sentence. This helps show that it's not grammatically related to the other words in the sentence.

It's time to review what we covered on this page.

We can categorize the words that we use into groups based on their functions and features. We call these groups the parts of speech.
Many words can function as multiple parts of speech. You need to look at each word in the context of a sentence in order to say what part of speech it is.
The eight parts of speech are nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, conjunctions, prepositions, and interjections.
You just learned about all of the parts of speech. Give yourself a high five!

If you'd like to teach or learn grammar the easy way—with sentence diagrams—check out our Get Smart Grammar Program .

It starts from the very beginning and teaches you grammar and sentence diagramming in easy, bite-size lessons.

Hello! I'm Elizabeth O'Brien, and my goal is to get you jazzed about grammar.

This is original content from https://www.english-grammar-revolution.com/parts-of-speech.html

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Parts of Speech

What is a Part of Speech?

We can categorize English words into 9 basic types called "parts of speech" or "word classes". It's quite important to recognize parts of speech. This helps you to analyze sentences and understand them. It also helps you to construct good sentences.

Parts of Speech Table

Parts of speech examples.

Parts of Speech Quiz

This is a summary of the 9 parts of speech*. You can find more detail if you click on each part of speech.

lexical Verbs ( work, like, run )
auxiliary Verbs ( be, have, must )
Determiners may be treated as adjectives, instead of being a separate part of speech.

Here are some examples of sentences made with different English parts of speech:

Here is a sentence that contains every part of speech:

Words with More Than One Job

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.

To analyze the part of speech, ask yourself: "What job is this word doing in this sentence?"

In the table below you can see a few examples. Of course, there are more, even for some of the words in the table. In fact, if you look in a good dictionary you will see that the word " but " has six jobs to do:

verb, noun, adverb, pronoun, preposition and conjunction!

People often ask

FAQ: frequently asked parts of speech questions

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Free English Lessons

Parts of speech in english – video.

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In this lesson, you can learn about parts of speech in English.

How many parts of speech are there in english can you name them, and explain what they do, understanding parts of speech —nouns, verbs, adjectives, and so on—can help you to understand english sentence structure and how english grammar works., in this class, you’ll learn the basic information about parts of speech, you’ll see some ways that parts of speech can be more complicated than you might expect, and you’ll have several chances to practice, quiz: parts of speech in english.

Now test your understanding of the different parts of speech by trying this quiz. There are 20 questions, which get harder as you go through it!

When you have finished, click ‘View Questions’ to see all the correct answers and read the explanations. There are links to further study resources in the explanations.

Quiz Summary

0 of 20 Questions completed

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0 of 20 Questions answered correctly

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Earned Point(s): 0 of 0 , ( 0 ) 0 Essay(s) Pending (Possible Point(s): 0 )

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Well done! You’ve finished!

That’s an excellent score and this quiz is extremely difficult! Congratulations!

A perfect score on an incredibly difficult quiz! Congratulations!

1 . Question

For the first five questions, answer true or false.

True or false: a word can be different parts of speech depending on its function and meaning in the sentence.

Review part three of the lesson if you need help with this one.

2 . Question

True or false: a noun can be a word or a phrase.

3 . Question

True or false: if a word can be a noun, it can only be a noun.

4 . Question

True or false: when analysing parts of speech, you don’t need to think about what the sentence means.

5 . Question

True or false: articles (‘the’, ‘a’), demonstratives (‘this’, ‘that’), quantifiers (‘some’, ‘few’) and possessive adjectives (‘your’, ‘their’) are all determiners.

Remember that determiners specify the noun you’re referring to. Do all these words do this?

6 . Question

For the next five questions, choose the part of speech described.

What part of speech can be an action or a state?

Interjections
Conjunctions

‘Run’ is an action and ‘understand’ is a state.

7 . Question

What part of speech can describe verbs, adjectives, adverbs or whole sentences?

Prepositions

8 . Question

What part of speech represents or replaces nouns?

9 . Question

What part of speech expresses an emotion or can be used to react to something?

10 . Question

Which part of speech doesn’t indicate something about a noun?

Determiners

11 . Question

For the next five questions, match the words in the sentence with the parts of speech.

“He slept badly.”

Sort elements

12 . question.

Match the words in the sentence with the parts of speech.

“She has bought a second-hand car.”

noun phrase

This time, you’re not analysing each word but the function of word groups and phrases in the sentence.

13 . Question

“Um, can you stop making so much noise, please?”

‘um’ and ‘please’
'can' and 'stop'
'you'
'making so much noise'

14 . Question

“Is this your bag or mine?”

conjunction
(possessive) pronoun

15 . Question

“Hey! Give his new watch back to him.”

interjection
preposition

16 . Question

For the last five questions, tick all the words that are correct.

Which words can be nouns?

You need to choose three answers.

17 . Question

Which words can be adverbs?

Only one word here is not an adverb.

18 . Question

Which words can be determiners?

This time there are two correct answers.

19 . Question

Which words can be more than one part of speech?

Two answers are correct; one of the others doesn’t even exist!

20 . Question

Which words are conjunctions?

nevertheless

This is a deliberately difficult question to end with! A conjunction must be followed by a noun (or noun phrase) and then a verb, with no commas.

So, first question: how many parts of speech are there?

Well, we did a Google search, and many of the top results said ‘eight’. So there must be eight parts of speech in English.

Wrong! There are nine.

So, what are they?

1. Guide to Parts of Speech in English

Number one: nouns. Nouns can be things, animals, or people, like doctor, pencil, tree or cat.

Nouns can also be ideas or abstract things, like idea, happiness, time or money.

Number two: verbs. Verbs can be actions, like do, run, fly or win.

Verbs can also describe states, like be, love, believe or understand.

Number three: adjectives. Adjectives describe nouns. For example: red, big, metal, or beautiful.

Number four: adverbs . Adverbs can describe verbs, meaning they describe how someone does something. For example, quickly, loudly, angrily or well.

Adverbs can also describe adjectives, other adverbs, or even whole sentences. For example, very is an adverb which can describe an adjective— very slow —or another adverb— very slowly.

Unfortunately or sometimes are adverbs which can be used to add information to a whole sentence.

For example:

Unfortunately, they missed the train and were late to their own wedding!
Sometimes, I wish I’d made different choices in life.

So, adverbs are a little more complicated. Here’s a good way to remember it: adjectives and adverbs both describe other words. They are both used to add information to something else.

Adjectives describe nouns, and adverbs describe everything else: verbs, adjectives, adverbs and whole sentences.

Number five: pronouns.

Pronouns replace or represent nouns. For example, I, you, she or they are pronouns which represent different people.

You use pronouns to avoid repeating the same word, or to refer to something when it’s obvious what you mean.

How was the weather there?

There is a pronoun which refers to a place. If you’ve already mentioned the place you’re talking about, you don’t need to say it again.

Another example:

Give me two, please.

Two is a pronoun which refers to a quantity of something which has already been mentioned. The person you’re talking to already knows what you’re talking about.

Number six: prepositions.

Prepositions usually go before a noun or noun phrase. What’s their job?

Prepositions can do two basic things: first, they can add an idea of time, place, or movement to a noun. For example:

on Wednesday
in the corner
towards the door

Secondly, prepositions can connect other words to a noun, or a pronoun.

For example, think about the verb depend on. The preposition on connects the verb depend to the object of the verb. For example:

It depends on the cost.

Usually, the noun or noun phrase goes after the preposition.

However, sometimes the preposition can link to a noun (or pronoun) earlier in the sentence. For example:

What does it depend on?

Here, on links to the pronoun what.

Number seven: conjunctions.

Conjunctions connect two things. A conjunction can connect two words:

I like cake and ice-cream.

A conjunction can connect two phrases:

Do you want to go now or wait till this afternoon?

You can also use a conjunction to connect two clauses:

Although I’ve been trying to learn for years, I’m still really bad at drawing.

Number eight: determiners

Determiners go before a noun. They include words like a, the, this or that, which help to specify which noun you’re talking about.

Words like my, your, his, her, etc. are also determiners. They specify which noun you’re talking about by saying who something belongs to.

Determiners can also tell you how many of something there are. Look at three examples:

ten bananas
some people
both of my brothers

The words ten, some and both are determiners.

Number nine: interjections

Interjections are different, because they aren’t normally part of a sentence.

Interjections are words or phrases which show how you feel. For example:

Parts of Speech in English - interjections

So, now you know about the nine parts of speech in English.

2. Practice with Parts of Speech in English

Let’s practice! Look at three sentences. Each sentence has five words.

They told me about it.
Look in the big cupboard.
Put it there, but carefully.

Can you identify which part of speech each word is? Pause the video and think about your answers.

How did you do? Could you identify the parts of speech correctly?

Let’s look at one more.

I’m staying in this evening.

What part of speech are these words? Think about it.

So, I is a pronoun, am is a verb, and staying is also a verb.

What about in? Did you say it’s a preposition?

It’s not a preposition; it’s an adverb.

How does this work? We had the word in in one of the sentences you saw before, and it was a preposition.

So, what’s going on?

3. The Same Word Can be More than One Part of Speech

Some words can only be one thing.

For example, the words independence or hair can only be nouns.

Believe and destroy can only be verbs.

However, many words can be more than one part of speech.

There are two things happening here.

First, a word can be two different things, which have the same written form and the same pronunciation.

Think about the word win. Is it a noun or a verb?

It can be both.

I’m sure they’ll win the game this weekend.
We’ll be hoping for a win in the big game this weekend.

Many words are like this. Another example: red can be an adjective or a noun.

What do you think about this red for the kitchen?
I like that red top she was wearing.

This is very common: very often, a word with one written form can be two (or more) different parts of speech.

We told you there are two things happening here; what’s the other?

Sometimes, a word can be different parts of speech depending on its function in the sentence.

Look at two sentences:

I have a few photos of my grandparents.
Sure, you can have a few.

Here’s a question: what part of speech is few in these sentences?

In the first sentence, few is a determiner; in the second, it’s a pronoun.

Can you explain why this is?

Think about what few does in these two sentences.

In the first sentence, few adds a quantity to the noun photos. It tells us how many photos you have. This makes it a determiner.

In the second sentence, few replaces a noun. You don’t know which noun it replaces, but in context, you would understand what the person meant.

Maybe it was ‘a few biscuits’, or ‘a few pieces of paper.’

We don’t know! But, you do know that few replaces a noun, which makes it a pronoun.

Another example is the sentence we saw before:

Prepositions go with nouns, and connect nouns to other words in the sentence. In here doesn’t go with a noun, so it can’t be a preposition.

Learn more with this Oxford Online English lesson on adverbs – to, in, at .

In here means ‘at home’, and it adds information to the verb stay. What kind of words add information to verbs?

Adverbs! So, in is an adverb.

Wait a minute, did we ever finish explaining what parts of speech are in this sentence?

You’re right! We didn’t. Let’s do it now. You need to say what parts of speech the words this evening are.

Can you do it?

Maybe you said that this is a determiner, and evening is a noun. That’s technically correct, but it’s not the best answer.

The best answer is that this evening is an adverb.

How do you explain that?

4. Compound Parts of Speech in English

Until now, you’ve seen single words, and how single words can be nouns, verbs, etc.

However, when you’re thinking about parts of speech, you can’t just think about single words. Phrases can also be nouns, verbs, adjectives, and so on.

Let’s do an example:

Add a small spoonful of brown sugar, then turn the heat down and stir the mixture gently.

Think about the first part of this sentence: add a small spoonful of brown sugar.

What parts of speech do we have here?

Of course, you can go through it word by word. You can say, add is a verb, a is a determiner, small is an adjective and so on.

But, is that the most useful way of looking at it?

It makes more sense to see this as a verb— add —and a noun— a small spoonful of brown sugar.

The noun is made up of several parts of speech: determiners, adjectives, prepositions and nouns, but together they have one meaning. These words refer to one thing.

You can analyse a sentence in several different layers. So, you can see a small spoonful of brown sugar as six individual words, or one noun phrase.

You could also see it as three parts: a determiner— a small spoonful —a preposition— of —and a noun— brown sugar.

Confused? We understand! You want to know the answer. You want to know which way is ‘correct’.

There isn’t one ‘correct’ way to see this. There are different perspectives.

A better question is: which perspective makes more sense?

In this sentence, a small spoonful of brown sugar refers to one thing in the world. So it makes sense to think of it as one part of speech in the sentence.

What about the second part of the sentence? How would you analyse the parts of speech?

As you saw before, there isn’t one right answer, but here’s a suggestion.

The sentence contains a conjunction— then —and then two verb phrases linked with the conjunction and.

This makes sense because the sentence is telling you to do two things: turn the heat down and stir the mixture gently.

So, it makes sense to see turn the heat down as one part of speech, because it’s telling you do to one thing.

Let’s put these ideas together.

First, when you think about parts of speech, you can’t just memorise information. You have to look at each sentence individually, and think about what each word is doing.

Secondly, always think about what the sentence means in the real world. Sentences aren’t abstract things; they refer to real people, real things and real actions.

There is always more than one way to analyse the parts of speech in a sentence: choose the way that makes sense based on what the sentence is telling you about real life!

Let’s do a more challenging practice exercise so you can see these ideas in action.

5. More Challenging Practice with English Parts of Speech

Look at three sentences:

Amazing! It’s way better than I ever thought it would be.
She was an amazing clinician , who came up with many innovative ways to treat patients.
I don’t believe it!

How would you analyse the parts of speech in these sentences? Think about the ideas we talked about in the last section. Does it make sense to break the sentences into individual words, or is it better to group words into phrases?

Pause the video and think about your ideas.

You can pause the video again to look at these in more detail.

Notice how the same word can be different parts of speech in different sentences. For example, amazing is an interjection in one sentence, and an adjective in another.

Notice also the different layers of analysis. For example, look at the phrase many innovative ways. You can see this as one noun phrase, or as a determiner plus a noun phrase, or as three individual parts: a determiner, an adjective and a noun.

Which is correct? They all are! Choose the perspective which makes more sense to you.

Thanks for watching!

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Cambridge Dictionary +Plus

Reported speech

Reported speech is how we represent the speech of other people or what we ourselves say. There are two main types of reported speech: direct speech and indirect speech.

Direct speech repeats the exact words the person used, or how we remember their words:

Barbara said, “I didn’t realise it was midnight.”

In indirect speech, the original speaker’s words are changed.

Barbara said she hadn’t realised it was midnight .

In this example, I becomes she and the verb tense reflects the fact that time has passed since the words were spoken: didn’t realise becomes hadn’t realised .

Indirect speech focuses more on the content of what someone said rather than their exact words:

“I’m sorry,” said Mark. (direct)

Mark apologised . (indirect: report of a speech act)

In a similar way, we can report what people wrote or thought:

‘I will love you forever,’ he wrote, and then posted the note through Alice’s door. (direct report of what someone wrote)

He wrote that he would love her forever , and then posted the note through Alice’s door. (indirect report of what someone wrote)

I need a new direction in life , she thought. (direct report of someone’s thoughts)

She thought that she needed a new direction in life . (indirect report of someone’s thoughts)

Reported speech: direct speech

Reported speech: indirect speech

Reported speech: reporting and reported clauses

Speech reports consist of two parts: the reporting clause and the reported clause. The reporting clause includes a verb such as say, tell, ask, reply, shout , usually in the past simple, and the reported clause includes what the original speaker said.

Reported speech: punctuation

Direct speech.

In direct speech we usually put a comma between the reporting clause and the reported clause. The words of the original speaker are enclosed in inverted commas, either single (‘…’) or double (“…”). If the reported clause comes first, we put the comma inside the inverted commas:

“ I couldn’t sleep last night, ” he said.

Rita said, ‘ I don’t need you any more. ’

If the direct speech is a question or exclamation, we use a question mark or exclamation mark, not a comma:

‘Is there a reason for this ? ’ she asked.

“I hate you ! ” he shouted.

We sometimes use a colon (:) between the reporting clause and the reported clause when the reporting clause is first:

The officer replied: ‘It is not possible to see the General. He’s busy.’

Punctuation

Indirect speech

In indirect speech it is more common for the reporting clause to come first. When the reporting clause is first, we don’t put a comma between the reporting clause and the reported clause. When the reporting clause comes after the reported clause, we use a comma to separate the two parts:

She told me they had left her without any money.

Not: She told me, they had left her without any money .

Nobody had gone in or out during the previous hour, he informed us.

We don’t use question marks or exclamation marks in indirect reports of questions and exclamations:

He asked me why I was so upset.

Not: He asked me why I was so upset?

Reported speech: reporting verbs

Say and tell.

We can use say and tell to report statements in direct speech, but say is more common. We don’t always mention the person being spoken to with say , but if we do mention them, we use a prepositional phrase with to ( to me, to Lorna ):

‘I’ll give you a ring tomorrow,’ she said .

‘Try to stay calm,’ she said to us in a low voice.

Not: ‘Try to stay calm,’ she said us in a low voice .

With tell , we always mention the person being spoken to; we use an indirect object (underlined):

‘Enjoy yourselves,’ he told them .

Not: ‘Enjoy yourselves,’ he told .

In indirect speech, say and tell are both common as reporting verbs. We don’t use an indirect object with say , but we always use an indirect object (underlined) with tell :

He said he was moving to New Zealand.

Not: He said me he was moving to New Zealand .

He told me he was moving to New Zealand.

Not: He told he was moving to New Zealand .

We use say , but not tell , to report questions:

‘Are you going now?’ she said .

Not: ‘Are you going now?’ she told me .

We use say , not tell , to report greetings, congratulations and other wishes:

‘Happy birthday!’ she said .

Not: Happy birthday!’ she told me .

Everyone said good luck to me as I went into the interview.

Not: Everyone told me good luck …

Say or tell ?

Other reporting verbs

The reporting verbs in this list are more common in indirect reports, in both speaking and writing:

Simon admitted that he had forgotten to email Andrea.

Louis always maintains that there is royal blood in his family.

The builder pointed out that the roof was in very poor condition.

Most of the verbs in the list are used in direct speech reports in written texts such as novels and newspaper reports. In ordinary conversation, we don’t use them in direct speech. The reporting clause usually comes second, but can sometimes come first:

‘Who is that person?’ she asked .

‘It was my fault,’ he confessed .

‘There is no cause for alarm,’ the Minister insisted .

Verb patterns: verb + that -clause

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English Grammar
Parts of Speech

Parts of Speech - Definition, 8 Types and Examples

In the English language , every word is called a part of speech. The role a word plays in a sentence denotes what part of speech it belongs to. Explore the definition of parts of speech, the different parts of speech and examples in this article.

Parts of speech definition, different parts of speech with examples.

Sentences Examples for the 8 Parts of Speech

A Small Exercise to Check Your Understanding of Parts of Speech

Frequently asked questions on parts of speech, what is a part of speech.

Parts of speech are among the first grammar topics we learn when we are in school or when we start our English language learning process. Parts of speech can be defined as words that perform different roles in a sentence. Some parts of speech can perform the functions of other parts of speech too.

The Oxford Learner’s Dictionary defines parts of speech as “one of the classes into which words are divided according to their grammar, such as noun, verb, adjective, etc.”
The Cambridge Dictionary also gives a similar definition – “One of the grammatical groups into which words are divided, such as noun, verb, and adjective”.

Parts of speech include nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, prepositions, conjunctions and interjections.

8 Parts of Speech Definitions and Examples:

1. Nouns are words that are used to name people, places, animals, ideas and things. Nouns can be classified into two main categories: Common nouns and Proper nouns . Common nouns are generic like ball, car, stick, etc., and proper nouns are more specific like Charles, The White House, The Sun, etc.

Examples of nouns used in sentences:

She bought a pair of shoes . (thing)
I have a pet. (animal)
Is this your book ? (object)
Many people have a fear of darkness . (ideas/abstract nouns)
He is my brother . (person)
This is my school . (place)

Also, explore Singular Nouns and Plural Nouns .

2. Pronouns are words that are used to substitute a noun in a sentence. There are different types of pronouns. Some of them are reflexive pronouns, possessive pronouns , relative pronouns and indefinite pronouns . I, he, she, it, them, his, yours, anyone, nobody, who, etc., are some of the pronouns.

Examples of pronouns used in sentences:

I reached home at six in the evening. (1st person singular pronoun)
Did someone see a red bag on the counter? (Indefinite pronoun)
Is this the boy who won the first prize? (Relative pronoun)
That is my mom. (Possessive pronoun)
I hurt myself yesterday when we were playing cricket. (Reflexive pronoun)

3. Verbs are words that denote an action that is being performed by the noun or the subject in a sentence. They are also called action words. Some examples of verbs are read, sit, run, pick, garnish, come, pitch, etc.

Examples of verbs used in sentences:

She plays cricket every day.
Darshana and Arul are going to the movies.
My friends visited me last week.
Did you have your breakfast?
My name is Meenakshi Kishore.

4. Adverbs are words that are used to provide more information about verbs, adjectives and other adverbs used in a sentence. There are five main types of adverbs namely, adverbs of manner , adverbs of degree , adverbs of frequency , adverbs of time and adverbs of place . Some examples of adverbs are today, quickly, randomly, early, 10 a.m. etc.

Examples of adverbs used in sentences:

Did you come here to buy an umbrella? (Adverb of place)
I did not go to school yesterday as I was sick. (Adverb of time)
Savio reads the newspaper everyday . (Adverb of frequency)
Can you please come quickly ? (Adverb of manner)
Tony was so sleepy that he could hardly keep his eyes open during the meeting. (Adverb of degree)

5. Adjectives are words that are used to describe or provide more information about the noun or the subject in a sentence. Some examples of adjectives include good, ugly, quick, beautiful, late, etc.

Examples of adjectives used in sentences:

The place we visited yesterday was serene .
Did you see how big that dog was?
The weather is pleasant today.
The red dress you wore on your birthday was lovely.
My brother had only one chapati for breakfast.

6. Prepositions are words that are used to link one part of the sentence to another. Prepositions show the position of the object or subject in a sentence. Some examples of prepositions are in, out, besides, in front of, below, opposite, etc.

Examples of prepositions used in sentences:

The teacher asked the students to draw lines on the paper so that they could write in straight lines.
The child hid his birthday presents under his bed.
Mom asked me to go to the store near my school.
The thieves jumped over the wall and escaped before we could reach home.

7. Conjunctions are a part of speech that is used to connect two different parts of a sentence, phrases and clauses . Some examples of conjunctions are and, or, for, yet, although, because, not only, etc.

Examples of conjunctions used in sentences:

Meera and Jasmine had come to my birthday party.
Jane did not go to work as she was sick.
Unless you work hard, you cannot score good marks.
I have not finished my project, yet I went out with my friends.

8. Interjections are words that are used to convey strong emotions or feelings. Some examples of interjections are oh, wow, alas, yippee, etc. It is always followed by an exclamation mark.

Examples of interjections used in sentences:

Wow ! What a wonderful work of art.
Alas ! That is really sad.
Yippee ! We won the match.

Sentence Examples for the 8 Parts of Speech

Noun – Tom lives in New York .
Pronoun – Did she find the book she was looking for?
Verb – I reached home.
Adverb – The tea is too hot.
Adjective – The movie was amazing .
Preposition – The candle was kept under the table.
Conjunction – I was at home all day, but I am feeling very tired.
Interjection – Oh ! I forgot to turn off the stove.

Let us find out if you have understood the different parts of speech and their functions. Try identifying which part of speech the highlighted words belong to.

My brother came home late .
I am a good girl.
This is the book I was looking for.
Whoa ! This is amazing .
The climate in Kodaikanal is very pleasant.
Can you please pick up Dan and me on your way home?

Now, let us see if you got it right. Check your answers.

My – Pronoun, Home – Noun, Late – Adverb
Am – Verb, Good – Adjective
I – Pronoun, Was looking – Verb
Whoa – Interjection, Amazing – Adjective
Climate – Noun, In – Preposition, Kodaikanal – Noun, Very – Adverb
And – Conjunction, On – Preposition, Your – Pronoun

What are parts of speech?

The term ‘parts of speech’ refers to words that perform different functions in a sentence in order to give the sentence a proper meaning and structure.

How many parts of speech are there?

There are 8 parts of speech in total.

What are the 8 parts of speech?

Nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives, prepositions, conjunctions and interjections are the 8 parts of speech.

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Speech Recognition Grammar Specification Version 1.0

W3c recommendation 16 march 2004.

Please refer to the errata for this document, which may include some normative corrections.

Status of this Document

This section describes the status of this document at the time of its publication. Other documents may supersede this document. A list of current W3C publications and the latest revision of this technical report can be found in the W3C technical reports index at http://www.w3.org/TR/.

This document has been reviewed by W3C Members and other interested parties, and it has been endorsed by the Director as a W3C Recommendation . W3C's role in making the Recommendation is to draw attention to the specification and to promote its widespread deployment. This enhances the functionaility and interoperability of the Web.

This specification is part of the W3C Speech Interface Framework and has been developed within the W3C Voice Browser Activity ( activity statement ) by participants in the Voice Browser Working Group ( W3C Members only ).

The design of SRGS 1.0 has been widely reviewed (see the disposition of comments ) and satisfies the Working Group's technical requirements. A list of implementations is included in the SRGS 1.0 implementation report , along with the associated test suite.

Comments are welcome on [email protected] ( archive ). See W3C mailing list and archive usage guidelines .

The W3C maintains a list of any patent disclosures related to this work .

1.1 grammar processors and user agents, 1.3 grammar conversions, 1.4 semantic interpretation, 1.5 embedded grammars, 1.6 terminology, 2.2.1 local references, 2.2.2 external reference by uri, 2.2.3 special rules.

2.2.4 Referencing N-gram Documents

2.3 Sequences and Encapsulation

2.4.1 weights, 2.5.1 repeat probabilities, 2.7 language, 2.8 precedence, 3.1 basic rule definition, 3.2 scoping of rule definitions, 3.3 example phrases, 4.1 grammar header declarations, 4.2 abnf self-identifying header, 4.3 xml form prolog and root element, 4.4 character encoding, 4.5 language, 4.7 root rule, 4.8 tag format, 4.9.1 resolving relative uris, 4.10 pronunciation lexicon, 4.11.1 meta and http-equiv, 4.11.2 xml metadata (xml only), 4.13 comments, 4.14 grammar fetching, 4.15 abnf keywords.

5.1 Conforming XML Form Grammar Fragments
5.2 Conforming Stand-Alone XML Form Document

5.3 Using XML Form Grammars with other Namespaces

5.4 conforming xml form grammar processors.

5.5 Conforming Stand-Alone ABNF Form Grammar Documents
5.6 Conforming ABNF Form Grammar Processors
5.7 Conforming ABNF/XML Form Grammar Processors
5.8 Conforming User Agents

6. Acknowledgements

A.1 Normative References
A.2 Informative References
Appendix B. DTD for XML Form Grammars (Informative)
Appendix C. XML Schema Definition For XML Form Grammars (Normative)
Appendix D. Formal Syntax for Augmented BNF Form Grammars (Normative)
Appendix E. DTMF Grammars (Normative)
Appendix F. XSLT Style Sheet to Convert XML Form Grammars to the ABNF Form (Informative)
Appendix G. Media Types and File Suffix (Informative)

H.1 Terminology and Notation

H.2 parsing rule references, h.3 recursion.

Appendix I. Features under Consideration for Future Versions (Informative)
J.1 Simple Examples (English)
J.2 Cross-Reference Examples (English)
J.3 Korean Examples
J.4 Chinese Examples
J.5 Swedish Examples

1. Introduction

This document defines the syntax for grammar representation. The grammars are intended for use by speech recognizers and other grammar processors so that developers can specify the words and patterns of words to be listened for by a speech recognizer.

The syntax of the grammar format is presented in two forms, an Augmented BNF (ABNF) Form and an XML Form. The specification ensures that the two representations are semantically mappable to allow automatic transformations between the two forms.

Augmented BNF syntax (ABNF): this is a plain-text (non-XML) representation which is similar to traditional BNF grammar and to many existing BNF-like representations commonly used in the field of speech recognition including the JSpeech Grammar Format [JSGF] from which this specification is derived. Augmented BNF should not be confused with Extended BNF which is used in DTDs for XML and SGML.
XML: This syntax uses XML elements to represent the grammar constructs and adapts designs from the PipeBeach grammar, TalkML [TALKML] and a research XML variant of the JSpeech Grammar Format [JSGF] .

Both the ABNF Form and XML Form have the expressive power of a Context-Free Grammar (CFG). A grammar processor that does not support recursive grammars has the expressive power of a Finite State Machine (FSM) or regular expression language. For definitions of CFG, FSM, regular expressions and other formal computational language theory see, for example, [HU79] . This form of language expression is sufficient for the vast majority of speech recognition applications.

This W3C standard is known as the Speech Recognition Grammar Specification and is modelled on the JSpeech Grammar Format specification [JSGF] , which is owned by Sun Microsystems, Inc., California, U.S.A.

A grammar processor is any entity that accepts as input grammars as described in this specification.

A user agent is a grammar processor that accepts user input and matches that input against a grammar to produce a recognition result that represents the detected input.

As the specification title implies, speech recognizers are an important class of grammar processor. Another class of grammar processor anticipated by this specification is a Dual-Tone Multi-Frequency (DTMF) detector. The type of input accepted by a user agent is determined by the mode or modes of grammars it can process: e.g. speech input for "voice" mode grammars and DTMF input for "dtmf" mode grammars.

For simplicity, throughout this document references to a speech recognizer apply to other types of grammar processor unless explicitly stated otherwise.

A speech recognizer is a user agent with the following inputs and outputs:

Input: A grammar or multiple grammars as defined by this specification. These grammars inform the recognizer of the words and patterns of words to listen for.
Input: An audio stream that may contain speech content that matches the grammar(s).
Output: Descriptions of results that indicate details about the speech content detected by the speech recognizer. The format and details of the content of the result are outside the scope of this specification. For informative purposes, most practical recognizers will include at least a transcription of any detected words.
Output: Error and other performance information may be provided to the host environment: e.g. to a voice browser that incorporates a grammar processor. The method of interaction with the host environment is outside the scope of this document. The specification does, however, require that a conformant grammar processor inform the environment of errors in parsing and other processing of grammar documents.

The primary use of a speech recognizer grammar is to permit a speech application to indicate to a recognizer what it should listen for, specifically:

Words that may be spoken,
Patterns in which those words may occur,
Spoken language of each word.

Speech recognizers may also support the Stochastic Language Models (N-Gram) Specification [NGRAM] . Both specifications define ways to set up a speech recognizer to detect spoken input but define the word and patterns of words by different and complementary means. Some recognizers permit cross-references between grammars in the two formats. The rule reference element of this specification describes how to reference an N-gram document.

The grammar specification does not address a number of other issues that affect speech recognition performance. Most of the following capabilities are addressed by the context in which a grammar is referenced or invoked: for example, through VoiceXML 2.0 [VXML2] or through a speech recognizer API.

Speaker adaptation data: Some speech recognizers support the ability to dynamically adjust to the voice of a speaker and often the ability to store adaptation data for that voice for future use. The speaker data may also include lists of words more often spoken by the user. The grammar format does not explicitly address these capabilities.
Speech recognizer configuration: The grammar format does not incorporate features for setting recognizer features such as timeouts, recognition thresholds, search sizes or N-best result counts.
Lexicon: The grammar format does not address the loading of lexicons or the pronunciation of words referenced by the grammar. The W3C Voice Browser Working Group is considering the development of a standard lexicon format. If and when a format is developed appropriate updates will be made to this grammar specification.
Other speech processing capabilities: Speech processing technology exists for language identification, speaker verification (also known as voice printing), speaker recognition (also known as speaker identification) amongst many other capabilities. Although these technologies may be associated with a speech recognizer they are outside the scope of this specification.

The ABNF Form and XML Form are specified to ensure that the two representations are semantically mappable. It should be possible to automatically convert an ABNF Form grammar to an XML Form grammar (or the reverse) so that the semantic performance of the grammars are identical. Equivalence of semantic performance implies that:

Both grammars accept the same language as input and reject the same language as input
Both grammars parse any input string identically

The XSL Transformation document in Appendix F demonstrates automatic conversion from XML to ABNF. The reverse conversion requires an ABNF parser and a transformational program.

There are inherent limits to the automatic conversion to and From ABNF Form and XML Form.

Formatting white space cannot be preserved so a pretty-printable grammar in one Form cannot guarantee automatic conversion to a pretty-printable grammar in the other Form. Note: syntactically significant white space is preserved.
Some XML constructs have no equivalent in ABNF: XML Schema, DTD, character and entity declarations and references, processing instructions, namespaces. The XML parser in a conforming grammar processor should expand all character and entity references as defined in XML 1.0 [XML] prior to conversion to ABNF; other constructs are lost. RDF [RDF-SYNTAX] represents metadata as XML within XML Form grammar but could not be effectively utilized in ABNF Form grammars and so is not supported.
Comment ordering with respect to grammar constructs may be modified.

A speech recognizer is capable of matching audio input against a grammar to produce a raw text transcription (also known as literal text ) of the detected input. A recognizer may be capable of, but is not required to, perform subsequent processing of the raw text to produce a semantic interpretation of the input.

For example, the natural language utterance "I want to book a flight from Prague to Paris" could result in the following XML data structure. To perform this additional interpretation step requires semantic processing instructions that may be contained within a grammar that defines the legal spoken input or in an associated document.

The Speech Recognition Grammar Specification provides syntactic support for limited semantic interpretation. The tag construct and the tag-format and tag declarations provide a placeholder for instructions to a semantic processor.

The W3C Voice Browser Working Group is presently developing the Semantic Interpretation for Speech Recognition specification [SEM] . That specification defines a language that can be embedded in tags within SRGS grammars to perform the interpretation process. The semantic processing is defined with respect to the logical parse structure for grammar processing (see Appendix H ). Other tag formats could be used but are outside the scope of the W3C activities.

For examples of semantic interpretation in the latest working draft see [SEM] .

The output of the semantic interpretation processor may be represented using the Natural Language Semantics Markup Language [NLSML] . This XML representation of interpreted spoken input can be used to transmit the result, as input to VoiceXML 2.0 [VXML2] processing or in other ways.

The semantic interpretation carried out in the speech recognition process is typically characterized by:

Restricted context: the interpretation does not resolve deictic or anaphoric references or other language forms that span more than a single utterance. Example: if the utterance "I want to book a flight from Prague to Paris" were followed later by "I want to continue from there to London" the reference to "there" could be resolved to "Paris" . This requires analysis spanning more than one utterance and is typically outside the scope of the speech recognizer, but in scope for a dialog manager (e.g. a VoiceXML application).
Domain-specific: a speech recognition grammar is typically restricted to a narrow domain of input (e.g. collect flight booking data). Within this domain semantic interpretation is an achievable task whereas semantic interpretation for an entire language is an extraordinarily complex task.
Language-specific: because each language has unique linguistic structures the process of converting from a raw text to a semantic result is necessarily language-specific.

It is this restricted form of semantic interpretation that this approach is intended to support. A VoiceXML application that receives a speech result with semantic interpretation will typically process the user input to carry out a dialog. The application may also perform deeper semantic analysis, for example resolving deictic or anaphoric references.

The Speech Recognition Grammar Specification is designed to permit ABNF Form and XML Form grammars to be embedded into other documents. For example, VoiceXML 1.0 [VXML1] and VoiceXML 2.0 [VXML2] permit inline grammars [VXML2 §3.1.1.1] in which an ABNF Form grammar or XML Form grammar is contained within a VoiceXML document.

Embedding an XML Form grammar within an XML document can be achieved with XML namespaces [XMLNS] or by incorporating the grammar XML Schema definition or DTD into to enclosing document's schema or DTD.

An ABNF Form grammar may be embedded into any XML document as character data. ABNF grammars will often contain angle brackets which require special handling within XML. A CDATA section [XML §2.7] or the escape sequences of " < " and " > " may be required to create well-formed XML. Note: angle brackets ('<' and '>') are used in ABNF to delimit any URI , media type or repeat operator .

ABNF URI : in the ABNF Form of this specification a URI is delimited by angle brackets ('<' '>'). For example, <http://www.example.com/file-path>
XML URI : in the XML Form of this specification any URI is provided as an attribute to an element; for example the ruleref and lexicon elements.

[See Appendix G for information on media types for the ABNF and XML Forms of the Speech Recognition Grammar Specification.]

ABNF URI with Media Type : in the ABNF Form a media type may be attached as a postfix to any URI. The media type is delimited by angle brackets ('<' '>') and the URI and media type are separated by a tilde character ('~') without intervening white space . For example, <http://example.com/file-path>~<media-type>
XML URI with Media Type : in the XML Form any element that carries a URI attribute may carry a type attribute.

2. Rule Expansions

A legal rule expansion is any legal token , rule reference , tag , or any logical combination of legal rule expansions as sequence , alternatives , repeated expansion or language-attributed expansion .

A rule expansion is formally a regular expression (see, for example, [HU79] ).

A rule definition associates a legal rule expansion with a rulename.

A token (a.k.a. a terminal symbol) is the part of a grammar that defines words or other entities that may be spoken. Any legal token is a legal expansion .

For speech recognition, a token is typically an orthographic entity of the language being recognized. However, a token may be any string that the speech recognizer can convert to a phonetic representation.

Token Content: In both the XML Form and ABNF Form any unmarked text within a rule definition, except example phrases (XML only) or tag content , is token content . The unmarked text is delimited by any syntactic construct of the grammar form (see below for details on the ABNF Form and XML Form). For each token content span in a grammar the grammar processor applies the following tokenization , white space normalization , token normalization and pronunciation lookup processes. All token content in both the XML Form and ABNF Form is treated as Characters in [XML] . (informative: XML specifies Characters by reference to ISO/IEC 10646 [ISO/IEC 10646] and Unicode [Unicode] .)

Tokenization behavior : Text spans containing token sequences are delimited as follows:

XML Form only: a <token> element may contain character data only. The character data is treated as a single unnormalized token. The character data must not contain any double quote characters.
Any token in ABNF Form or XML Form (except within <token> element in XML Form) may be delimited by double quotes. The text contained within the double quotes is an unnormalized token. The text must not contain any double quote characters. A token delimited by double quotes may contain white space.
Any token content not delimited by a <token> element or double quotes is treated as a sequence of white-space-delimited tokens. Each token contained in the token content is delimited at the start and at the end by any white space character or any syntactic construct that delimits a token content span. The syntactic constructs that delimit token content are different for the ABNF Form and XML Form. These tokens cannot contain white space characters.

White Space Normalization: White space must be normalized when contained in any token delimited by a <token> elements or by double quotes. Leading and trailing white space characters are stripped. Any token-internal white space character or sequence is collapsed to a single space character (#x20). For example, the following are all normalized to the same string, "San Francisco".

Because the presence of white space within a token is significant the following are distinct tokens.

Token Normalization: Other normalization processes are applied to the white space normalized token according to the language and the capabilities of the speech recognizer.

Grammar processors may assume Early Uniform Normalization as defined in the Character Model for the World Wide Web 1.0 [CHARMOD §4] .

Pronunciation Lookup: To match spoken (audio) input to a grammar a speech recognition must be capable of modelling the audio patterns of any token in a grammar. Speech recognizers employ a diverse set of techniques for performing this key recognition process. The following is an informative description of techniques that a speech recognizer may apply based on conventional large vocabulary speech recognition technology.

A large vocabulary speech recognizer converts each normalized token to a phoneme sequence or a set of possible phoneme sequences. Conversion of an orthographic form (token) to the spoken form (phonemes) is a highly language-specific process. In many cases the conversion is even specific to a national variant, regional dialect or other variant of the language. For example, for some tokens Parisian French, Quebec French and Swiss French will each convert to different pronunciations.

The text-to-phoneme conversion in a large vocabulary speech recognizer may involve some or all of the following sub-processes.

Pronunciation lexicon lookup: One of possibly many lexicons available to a recognizer can provide the phoneme sequence for a token. Both the ABNF Form and XML Form permit a grammar to specify one or more lexicon documents. Recognizers typically provide a built-in lexicon for each supported language though the coverage will vary between recognizers. The algorithm by which the lookup resolves a token to a pronunciation is defined by the lexicon format and/or the speech recognizer and may be language-specific. Case-insensitive string matching is recommended.
Morphological analysis: a recognizer may be capable of determining the transformation from a base token and phoneme string to a morphological variant and its pronunciation. For example given the pronunciation for "Hyundai" a rule could infer the pronunciation for the pluralized form "Hyundai's".
Automatic text-to-phoneme conversion: for many, but not all, languages and scripts there are rules that automatically convert a token into a phoneme sequence. For example, in English most but not all words ending with the letter sequence "ise" end with the phoneme sequence "ai z". A speech recognizer may use automated conversion to infer pronunciations for tokens that cannot be looked up in a lexicon.

Any language is likely to have other specialized processes for determining a pronunciation for a token. For example, for Japanese special techniques are required for Kanji and each Kana form.

For any language and recognizer there may be variation in coverage and completeness of the language's tokens.

When a grammar processor handles a grammar containing a token that it cannot convert to phonemic form or otherwise use in the speech recognition processing of audio it should inform the hosting environment.

Limitations of token handling: the following is informative guidance to grammar developers.

The Pronunciation Lexicon activity [LEX] of the W3C Voice Browser Working Group will provide guidance on the token-handling processes outlined above.

Token handling will vary between recognizers and will vary between languages.

Grammar authors can improve document portability by avoiding characters and forms in tokens that do not have obvious pronunciations in the language. For English, the following are ways to handle some orthographic forms:

Acronyms should be avoided. Alphabetic characters should be widely available. For example, replace "USA" by "u s a"; replace "W3C" by "w three c"; replace "IEEE" by "i triple e".
Abbreviations should be replaced by the unabbreviated form. For example, replace "Dr." by "drive" or "doctor".
Most punctuation should be expanded to a spelled form. For example replace "&" by "ampersand" or "and"; replace "+" by "plus"; replace "<" by "less than" or "open angle bracket".
A grammar processor should support digits (e.g. "0" though "9" for European scripts). Other natural numbers should be replaced by spelled forms. For example, for US English replace "10" by "ten" and "1000" by "thousand".
Grammar authors should consider the possibility that a grammar will be used to interpret input in a non-speech recognition device. For example, grammars can be used to process text strings from keyboard input, text telephone services, pen input and other text modalities. To facilitate text input a grammar should contain standard orthographic tokens of the language. That is, to facilitate non-speech recognition input the grammar should contain standard spellings of natural language words to the greatest extent possible.

Any plain text within a rule definition is token content . The ABNF Syntax (Appendix D) normatively defines the token parsing behavior.

A language attachment may be provided for any token. When attached to a token the language modifies the handling of that token only.

Informative

The rule expansion of a rule definition is delimited at the start and end by equals sign ('=') and semicolon (';') respectively. Any leading plain text of the rule expansion is delimited by ('=') and similarly any final plain text is closed by semicolon.

Within a rule expansion the following symbols have syntactic function and delimit plain text.

Dollar sign ('$') and angle brackets ('<' and '>') when needed mark rule references
Parentheses ('(' and ')') may enclose any rule expansion
Vertical bar ('|') delimits alternatives
Forward slashes ('/' and '/') delimit any weights on alternatives
Angle brackets ('<' and '>') delimit any repeat operator
Square brackets ('[' and ']') delimit any optional expansion
Curly brackets ('{' and '}') delimit any tag
Exclamation point ('!') prefixes any language identifier

Within plain text regions delimited by these characters the tokenization , white space normalization , token normalization and pronunciation lookup processes described above apply.

Any token element explicitly delimits a single token as described above. The token element may include an optional xml:lang attribute to indicate the language of the contained token.

Any other character data within a rule element (rule definition) or item element is token content . Note that character data within tag or example is not token text.

2.2 Rule Reference

Any legal rule reference is a legal rule expansion .

Rulenames : Every rule definition has a local name that must be unique within the scope of the grammar in which it is defined. A rulename must match the "Name" Production of XML 1.0 [XML §2.3] and be a legal XML ID. Section 3.1 documents the rule definition mechanism and the legal naming of rules.

This table summarizes the various forms of rule reference that are possible within and across grammar documents.

Note: an XML Form grammar document must provide one and only one of the uri or special attributes on a ruleref element. There is no equivalent constraint in ABNF since the syntactic forms are distinct.

When referencing rules defined locally (defined in the same grammar as contains the reference), always use a simple rulename reference which consists of the local rulename only. The ABNF Form and XML Form have a different syntax for representing a simple rulename reference.

ABNF Form The simple rulename reference is prefixed by a "$" character. $city $digit XML Form The ruleref element is an empty element with a uri attribute that specifies the rule reference as a same-document reference URI [RFC2396] : that is, the attribute consists only of the number sign ('#') and the fragment identifier that indicates the locally referenced rulename. <ruleref uri="#city"/> <ruleref uri="#digit"/>

References to rules defined in other grammars are legal under the conditions defined in Section 3 . The external reference must identify the external grammar by URI and may identify a specific rule within that grammar. If the fragment identifier that would indicate a rulename is omitted, then the reference implicitly targets the root rule of the external grammar.

Any externally-referenced rule may be activated for recognition. That is it may define the top-level syntax of spoken input. For instance, VoiceXML [VXML2] grammar activation may explicitly reference one or more public rules (see Section 3.2 ) and/or implicitly reference the root rule (see Section 4.7 ).

A URI reference is illegal if the referring document and referenced document have different modes. For instance, it is illegal to reference a "dtmf" grammar from a "voice" grammar. (See Section 4.6 for additional detail on modes).

A resource indicated by an URI reference may be available in one or more media types . The grammar author may specify the preferred media-type via the type attribute (XML form) or in angle braces following the URI (ABNF form). When the content represented by a URI is available in many data formats, a grammar processor may use the preferred media- type to influence which of the multiple formats is used. For instance, on a server implementing HTTP content negotiation, the processor may use the preferred media- type to order the preferences in the negotiation.

The resource representation delivered by dereferencing the URI reference may be considered in terms of two types. The declared media-type is the asserted value for the resource and the actual media-type is the true format of its content. The actual media-type should be the same as the declared media-type, but this is not always the case (e.g. a misconfigured HTTP server might return text/plain for an application/srgs+xml document). A specific URI scheme may require that the resource owner always, sometimes, or never return a media-type. The declared media-type is the value returned by the resource owner or, if none is returned, the preferred media type given in the grammar. There may be no declared media-type if the resource owner does not return a value and no preferred type is specified. Whenever specified, the declared media-type is authoritative.

Three special cases may arise. The declared media-type may not be supported by the processor; this is an error. The declared media-type may be supported but the actual media-type may not match; this is also an error. Finally, there may be no declared media-type; the behavior depends on the specific URI scheme and the capabilities of the grammar processor. For instance, HTTP 1.1 allows document introspection (see RFC 2616 , section 7.2.1), the data scheme falls back to a default media type, and local file access defines no guidelines. The following table provides some informative examples:

See Appendix G for a summary of the status for media types for ABNF Form and XML Form grammars.

ABNF Form In ABNF an external reference by URI is represented by a dollar sign ('$') followed immediately by either an ABNF URI or ABNF URI with media type . There must be no white space between the dollar sign and the URI. // References to specific rules of an external grammar $<http://grammar.example.com/world-cities.gram#canada> $<http://grammar.example.com/numbers.gram#digit> // Implicit reference to the root rule of an external grammar $<../date.gram> // References with associated media types $<http://grammar.example.com/world-cities.gram#canada>~<application/srgs> $<../date.gram>~<application/srgs> Note: the media type of "application/srgs" has been requested for ABNF Form grammars. See Appendix G for details. XML Form An XML rule reference is represented by a ruleref element with a uri attribute that defines the URI of the referenced grammar and rule within it. If a fragment identifier is appended then the identifier indicates a specific rulename being referenced. If the fragment identifier is omitted then the reference is (implicitly) to the root rule of the referenced grammar. The optional type attribute specifies the media type of the grammar containing the reference.  <ruleref uri="http://grammar.example.com/world-cities. grxml #canada"/> <ruleref uri="http://grammar.example.com/numbers. grxml #digit"/>  <ruleref uri="../date. grxml "/>  <ruleref uri="http://grammar.example.com/world-cities. grxml #canada" type="application/srgs+xml"/> <ruleref uri="../date. grxml " type="application/srgs+xml"/> Note: the media type "application/srgs+xml" has been requested for XML Form grammars. See Appendix G for details on media types for grammars.

Several rulenames are defined to have specific interpretation and processing by a speech recognizer. A grammar must not redefine these rulenames.

In the ABNF Form a special rule reference is syntactically identical to a local rule reference . However, the names of the special rules are reserved to prevent a rule definition with the same name.

In the XML Form a special rulename is represented with the special attribute on a ruleref element. It is illegal to provide both the special and the uri attributes.

ABNF Form: $NULL XML Form: <ruleref special="NULL"/>

ABNF Form: $VOID XML Form: <ruleref special="VOID"/>

ABNF Form: $GARBAGE XML Form: <ruleref special="GARBAGE"/>

2.2.4 Referencing N-gram Documents (Informative)

The W3C Voice Browser Working Group has released a Working Draft for the Stochastic Language Models (N-Gram) Specification [NGRAM] . These two specifications represent different and complementary ways of informing a speech recognizer of which words and patterns of words to listen for.

A speech recognizer may choose to support the Speech Recognition N-Gram Grammar Specification in addition to the speech recognition grammar defined in this document.

If a speech recognizer supports both grammar representations it may optionally support references between the two formats. Grammars defined in the ABNF Form or XML Form may reference start symbols of N-Gram documents and vice versa.

The syntax for referencing an N-Gram is the same as referencing externally defined ABNF Form or XML Form grammar documents. A media type is recommended on a reference to an N-gram document. The Working Group has not yet applied for a type on N-gram documents so no example is given. The fragment identifier (a rulename when referencing ABNF Form and XML Form grammars) identifies a start symbol as defined by the N-Gram specification. If the start symbol is absent the N-Gram, as a whole, is referenced as defined in the N-Gram specification.

ABNF Form URI references to N-Gram documents follow the same syntax as references to other ABNF or XML Form grammar documents. The following are examples of references to an N-Gram document via an explicit rule reference and a n implicit reference to the root rule . $<http://grammar.example.com/ngram.xml#StartSymbol> $<http://grammar.example.com/ngram.xml> XML Form URI references to N-Gram documents follow the same syntax as reference to other ABNF Form and XML Form grammar documents. The following are examples of references to an N-Gram document via an explicit rule reference and a n implicit reference to the root rule . <ruleref uri="http://grammar.example.com/ngram.xml#StartSymbol"/> <ruleref uri="http://grammar.example.com/ngram.xml"/>

A sequence of legal rule expansions is itself a legal rule expansion .

The sequence of rule expansions implies the temporal order in which the expansions must be detected by the user agent . This constraint applies to sequences of tokens, sequences of rule references, sequences of tags, parentheticals and all combinations of these rule expansions.

Both the ABNF Form and XML Form provide syntax for encapsulating any expansion. This is used, for example, to attach a repeat operator , a language identifier or to ensure correct precedence in parsing (ABNF only).

ABNF Form A sequence of legal expansions separated by white space is a legal expansion. A legal expansion surrounded by parentheses ('(' and ')') is a legal expansion. this is a test // sequence of tokens $action $object // sequence of rule references the $object is $color // sequence of tokens and rule references (fly to $city) // parentheses for encapsulation Special cases An empty parenthetical is legal as is a parenthetical containing only white space ; e.g. '()' or '( )'. Both forms are equivalent to $NULL and a grammar processor will behave as if the parenthetical were not present. // equivalent sequences phone home phone ( ) home XML Form A sequence of XML rule expansion elements ( <ruleref> , <item> , <one-of> , <token> <tag> ) and CDATA sections containing space separated tokens must be recognized in temporal sequence. (The only exception is where one or more "item" elements appear within a one-of element.) An item element can surround any expansion to permit a repeat attribute or language identifier to be attached. The weight attribute of item is ignored unless the element appears within a one-of element.  this is a test  <ruleref uri="#action"/> <ruleref uri="#object"/>  the <ruleref uri="#object"/> is <ruleref uri="#color"/>  <item>fly to <ruleref uri="#city"/> </item> Special cases An empty item element is legal as is an item element containing only white space . Both forms are equivalent to a NULL reference and a grammar processor will behave as if the item were not present.  phone home phone <item/> home phone <item></item> home phone <item> </item> home

2.4 Alternatives

Any set of alternative legal rule expansions is itself a legal rule expansion . For input to match a set of alternative rule expansions it must match one of the set of alternative expansions. A set of alternatives must contain one or more alternatives.

Any set of alternatives may be labeled with a language attachment . In the XML Form an xml:lang attribute is present on the one-of element. In the ABNF Form to ensure correct precedence the set of alternatives must be delimited by parentheses with the ABNF language attachment immediately following.

A weight may be optionally provided for any number of alternatives in an alternative expansion. Weights are simple positive floating point values without exponentials. Legal formats are "n" , "n." , ".n" and "n.n" where "n" is a sequence of one or many digits.

A weight is nominally a multiplying factor in the likelihood domain of a speech recognition search. A weight of 1.0 is equivalent to providing no weight at all. A weight greater than "1.0" positively biases the alternative and a weight less than "1.0" negatively biases the alternative.

[JEL98] and [RAB93] are informative references on the topic of speech recognition technology and the underlying statistical framework within which weights are applied.

Grammar authors and speech recognizer developers should be aware of the following limitations upon the definition and application of weights as outlined above.

The application of weights to a speech recognition search is under the internal control of the recognizer. There is no normative or informative algorithm for applying weights. Furthermore, speech recognition is a statistical process so consistent behavior cannot be guaranteed.
Appropriate weights are difficult to determine for any specific grammar and recognizer. Guessing weights does not always improve speech recognition performance.
Effective weights are best obtained by study of real speech input to a grammar. For example, a reasonable technique for developing portable weights is to use weights that are correlated with the occurrence counts of a set of alternatives.
Tuning weights for a particular recognizer does not guarantee improved recognition performance on other speech recognizers.

ABNF Form A set of alternative choices is identified as a list of legal expansions separated by the vertical bar symbol. If necessary, the set of alternative choices may be delimited by parentheses. Michael | Yuriko | Mary | Duke | $otherNames (1 | 2 | 3) A weight is surrounded by forward slashes and placed before each item in the alternatives list. /10/ small | /2/ medium | large /3.1415/ pie | /1.414/ root beer | /.25/ cola Special Cases It is legal for an alternative to be a reference to $NULL , an empty parenthetical or a single tag. In each case the input is equivalent to matching $NULL and as a result the other alternatives are optional. // Legal $rule1 = word | $NULL; $rule2 = () | word; $rule3 = word | { TAG-CONTENT }; An empty alternative ( white space only) is not legal. // ILLEGAL $rule1 = a | | b; $rule2 = | b; $rule3 = a |; The following construct is interpreted as a single weighted alternative. // Legal $rule1 = /2/ word; $rule2 = /2/ { TAG-CONTENT }; $rule3 = /2/ $NULL; XML Form The one-of element identifies a set of alternative elements. Each alternative expansion is contained in a item element. There must be at least one item element contained within a one-of element. Weights are optionally indicated by the weight attribute on the item element. <one-of> <item>Michael</item> <item>Yuriko</item> <item>Mary</item> <item>Duke</item> <item><ruleref uri="#otherNames"/></item> </one-of> <one-of><item>1</item> <item>2</item> <item>3</item></one-of> <one-of> <item weight="10">small</item> <item weight="2">medium</item> <item>large</item> </one-of> <one-of> <item weight="3.1415">pie</item> <item weight="1.414">root beer</item> <item weight=".25">cola</item> </one-of> Special cases A one-of element containing a single item is legal and requires that input match the single item. The single item may be optionally weighted. <one-of> <item>word</item> </one-of> <one-of> <item weight="2.0">word</item> </one-of> Is it legal for an alternative to be a reference to NULL , an empty item or a single tag. In each case the input is equivalent to matching NULL and as a result the other alternatives are optional. <one-of> <item>word</item> <item/> </one-of> <one-of> <item>word</item> <item> <ruleref special="NULL"/> </item> </one-of> <one-of> <item>word</item> <item> <tag> TAG-CONTENT </tag> </item> </one-of>

2.5 Repeats

Any repeated legal rule expansion is itself a legal rule expansion .

Operators are provided that define a legal rule expansion as being another sub-expansion that is optional, that is repeated zero or more times, that is repeated one or more times, or that is repeated some range of times.

Common Repeats

As indicated in the table above, an expansion that can occur 0-1 times is optional. Because optionality is such a common form the ABNF syntax provides square brackets as a special operator for representing optionality.

A repeat of "0-" indicates that an expansion can occur zero times, once or any number of multiple times. In regular expression languages this is often represented by the Kleene star ('*') which is reserved but not used in ABNF.

A repeat of "1-" indicates that an expansion can occur once or any number of multiple times. In regular expression languages this is often represented by the positive closure ('+') which is reserved but not used in ABNF.

Although both ABNF and XML support a grammar that permits an unbounded number of input tokens it is not the case that users will speak indefinitely. Speech recognition can perform more effectively if the author indicates a more limited range of repeat occurrences.

Special Cases

Where a number of possible repetitions (e.g. <m-> or <m-n> (n > 0) but not <0>) is expressed on a construct whose only content is one or more tag elements, the behavior of the grammar processor is not defined and will be specific to individual implementations.

Any number of non-optional repetitions (e.g., <m-n>; m>0) of VOID is equivalent to a single VOID .

The behavior of a grammar processor in handling any number of repetitions of NULL is not defined and will be specific to individual implementations.

If the number of repetitions for any expansion can be only zero (i.e. <0> or <0-0>) then the expansion is equivalent to NULL .

Any repeat operator may specify an optional repeat probability. The value indicates the probability of successive repetition of the repeated expansion.

A repeat probability value must be in the floating pointing range of "0.0" to "1.0" (inclusive). Values outside this range are illegal. The floating point format is one of "n", "n.", "n.nnnn", ".nnnn" (with any number of digits after the dot).

Note: repeat probabilities and weights are different logical entities and have a different impact upon a speech recognition search.

Informative example: A simple example is an optional expansion (zero or one occurrences) with a probability — say "0.6". The grammar indicates that the chance that the expansion will be matched is 60% and that the chance that the expansion will not be present is 40%.

When no maximum is specified in a range (m-) the probabilities decay exponentially.

Grammar authors and speech recognizer developers should be aware of the following limitations upon the definition and application of repeat probabilities as outlined above.

The application of repeat probabilities to a speech recognition search is under the internal control of the recognizer. There is no specified algorithm for applying repeat probabilities in a speech recognition processor so consistent behavior cannot be guaranteed.
Appropriate repeat probabilities are often difficult to determine for any specific grammar and recognizer. Guessing repeat probabilities does not always improve speech recognition performance.
Appropriate repeat probabilities are best obtained by study of statistical patterns of real speech input. Tuning repeat probabilities for a particular recognizer does not guarantee improved recognition performance on other speech recognizers.

Useful references on statistical models of speech recognition include [JEL98] and [RAB93] .

ABNF Form The following are postfix operators: <m-n> <m-> <m> . A postfix operator is logically attached to the preceding expansion. Postfix operators have high precedence and so are tightly bound to the immediately preceding expansion (see Section 2.8 ). Optional expansions may be delimited by square brackets: [expansion] . Alternatively, an optional expansion is indicated by the postfix operator " <0-1> ". The following symbols are reserved for future use in ABNF: '*', '+', '?'. These symbols must not be used at any place in a grammar where the syntax currently permits a repeat operator. // the token "very" is optional [very] very <0-1> // the rule reference $digit can occur zero, one or many times $digit <0-> // the rule reference $digit can occur one or more times $digit <1-> // the rule reference $digit can occur four, five or six times $digit <4-6> // the rule reference $digit can occur ten or more times $digit <10-> // Examples of the following expansion // "pizza" // "big pizza with pepperoni" // "very big pizza with cheese and pepperoni" [[very] big] pizza ([with | and] $topping) <0-> Repeat probabilities are only supported in the range form. The probability is delimited by slash characters and contained within the angle brackets: <m-n /prob/> and <m- /prob/> . // the token "very" is optional and is 60% likely to occur // and 40% likely to be absent in input very <0-1 /0.6/> // the rule reference $digit must occur two to four times // with 80% probability of recurrence $digit <2-4 /.8/> XML Form The item element has a repeat attribute that indicates the number of times the contained expansion may be repeated. The following example illustrates the accepted values of the attribute.  <item repeat="0-1">very</item>  <item repeat="0-"> <ruleref uri="#digit"/> </item>  <item repeat="1-"> <ruleref uri="#digit"/> </item>  <item repeat="4-6"> <ruleref uri="#digit"/> </item>  <item repeat="10-"> <ruleref uri="#digit"/> </item>     <item repeat="0-1"> <item repeat="0-1"> very </item> big </item> pizza <item repeat="0-"> <item repeat="0-1"> <one-of> <item>with</item> <item>and</item> </one-of> </item> <ruleref uri="#topping"/> </item> The repeat-prob on the item element carries the repeat probability. Repeat probabilities are supported on any item element but are ignored if the repeat attribute is not also specified. <-- The token "very" is optional and is 60% likely to occur. --> <-- Means 40% chance that "very" is absent in input --> <item repeat="0-1" repeat-prob="0.6">very</item> <-- The rule reference to digit must occur two to four times --> <-- with 80% probability of recurrence. --> <item repeat="2-4" repeat-prob=".8"> <ruleref uri="#digit"/> </item>

A tag is a legal rule expansion (a tag can also be declared in the grammar header - see S4.1 ) .

A tag is an arbitrary string that may be included inline within any legal rule expansion. Any number of tags may be included inline within a rule expansion.

Tags do not affect the legal word patterns defined by the grammars or the process of recognizing speech or other input given a grammar.

Tags may contain content for semantic interpretation . The semantic interpretation processes may affect the recognition result.

Language attachments have no effect upon tags.

The tag format declaration indicates the content type of all tags in a grammar.

It is legal to use a tag as a stand-alone expansion. For example, a rule may expand to a single tag and no tokens.

ABNF Form A tag is delimited by either a pair of opening and closing curly brackets — '{' and '}' — or by the following 3-character sequences which are considered very unlikely to occur within a tag — '{!{' and '}!}'. A tag delimited by single curly brackets cannot contain the single closing curly bracket character ('}'). A tag delimited by the 3-character sequence cannot contain the closing 3-character sequence ('}!}'). The tag content is all text between the opening and closing character sequences including leading and trailing white space . The contents of the tag are not parsed by the grammar processor. Tag precedence is the same as for rule references and tokens. In the first example below there is a sequence of six space-separated expansions (3 tokens, a tag, a token and a tag). In the second example, the alternative is a choice between a sequence containing a token and a tag or a sequence containing a rule reference and a tag. $rule1 = this is a { TAG-CONTENT-1 } test { TAG-CONTENT-2 }; $rule2 = open { TAG-CONTENT-1 } | $close { TAG-CONTENT-2 }; $rule3 = {!{ a simple tag containing { and } needs no escaping }!}; XML Form A tag element can be a direct child of the item and rule elements. The content of tag is CDATA. <rule id="rule1">this is a <tag> TAG-CONTENT-1 </tag> test <tag> TAG-CONTENT-2 </tag> </rule> <rule id="rule2"> <one-of> <item> open <tag> TAG-CONTENT-1 </tag> </item> <item> <ruleref uri="#close"/> <tag> TAG-CONTENT-2 </tag> </item> </one-of> </rule>

Any legal rule expansion that has an attached language identifier is itself a legal rule expansion. Both the ABNF Form and the XML Form permit a legal language identifier to be attached to any token , sequence or set of alternatives (Note that rule reference does not permit a language identifier to be attached) . The syntax for the ABNF Form and for the XML Form are provided below.

The language declaration for a rule expansion affects only the contained content. Moreover, the language declaration affects only the handling of tokens in the contained content and does not affect tags or rule references . The application of language to token handling and particularly to pronunciation lookup is described in Section 2.1 .

By default a grammar is a single language document with a language identifier provided in the language declaration in the grammar header (see Section 4.5 ). All tokens within that grammar, unless otherwise declared, will be handled according to the grammar's language.

In situations where applications target a multilingual user community, grammars that contain words in more than one language may be needed. For example, in response to a prompt such as: "Do you want to talk to André Prévost?" (a combination of an English sentence with a French name), the response may be either "yes" or "oui" .

The Speech Recognition Grammar Specification permits one grammar to collect input from more than one language. The specification also permits multiple grammars each with a separate single language to be used in parallel. The specification also permits a single input utterance to contain more than one language. Finally, the specification permits any combination of the above: for example, parallel grammars each with multi-lingual capability.

Not all user agents are required to support all languages, or indeed any or all of the multi-lingual capabilities. The conformance requirements regarding multi-lingual support for XML Form grammar processors and ABNF Form grammar processors are the same and are laid out in Section 5.4 and Section 5.6 respectively.

There is a related challenge for multilingual applications that deal with proper names (people, streets, companies, etc.) that may be spoken with different pronunciations or accents depending upon the language of origin and the speaking language. It is often impossible to predict the language that users will use to pronounce certain tokens. In fact, users may actually use different languages for different words in the same sentence, and in unpredictable ways. For instance, the name "Robert Jones" might be pronounced by a French-speaking user using the French pronunciation for "Robert" but an English pronunciation for "Jones", whereas a mono-lingual English speaker would use the English pronunciation for both words.

Language scoping: language declarations are scoped locally to a document and to a rule definition. In XML terminology, the language attribute is inherited down the document tree. Where a language change encompasses a reference to another grammar, the referenced rule and its containing grammar define the language of the reference expansion. The language in effect at the point of the rule reference does not have any effect upon the referenced rule.

Language and results: The language used in the recognition of a token is not considered a part of the speech result even in the case that a language declaration is associated with a token.

ABNF Form In the ABNF Form a language identifier may be right-attached to any legal rule expansion except rule reference . The attachment is an exclamation point character ('!') followed by a legal language identifier without intervening white space . The language attachment has higher precedence than sequences or alternatives . To attach a language to these rule expansion types the expansion should be delimited by parentheses (see Section 2.3 ). #ABNF 1.0 ISO-8859-1; // Default grammar language is US English language en-US; // Single language attachment to tokens // Note that "fr-CA" (Canadian French) is applied to only // the word "oui" because of precedence rules $yes = yes | oui!fr-CA; // Single language attachment to an expansion $people1 = (Michel Tremblay | André Roy)!fr-CA; // Handling language-specific pronunciations of the same word // A capable speech recognizer will listen for Mexican Spanish and // US English pronunciations. $people2 = Jose!en-US; | Jose!es-MX; /** * Multi-lingual input possible * @example may I speak to André Roy * @example may I speak to Jose */ public $request = may I speak to ($people1 | $people2); XML Form XML 1.0 [XML §2.12] defines the xml:lang attribute for language identification. The attribute provides a single language identifier for the content of the element on which it appears. The xml:lang attribute may be attached to one-of , token and item . It applies the token handling of scoped tokens. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?> <!DOCTYPE grammar PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD GRAMMAR 1.0//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/speech-grammar/grammar.dtd">  <grammar xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/06/grammar" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.w3.org/2001/06/grammar http://www.w3.org/TR/speech-grammar/grammar.xsd" xml:lang="en-US" version="1.0">  <rule id="yes"> <one-of> <item>yes</item> <item xml:lang="fr-CA">oui</item> </one-of> </rule>  <rule id="people1"> <one-of xml:lang="fr-CA"> <item>Michel Tremblay</item> <item>André Roy</item> </one-of> </rule>  <rule id="people2"> <one-of> <item xml:lang="en-US">Jose</item> <item xml:lang="es-MX">Jose</item> </one-of> </rule>  <rule id="request" scope="public"> <example> may I speak with André Roy </example> <example> may I speak with Jose </example> may I speak with <one-of> <item> <ruleref uri="#people1"/> </item> <item> <ruleref uri="#people2"/> </item> </one-of> </rule> </grammar>

This section defines the precedence of the ABNF rule expansion syntax. Because XML documents explicitly indicate structure there is no ambiguity and thus a precedence definition is not required. The precedence definitions for the ABNF Form are intended to minimize the need for parentheses.

ABNF Form The following is the ordering of precedence of rule expansions. Parentheses may be used to explicitly control rule structure. A rule reference , a quoted token , an unquoted token or a tag . Parentheses ('(' and ')') for grouping and square brackets ('[' and ']') for optional grouping . Repeat operator (e.g. " <0-1> ") and language attachment (e.g. "!en-AU") apply to the tightest immediate preceding rule expansion. (To apply them to a sequence or to alternatives, use `()' or `[]' for grouping.) Sequence of rule expansions. Set of alternative rule expansions separated by vertical bars ('|') with optional weights . XML Form None required. XML structure is explicit.

3. Rule Definitions

A rule definition associates a legal rule expansion with a rulename . The rule definition is also responsible for defining the scope of the rule definition: whether it is local to the grammar in which it is defined or whether it may be referenced within other grammars. Finally, the rule definition may additionally include documentation comments and other pragmatics.

The rulename for each rule definition must be unique within a grammar. The same rulename may be used in multiple grammars.

A rule definition is referenced by a URI in a rule reference with the rulename being represented as the fragment identifier.

The core purpose of a rule definition is to associate a legal rule expansion with a rulename.

A legal rulename in either the XML Form or ABNF Form is a character sequence that:

is an XML Name [XML §2.3] ,
and does not contain the following character '.', ':', '-',
and is not the name of a special rule ("NULL", "VOID", "GARBAGE").

Defined rulenames must be unique within a grammar. The schema enforces this by declaring the rulename as an XML ID.

Rulenames are case-sensitive in both XML and ABNF grammars. Exact string comparison is used to resolve rulename references.

A legal rulename cannot be one of the special rules : specifically "NULL", "VOID" or "GARBAGE".

ABNF Form The rule definition consists of an optional scoping declaration (explained in the next section) followed by a legal rule name, an equals sign, a legal rule expansion and a closing semicolon. The rule definition has one of the following legal forms: $ruleName = ruleExpansion; public $ruleName = ruleExpansion; private $ruleName = ruleExpansion; For example: $city = Boston | "New York" | Madrid; $command = $action $object; Special Cases An empty rule definition is illegal. It is legal to define a rule that expands to empty parentheses or $NULL (equivalent forms). It is legal to define a rule that expands to a single tag . // Legal $rule = (); $rule = $NULL; $rule = { TAG-CONTENT }; // ILLEGAL $rule = ; XML Form A rule definition is represented by the rule element. The id attribute of the element indicates the name of the rule and must be unique within the grammar (this is enforced by XML). The contents of the rule element may be any legal rule expansion defined in Section 2 . The scope attribute is explained in the next section. <rule id="city"> <one-of> <item>Boston</item> <item>"San Francisco"</item> <item>Madrid</item> </one-of> </rule> <rule id="command"> <ruleref uri="#action"/> <ruleref uri="#object"/> </rule> Special Cases It is not legal to define an empty rule element or a rule element that contains only white space CDATA. It is legal to define a rule that expands to an empty item or to a single rule reference to NULL . It is legal to define a rule that expands to a single tag element.  <rule id="rule"><item/></rule> <rule id="rule"><ruleref special="NULL"/></rule> <rule id="rule"><tag> TAG-CONTENT </tag></rule>  <rule id="rule"/> <rule id="rule"></rule> <rule id="rule"> </rule>

Each defined rule has a scope. The scope is either "private" or "public". If not explicitly declared in a rule definition then the scope defaults to "private".

A public-scoped rule may be explicitly referenced (using the fragment identifier syntax of a URI) in the rule definitions of other grammars and in other non-grammar documents . A private-scoped rule cannot be so referenced and is directly accessible only within its containing grammar. A private rule may be explicitly referenced only by other rules within the same grammar .

Informative: grammar authors may consider the following guidance when scoping the rules of a grammar.

Grammar authoring shares many properties of programming. Establishing contracts of an API is analogous to defining a set of grammars and defining the public rules of a grammar each with defined language behavior.
Consistent design and implementation of public rules promotes grammar re-use and facilitates creation of grammar libraries.
Natural language grammars often require creation of many internal "working" rules to create a smaller number of useful external rules. Hiding working rules with private scope allows revision of those rules without affecting other grammars that reference the grammar. Hiding working rules also prevents accidental mis-use of a working rule.
Grammar compilation resembles programming language compilation. Making rules private allows advanced grammar compilers to perform optimizations that cannot be applied when a rule is declared public.

ABNF Form A rule definition may be annotated with the keywords "public" or "private". If no scope is provided, the default is "private". $town = Townsville | Beantown; private $city = Boston | "New York" | Madrid; public $command = $action $object; XML Form The scope attribute of the rule element defines the scope of the rule definition. Defined values are public and private . If omitted, the default scope is private . <rule id="town"> <one-of> <item>Townsville</item> <item>Beantown</item> </one-of> </rule> <rule id="city" scope="private"> <one-of> <item>Boston</item> <item>"San Francisco"</item> <item>Madrid</item> </one-of> </rule> <rule id="command" scope="public"> <ruleref uri="#action"/> <ruleref uri="#object"/> </rule>

It is often desirable to include examples of phrases that match rule definitions along with the definition. Zero, one or many example phrases may be provided for any rule definition. Because the examples are explicitly marked, automated tools can be used for regression testing and for generation of grammar documentation.

ABNF Form A documentation comment is a C/C++/Java comment that starts with the sequence of characters /** and which immediately precedes the relevant rule definition. Zero or more @example tags may be contained at the end of the documentation comment. The syntax follows the Tagged Paragraph of a documentation comment of the Java Programming Language [JAVA §18.4] . The tokenization of the example follows the tokenization and sequence rules defined in Section 2.1 and Section 2.3 respectively. /** * A simple directive to execute an action. * * @example open the window * @example close the door */ public $command = $action $object; XML Form Any number of "example" elements may be provided as the initial content within a "rule" element. The tokenization of the example follows the tokenization and sequence rules defined in Section 2.1 and Section 2.3 respectively. <rule id="command" scope="public">  <example> open the window </example> <example> close the door </example> <ruleref uri="#action"/> <ruleref uri="#object"/> </rule>

4. Grammar Documents

A conforming stand-alone grammar document consists of a legal header followed by a body consisting of a set of legal rule definitions . All rules defined within that grammar are scoped within the grammar's rulename namespace and each rulename must be legal and unique .

It is legal for a grammar to define no rules. The grammar cannot be used for processing input since it defines no patterns for matching user input.

4.11.2 Metadata (XML Only)

A legal stand-alone grammar header consists of a number of required declarations and other optional declarations. In addition, the ABNF Form and XML Form each have additional requirements and capabilities of the header that are specific to each syntactic form. The ordering of header declarations is also specific to the two forms.

The table summarizes the information declared in a grammar header and the appropriate representation in the ABNF Form and XML Form.

A grammar that complies to this specification must declare the version to be "1.0".

Note: the grammar version indicates the version of the specification implemented by the grammar and is not for versioning of the grammar content. A meta or metadata declaration may be used for content versioning.

ABNF Form: Header Summary A legal header for a stand-alone ABNF document consists of a required ABNF self-identifying header including the grammar version and optional character encoding followed by these declarations in any order: Language Mode Root rule Tag format Base URI Pronunciation lexicon (any number) Meta and http-equiv (any number) Tag (any number) ABNF comments may appear between the declarations in the ABNF header after the ABNF self-identifying header. The header declarations are followed by the rule definitions of the grammar. The following are two examples of ABNF headers. Note that ordering of the declarations (except the ABNF self-identifying header) is unimportant. #ABNF 1.0 ISO-8859-1; language en; mode voice; root $myRule; tag-format FORMAT-STRING; base <http://www.example.com/base-file-path>; lexicon <http://www.example.com/lexicon.file>; lexicon <http://www.example.com/strange-city-names.file>~<media-type>; meta "Author" is "Stephanie Williams"; http-equiv "Date" is "Fri, 10 Feb 2002 17:27:21 GMT"; {var x=1}; #ABNF 1.0; // A French Canadian grammar language fr-CA; // It's a speech grammar mode voice; // Here's the root rule root $QuebecCities;

XML Form: Header Summary A legal stand-alone XML Form grammar document consists of: Legal XML Prolog Root grammar element with the following attributes XML namespace XML Schema attributes Version Language Mode Root rule Tag format Base URI grammar element containing any number of the following elements in any order: Pronunciation lexicon (any number) Meta and HTTP-Equiv (any number) Metadata (any number) Tag (any number) Rule definitions follow the lexicon , meta , metadata and tag declarations. The following are examples of XML Form grammars headers each including all declarations permitted on the grammar element and one with the DOCTYPE declaration. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?> <grammar version="1.0" xml:lang="en" mode="voice" root="myRule" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/06/grammar" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.w3.org/2001/06/grammar http://www.w3.org/TR/speech-grammar/grammar.xsd" xml:base="http://www.example.com/base-file-path"> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?> <!DOCTYPE grammar PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD GRAMMAR 1.0//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/speech-grammar/grammar.dtd"> <grammar version="1.0" xml:lang="fr-CA" mode="voice" root="QuebecCities" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/06/grammar" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.w3.org/2001/06/grammar http://www.w3.org/TR/speech-grammar/grammar.xsd" xml:base="http://www.example.com/another-base-file-path">

The ABNF self-identifying header must be present in any legal stand-alone ABNF Form grammar document.

The first character of an ABNF document must be the "#" symbol (x23) unless preceded by an optional XML 1.0 byte order mark [XML §4.3.3] . The ABNF byte order mark follows the XML definition and requirements. For example, documents encoded in UTF-16 must begin with the byte order mark.

The optional byte order mark and required "#" symbol must be followed immediately by the exact string "ABNF" (x41 x42 x4d x46) or the appropriate equivalent for the document's encoding (e.g. for UTF-16 little-endian: x23 x00 x41 x00 x42 x00 x4d x00 x46 x00). If the byte order mark is absent on a grammar encoded in UTF-16 then the grammar processor should perform auto-detection of character encoding in a manner analogous to auto-detection of character encoding in XML [XML §F] .

Next follows a single space character (x20) and the required version number which is " 1.0 " for this specification (x31 x2e x30).

Next follows an optional character encoding . Section 4.4 defines character encodings in more detail. If present, there must be a single space character (x20) between the version number and the character encoding.

The self-identifying header is finalized with a semicolon (x3b) followed immediately by a newline. The semicolon must be the first character following the version number or the character encoding if is present.

For the remaining declarations of the ABNF header white space is not significant.

A legal stand-alone XML Form grammar document must have a legal XML Prolog [XML §2.8] .

The XML prolog in an XML Form grammar comprises the XML declaration and an optional DOCTYPE declaration referencing the grammar DTD. It is followed by the root grammar element. The XML prolog may also contain XML comments, processor instructions and other content permitted by XML in a prolog.

The version number of the XML declaration indicates which version of XML is being used. The version number of the grammar element indicates which version of the grammar specification is being used — " 1.0 " for this specification. The grammar version is a required attribute.

The grammar element must designate the grammar namespace. This can be achieved by declaring an xmlns attribute or an attribute with an "xmlns" prefix. See [XMLNS] for details. Note that when the xmlns attribute is used alone, it sets the default namespace for the element on which it appears and for any child elements. The namespace for XML Form grammars is defined as http://www.w3.org/2001/06/grammar .

It is recommended that the grammar element also indicate the location of the grammar schema (see Appendix C ) via the xsi:schemaLocation attribute from [SCHEMA1] . Although such indication is not required, to encourage it this document provides such indication on all of the examples:

If present, the optional DOCTYPE must reference the standard DOCTYPE and identifier.

The character encoding is defined on the XML declaration as defined by the XML specification. See Section 4.4 for detail.

The language is defined by the xml:lang attribute on the grammar element. See Section 4.5 for details.

The grammar mode is defined on the grammar element. See Section 4.6 for details.

The root rule is defined on the grammar element. See Section 4.7 for details.

The tag-format is defined on the grammar element. See Section 4.8 for details.

The base URI for the document is defined by the xml:base attribute on the grammar element. See Section 4.9 for details.

The character encoding declaration indicates the scheme used for encoding character data in the document. For example, for US applications it would be common to use US-ASCII, UTF-8 (8-bit Unicode) or ISO-8859-1. For Japanese grammars, character encodings such as EUC-JP and UTF-16 (16-bit Unicode) could be used.

Except for the different syntactic representation, the ABNF Form follows the character encoding handling defined for XML. XML grammar processors must accept both the UTF-8 and UTF-16 encodings of ISO/IEC 10646 and may support other character encodings. This follows from an XML grammar processor being a compliant XML processor and thus required to support those character encodings. For consistency, ABNF grammar processor must also accept both the UTF-8 and UTF-16 encodings of ISO/IEC 10646 and may support other character encodings.

For both XML Form and ABNF Form grammars the declaration of the character encoding is optional but strongly recommended. XML defines behavior for XML processors that receive an XML document without a character encoding declaration. For consistency an ABNF grammar processor must follow the same behavior (with adjustments for the different syntax). (Note the character encoding declaration is optional only in cases where it is optional for a legal XML document.)

ABNF Form The character encoding declaration is part of the self-identifying grammar header defined in Section 4.1 and is processed in combination with the byte order mark, if present, using the same procedure as XML 1.0 [XML §4.3.3] . The following are examples of ABNF self-identifying grammar headers with and without the character encoding declaration. Note: the ABNF Form syntax does not provide a character reference syntax for entry of a specific character, for example, one not directly accessible from available input devices. This contrasts with XML 1.0 syntax for character references [XML §4.1] . For development requiring character references the XML Form of the specification is recommended. #ABNF 1.0 ISO-8859-1; #ABNF 1.0 EUC-JP; #ABNF 1.0; XML Form XML declares character encodings as part of the document's XML declaration on the first line of the document. The following are examples of XML headers with and without the character encoding declaration. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="EUC-JP"?> <?xml version="1.0"?>

The language declaration of a grammar provides the language identifier that indicates the primary language contained by the document and optionally indicates a country or other variation. Additionally, any legal rule expansion may be labeled with a language identifier .

The language declaration is required for all speech recognition grammars: i.e. all grammars for which the mode is "voice". (Note that mode defaults to voice if there is no explicit mode declaration in ABNF or mode attribute in XML.)

If an XML Form grammar is incorporated within another XML document — for example, as supported by VoiceXML 2.0 — then the xml:lang attribute is optional on the grammar element and the xml:lang attribute must be inherited from the enclosing document.

In DTMF grammars a language declaration must be ignored if present.

The conformance definition in Section 5 defines the behavior of a grammar processor when it encounters a language variant that it does not support.

ABNF Form The ABNF header must contain zero or one language declaration. It consists of the keyword " language ", white space , a legal language identifier , optional white space and a terminating semicolon character (';'). language en-US; language fr; XML Form Following the XML 1.0 specification [XML §2.12] the language identifier is indicated by an xml:lang attribute on the root grammar element. <grammar xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/06/grammar" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.w3.org/2001/06/grammar http://www.w3.org/TR/speech-grammar/grammar.xsd" xml:lang="en-US" version="1.0"> <grammar xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/06/grammar" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.w3.org/2001/06/grammar http://www.w3.org/TR/speech-grammar/grammar.xsd" xml:lang="fr" version="1.0">

4.6 Grammar Mode

The mode of a grammar indicates the type of input that the user agent should be detecting. The default mode is " voice " for speech recognition grammars. An alternative input mode defined in Appendix E is " dtmf " input.

The mode attribute indicates how to interpret the tokens contained by the grammar. Speech tokens are expected to be detected as speech audio that sounds like the token. Behavior with DTMF input, if supported, is defined in Appendix E .

It is often the case that a different user agent is used for detecting DTMF tones than for speech recognition. The same may be true for other modes defined in future revisions of the specification.

The specification does not define a mechanism by which a single grammar can mix modes: that is, a representation for a mixed " voice " and " dtmf " grammar is not defined. Moreover, it is illegal for a rule reference in one grammar to reference any grammar with a different mode.

A user agent may, however, support the simultaneous activation of more than one grammar including both " voice " and " dtmf " grammars. This is necessary, for example, for DTMF-enabled VoiceXML browsers [VXML2] . (Note: parallel activation implies disjunction at the root level of the grammars rather than mixing of modes within the structure of the grammars.)

ABNF Form The ABNF header must contain zero or one mode declaration. It consists of the keyword " mode ", white space , either " voice " or " dtmf " optional white space and a terminating semicolon character (';'). If the ABNF header does not declare the mode then it defaults to voice . mode voice; mode dtmf; XML Form The mode declaration is provided as an optional mode attribute on the root grammar element. Legal values are "voice" and "dtmf" . If the mode attribute is omitted then the value defaults to voice . <grammar mode="voice" version="1.0" xml:lang="en-US" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/06/grammar" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.w3.org/2001/06/grammar http://www.w3.org/TR/speech-grammar/grammar.xsd"> <grammar mode="dtmf" version="1.0" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/06/grammar" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.w3.org/2001/06/grammar http://www.w3.org/TR/speech-grammar/grammar.xsd">

Both the XML Form and ABNF Form permit the grammar header to optionally declare a single rule to be the root rule of the grammar. The rule declared as the root rule must be defined within the scope of the grammar. The rule declared as the root rule may be scoped as either public or private .

A n implicit rule reference to the root rule of a grammar is legal. The syntax for implicitly referencing root rules is defined in Section 2.2 . It is an error to reference a grammar implicitly by its root if that grammar does not declare a legal root rule.

Although a grammar is not required to declare a root rule it is good practice to declare the root rule of any grammar.

ABNF Form The ABNF header must contain zero or one root rule declaration. It consists of the keyword " root ", white space , the legal rulename of a rule defined within the grammar prefixed by the dollar sign ('$'), optional white space and a terminating semicolon character (';'). If the ABNF header does not declare the root rule then it is not legal to implicitly reference the grammar by its root. root $rulename; XML Form The root rulename declaration is provided as an optional root attribute on the grammar element. The root declaration must identify one rule defined elsewhere within the same grammar. The value of the root attribute is an XML IDREF (not a URI) and must not include the number sign ('#'). <grammar root="rulename" ...>

The tag-format declaration is an optional declaration of a tag-format identifier that indicates the content type of all rule tags and header tags contained within a grammar.

The tag-format identifier is a URI . It is recommended that the tag format identifier indicate both the content type and a version. Tags typically contain content for a semantic interpretation processor and in such cases the identifier, if present, should indicate the semantic processor to use.

Tag-format identifier values beginning with the string "semantics/x.y" (where x and y are digits) are reserved for use by the W3C Semantic Interpretation for Speech Recognition specification [SEM] or future versions of the specification.

Grammar processor handling of tags is undefined if the tag format declaration is omitted.

ABNF Form The ABNF header must contain zero or one tag format declaration. It consists of the keyword " tag-format ", white space , a tag format identifier (an ABNF URI ), optional white space and a terminating semicolon character (';'). Informative example ("semantics/1.0" is a reserved identifier) : tag-format <semantics/1.0>; XML Form The tag-format is an optional attribute of the grammar element and contains a tag format identifier. <grammar tag-format="semantics/1.0" ...>

4.9 Base URI

Relative URIs are resolved according to a base URI , which may come from a variety of sources. The base URI declaration allows authors to specify a document's base URI explicitly. See Section 4.9.1 for details on the resolution of relative URIs.

The path information specified by the base URI declaration only affects URIs in the document where the element appears.

The base URI declaration is permitted but optional in both the XML Form and the ABNF Form.

Note: the base URI may be declared in a meta declaration but the explicit base declaration is recommended for both the ABNF Form and XML Form.

ABNF Form The ABNF header must contain zero or one base URI declaration. It consists of the keyword " base ", white space , a legal ABNF URI , optional white space and a terminating semicolon character (';'). base <http://www.example.com/base-file-path>; base <http://www.example.com/another-base-file-path>; XML Form The base URI declaration follows [XML-BASE] and is indicated by a xml:base attribute on the root grammar element. <grammar xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/06/grammar" xml:base="http://www.example.com/base-file-path" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.w3.org/2001/06/grammar http://www.w3.org/TR/speech-grammar/grammar.xsd" version="1.0"> <grammar xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/06/grammar" xml:base="http://www.example.com/another-base-file-path" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.w3.org/2001/06/grammar http://www.w3.org/TR/speech-grammar/grammar.xsd" version="1.0">

User agents must calculate the base URI for resolving relative URIs according to [RFC2396] . The following describes how RFC 2396 applies to grammar documents.

User agents must calculate the base URI according to the following precedences (highest priority to lowest):

The base URI is set by the xml:base attribute on the grammar element or the base declaration in the ABNF header (see Section 4.9).
The base URI is provided in a meta declaration .
The base URI is given by metadata discovered during a protocol interaction, such as an HTTP header (see [RFC2616] ).
By default, the base URI is that of the current document. Not all grammar documents have a base URI (e.g., a valid grammar document may appear in an email and may not be designated by a URI). Such grammar documents are not valid if they contain relative URIs and rely on a default base URI.

A grammar may optionally reference one or more external pronunciation lexicon documents. A lexicon document is identified by a URI with an optional media type .

The pronunciation information contained within a lexicon document is used only for tokens defined within the enclosing grammar.

The W3C Voice Browser Working Group is developing the Pronunciation Lexicon Markup Language [LEX] . The specification will address the matching process between tokens and lexicon entries and the mechanism by which a speech recognizer handles multiple pronunciations from internal and grammar-specified lexicons. Pronunciation handling with proprietary lexicon formats will necessarily be specific to the speech recognizer.

Pronunciation lexicons are necessarily language-specific. Pronunciation lookup in a lexicon and pronunciation inference for any token may use an algorithm that is language-specific. (See Section 2.1 for additional information on token handling and pronunciations.)

ABNF Form The ABNF header may contain any number of pronunciation lexicon declarations (zero, one or many). The lexicon declaration consists of the " lexicon " keyword followed by white space , an ABNF URI or ABNF URI with media type , optional white space and a closing semicolon (';'). (Note that a lexicon URI is not preceded by a dollar sign as is the case for ABNF rule references.) Example: #ABNF V1.0 ISO-8859-1; language en-US; lexicon <http://www.example.com/lexicon.file>; lexicon <http://www.example.com/strange-city-names.file>~<media-type>; ... XML Form Any number of lexicon elements may occur as immediate children of the grammar element. The lexicon element must have a uri attribute specifying a URI that identifies the location of the pronunciation lexicon document. The lexicon element may have a type attribute that specifies the media type of the pronunciation lexicon document. <grammar xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/06/grammar" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.w3.org/2001/06/grammar http://www.w3.org/TR/speech-grammar/grammar.xsd" xml:lang="en" version="1.0"> <lexicon uri="http://www.example.com/lexicon.file"/> <lexicon uri="http://www.example.com/strange-city-names.file" type="media-type"/> ...

4.11 Meta Data

Grammar documents let authors specify metadata — information about a document rather than document content — in a number of ways.

A meta declaration in either the ABNF Form or XML Form may be used to express metadata information in both XML Form and ABNF Form grammars or to reference metadata available in an external resource. The XML Form also supports a metadata element that provides a more general and powerful treatment of metadata information than meta . Since metadata requires an XML metadata schema which cannot be expressed in ABNF, there is no equivalent of metadata in the ABNF Form of grammars.

A meta declaration in either ABNF Form or the XML Form associates a string to declared meta property or declares "http-equiv" content.

The seeAlso property is the only defined meta property name. It is used to specify a resource that might provide additional metadata information about the containing grammar. This property is modelled on the rdfs:seeAlso property of Resource Description Framework (RDF) Schema Specification 1.0 [RDF-SCHEMA §2.3.4] .

It is recommended that for general metadata properties that grammar authors follow the metadata properties defined in the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative [DC] . For example, "Creator" to identify the entity primarily responsible for making the content of the grammar, "Date" to indicate creation date, or "Source" to indicate the resource From which a grammar is derived (e.g. when converting an XML Form grammar to the ABNF Form, use "Source" to provide the URI for the original document.)

ABNF Form The ABNF header may contain any number of meta declarations and http-equiv declarations (zero, one or many). Each declaration consists of the " meta " or " http-equiv " keyword followed by white space , the name string delimited by quotes, the keyword " is ", white space , the content string delimited by quotes, optional white space and a closing semicolon (';'). The name string and the content string must be delimited by either a matching pair of double quotes ('"') or a matching pair of single quotes ("'"). Informative example: #ABNF 1.0; meta "Creator" is "Stephanie Williams"; meta "seeAlso" is "http://example.com/my-grammar-metadata.xml"; http-equiv "Expires" is '0'; http-equiv "Date" is "Thu, 12 Dec 2000 23:27:21 GMT"; XML Form A metadata property is declared with a meta element. Either a name or http-equiv attribute is required. It is illegal to provide both name and http-equiv attributes. A content attribute is required. The meta , metadata and lexicon elements must occur before all rule elements contained with the root grammar element. There are no constraints on the ordering of the meta , metadata and lexicon elements. Informative example: <?xml version="1.0"?> <grammar version="1.0" xml:lang="en-US" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.w3.org/2001/06/grammar http://www.w3.org/TR/speech-grammar/grammar.xsd" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/06/grammar"> <meta name="Creator" content="Stephanie Williams"/> <meta name="seeAlso" content="http://example.com/my-grammar-metadata.xml"/> <meta http-equiv="Expires" content="0"/> <meta http-equiv="Date" content="Thu, 12 Dec 2000 23:27:21 GMT"/> ... </grammar>

The metadata element is container in which information about the document can be placed using a metadata schema. Although any metadata schema can be used with metadata , it is recommended that the Resource Description Format (RDF) schema [RDF-SCHEMA] is used in conjunction with the general metadata properties defined in the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative [DC] .

RDF is a declarative language and provides a standard way for using XML to represent metadata in the form of statements about properties and relationships of items on the Web. Content creators should refer to W3C metadata Recommendations [RDF-SYNTAX] and [RDF-SCHEMA] when deciding which metadata RDF schema to use in their documents. Content creators should also refer to the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative [DC] , which is a set of generally applicable core metadata properties (e.g., Title, Creator, Subject, Description, Copyrights, etc.).

This specification only defines an XML representation for this form of metadata declaration. There is no ABNF equivalent for metadata . A conversion of an XML Form grammar to the ABNF Form may extract the XML metadata into a separate document that is referenced with a "seeAlso" meta declaration in the ABNF document. Note: an agent that searches XML documents for metadata represented with RDF would be unable to locate RDF even if it were represented in ABNF. Thus, support for RDF in ABNF was considered low utility.

XML Form Document properties declared with metadata element can use any metadata schema. The metadata , meta , and lexicon elements must occur before all rule elements contained with the root grammar element. There are no constraints on the ordering of the metadata , meta and lexicon elements. Informative: This is an example of how metadata can be included in an XML grammar document using the Dublin Core version 1.0 RDF schema [DC] describing general document information such as title, description, date, and so on: <?xml version="1.0"?> <grammar xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/06/grammar" version="1.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.w3.org/2001/06/grammar http://www.w3.org/TR/speech-grammar/grammar.xsd" xml:lang="en-US"> <metadata> <rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf = "http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#" xmlns:rdfs = "http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/PR-rdf-schema-19990303#" xmlns:dc = "http://purl.org/metadata/dublin_core#">  <rdf:Description about="http://www.example.com/meta.grxml" dc:Title="Digit Grammar" dc:Description="Digit Grammar in W3C XML Form" dc:Publisher="W3C" dc:Language="en" dc:Date="2002-02-14" dc:Rights="Copyright 2002 Jan Smith" dc:Format="application/srgs+xml" > <dc:Creator> <rdf:Seq ID="CreatorsAlphabeticalBySurname"> <rdf:li>Jackie Crystal</rdf:li> <rdf:li>Jan Smith</rdf:li> </rdf:Seq> </dc:Creator> </rdf:Description> </rdf:RDF> </metadata> </grammar>

A grammar may optionally specify one or more tag declarations in the header. The content of a tag in the header, just like a tag in rule expansions , is an arbitrary string which may be used for semantic interpretation .

ABNF Form The ABNF header may contain any number of tag declarations (zero, one or many). The tag declaration consists a string delimited as described in S2.6 ABNF Form , followed by a closing semicolon (';'). The tag content is all text between the opening and closing delimiters including leading and trailing whitespace . The contents of the tag are not parsed by the grammar processor. #ABNF V1.0 ISO-8859-1; language en-US; { TAG-CONTENT-1 }; {!{ TAG-CONTENT-2 }!}; $rule = . . .; ... XML Form Any number of tag elements may occur as immediate children of the grammar element. The content of tag is CDATA. <grammar xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/06/grammar" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.w3.org/2001/06/grammar http://www.w3.org/TR/speech-grammar/grammar.xsd" xml:lang="en" version="1.0"> <tag> TAG-CONTENT-1 <tag> <tag> TAG-CONTENT-2 <tag> ...

Comments may be placed in most places in a grammar document. For XML, use XML comments. For ABNF there are documentation comments and C/C++/Java-style comments.

ABNF Form C/C++/Java comments are permitted. Documentation comments are permitted before grammar and language declarations and before any rule definition. Section 3.3 defines the format for representing examples in documentation comments before a rule definition. // C++/Java-style single-line comment /* C/C++/Java-style comment */ /** Java-style documentation comment */ XML Form An XML comment has the following syntax.

The fetching and caching behavior of both ABNF Form and XML Form grammar documents is defined primarily by the environment in which the grammar processor operates. For instance, VoiceXML 1.0 and VoiceXML 2.0 define certain fetching and caching behaviors that apply to grammars activated by a VoiceXML browser. Similarly, any API for a recognizer that supports ABNF Form or XML Form grammars may apply fetching and caching behaviors.

Grammar processors are recommended to support the following interpretation of "rendering" a grammar for the purpose of determining document freshness.

Activation of a grammar is the point at which the recognizer begins detection of user input matching the grammar and is therefore analogous to the action of visual or audio rendering of system output. As with output rendering, grammar freshness should be checked close to the moment of grammar activation.

ABNF keywords are case sensitive. The keywords of the ABNF language are not reserved. The keywords with specified meaning in ABNF are:

Since keywords are not reserved they may be used as rulenames and as tokens. The following is a legal grammar that accepts as input a sequence of one or more "public" tokens.

5. Conformance

This section is normative.

Different sets of grammar conformance criteria exist for:

5.2 Conforming Stand-Alone XML Form Grammar Document

5.1: Conforming XML Form Grammar Fragments

An XML Form grammar document fragment is a Conforming XML Form Grammar Fragment if:

it is a well-formed XML document [XML] conforming to namespaces in XML [XMLNS]
all non-grammar namespace elements and attributes and all xmlns attributes which refer to non-grammar namespace elements are removed from the document,
and, an appropriate XML declaration (i.e., <?xml...?> ) is included at the top of the document,
and, if the grammar element does not already designate the grammar namespace using the "xmlns" attribute, then xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/06/grammar" is added to the element.

5.2: Conforming Stand-Alone XML Form Grammar Document

A document is a Conforming Stand-Alone XML Form Grammar Document if it meets both the following conditions.

It is a well-formed XML document [XML] conforming to namespaces in XML [XMLNS] .
It is valid XML document which adheres to the specification described in this document ( Speech Recognition Grammar Specification ) including the constraints expressed in the schema (see Appendix C ) and having an XML Form prolog and <grammar> root element as specified in Section 4.3 and

The XML Form grammar specification and these conformance criteria provide no designated size limits on any aspect of grammar documents. There are no maximum values on the number of elements, the amount of character data, or the number of characters in attribute values.

The grammar namespace may be used with other XML namespaces as per the Namespaces in XML Recommendation [XMLNS] . Future work by W3C will address ways to specify conformance for documents involving multiple namespaces.

An XML Form grammar processor is a program that can parse and process XML Form grammar documents. Examples include speech recognizers and DTMF detectors that accept the XML Form.

In a Conforming XML Form Grammar Processor , the XML parser must be able to parse and process all XML constructs defined by XML 1.0 [XML] and Namespaces in XML [XMLNS] . This XML parser is not required to perform validation of a grammar document as per its schema or DTD; this implies that during processing of an XML Form grammar document it is optional to apply or expand external entity references defined in an external DTD.

A Conforming XML Form Grammar Processor must correctly understand and apply the semantics of each possible grammar feature defined by this document.

A Conforming XML Form Grammar Processor must meet the following requirements for handling of languages:

A Conforming Grammar Processor is required to parse all legal language declarations successfully.
A Conforming Grammar Processor should inform its hosting environment if it encounters a language that it can not support.
A Conforming Grammar Processor that can support a given language, must be able to activate the root, any single public rule, or any set of public rules or roots of one or many grammars where each rule or root and all directly or indirectly referenced sub-rules are for this same given language.
A Conforming Grammar Processor may activate a part (i.e., the root, any single public rule, or any set of public rules) of one or many grammars where the parts contain multiple languages, with one or more languages in each part. When a processor is able to support each language in the set but is unable to handle them concurrently it should inform the hosting environment. When the set includes one or more languages that are not supported by the processor it should inform the hosting environment.
A Conforming Grammar Processor may implement languages by approximate substitutions according to a documented, platform-specific behavior. For example, using a US English speech recognizer to process British English input.

When a Conforming XML Form Grammar Processor encounters elements or attributes in a non-grammar namespace it may:

ignore the non-standard elements and/or attributes
or, process the non-standard elements and/or attributes
or, reject the document containing those elements and/or attributes

A Conforming XML Form Grammar Processor is not required to support recursive grammars, that is, grammars in which rule references include direct or indirect self-reference.

There is, however, no conformance requirement with respect to performance characteristics of the XML Form Grammar Processor. For instance, no statement is required regarding the accuracy, speed or other characteristics of a speech recognizer or DTMF detector. No statement is made regarding the size of grammar or size of grammar vocabulary that an XML Form Grammar Processor must support.

5.5: Conforming Stand-Alone ABNF Form Grammar Documents

An ABNF grammar document is a Conforming ABNF Document if it adheres to the specification described in this document ( Speech Recognition Grammar Specification ) including the Formal ABNF Specification .

5.6: Conforming ABNF Form Grammar Processor

An ABNF Grammar Processor is a program that can parse and process ABNF grammar documents. Examples include speech recognizers and DTMF detectors that accept the ABNF Form.

A Conforming ABNF Grammar Processor must correctly understand and apply the semantics of each possible grammar feature defined by this document.

A Conforming ABNF Grammar Processor must follow the same language handling requirements as outlined in Section 5.4 for Conforming XML Form Grammar Processors.

A Conforming ABNF Grammar Processor should inform its hosting environment if it encounters an illegal grammar document or other grammar content that it is unable to process.

A Conforming ABNF Grammar Processor is not required to support recursive grammars, that is, grammars in which rule references include direct or indirect self-reference.

There is, however, no conformance requirement with respect to performance characteristics of the ABNF Grammar Processor. For instance, no statement is required regarding the accuracy, speed or other characteristics of a speech recognizer or DTMF detector. No statement is made regarding the size of grammar or size of grammar vocabulary that an ABNF Grammar Processor must support.

5.7: Conforming ABNF/XML Form Grammar Processor

A Conforming ABNF/XML Form Grammar Processor must meet all the conformance criteria defined in Section 5.4 and in Section 5.6 .

Additionally an ABNF/XML Form Grammar Processor must be able to resolve and apply references from XML Form Grammars to ABNF Form Grammars, and references from ABNF Form Grammars to XML Form Grammars.

5.8: Conforming User Agent

A conforming user agent is a Conforming XML Form Grammar Processor , Conforming ABNF Form Grammar Processor or Conforming ABNF/XML Form Grammar Processor that is capable of accepting user input of the mode of a grammar (i.e. speech input in "voice" mode, DTMF input "dtmf" mode) and:

Is capable of determining when a sequence of user input exactly matches a grammar,
Is capable of producing an output representation that indicates how the input matches the grammar.

Current speech recognition technology is statistically based. Since the output is not deterministic and cannot be guaranteed to be a correct representation of the input there is no conformance requirement regarding accuracy. A conformance test may, however, require some examples of correct recognition of speech input to determine conformance.

This document was written with the participation of the members of the W3C Voice Browser Working Group (listed in alphabetical order) :

Appendix A: References

A.1: normative references, a.2: informative references, appendix b: dtd for xml form grammars.

This appendix is informative.

The grammar DTD is located at http://www.w3.org/TR/speech-grammar/grammar.dtd

Appendix C: XML Schema Definition For XML Form Grammars

This appendix is normative.

The grammar schema is located at http://www.w3.org/TR/speech-grammar/grammar.xsd

Note: the grammar schema includes the no-namespace core schema (below).

The no-namespace core schema for grammars is located at http://www.w3.org/TR/speech-grammar/grammar-core.xsd . It may be used as a basis for specifying XML Form Grammar Fragments embedded in non-grammar namespace schemas.

Appendix D: Formal Syntax for Augmented BNF Form Grammars

The notation used here follows the EBNF notation (Extended Backus-Naur Form) defined in the XML 1.0 Recommendation [XML §6] .

The white space handling of the ABNF Form follows white space and end-of-line handling of XML (see Section 1.6 ).

Lexical Grammar for ABNF

The lexical grammar defines the lexical tokens of the ABNF format and has single characters as its terminal symbols. As a consequence neither white space characters nor ABNF comments are allowed in lexical tokens unless explicitly specified.

Note: As mentioned in Section 2.5 the symbols "*", "+" and "?", which are often used in regular expression languages, are reserved for future use in ABNF and must not be used at any place in a grammar where the syntax currently permits a repeat operator.

Syntactic Grammar for ABNF

The syntactic grammar has lexical tokens defined by the lexical grammar as its terminal symbols. Between two lexical tokens any number of white spaces or ABNF comments may appear.

Appendix E: DTMF Grammars

This section defines a normative representation of a grammar consisting of DTMF tokens. A DTMF grammar can be used by a DTMF detector to determine sequences of legal and illegal DTMF events. All grammar processors that support grammars of mode "dtmf" must implement this Appendix. However, not all grammar processors are required to support DTMF input.

If the grammar mode is declared as "dtmf" then tokens contained by the grammar are treated as DTMF tones (rather than the default of speech tokens).

There are sixteen (16) DTMF tones. Of these twelve (12) are commonly found on telephone sets as the digits "0" through "9" plus "*" (star) and "#" (pound). The four DTMF tones not typically present on telephones are "A", "B", "C", "D".

Each of the DTMF symbols is a legal DTMF token in a DTMF grammar. As in speech grammars, tokens must be separated by white space in a DTMF grammar. A space-separated sequence of DTMF symbols represents a temporal sequence of DTMF entries.

In the ABNF Form the "*" symbol is reserved so double quotes must always be used to delimit "*" when defining an ABNF DTMF grammar. It is recommended that the "#" symbol also be quoted. As an alternative the tokens "star" and "pound" are acceptable synonyms.

In any DTMF grammar any language declaration in a grammar header is ignored and any language attachments to rule expansions are ignored.

In all other respects a DTMF grammar is syntactically the same as a speech grammar. For example, DTMF grammars may use rule references , special rules , tags and other specification features.

The following is a simple DTMF grammar that accepts a 4-digit PIN followed by a pound terminator. It also permits the sequence of "*" followed by "9" (e.g. to receive a help message).

Appendix F: XSLT Style Sheet to Convert XML Form Grammars to ABNF Form

The transformation provided below is illustrative of the conversion of an XML Form grammar to the Augmented BNF Form. Known limitations:

Comments are not transformed
There is no treatment of empty token elements (which are illegal in ABNF)
Preserves filenames (e.g. "grammar.grxml") and media types ('application/srgs+xml') in URIs and media type declarations.
Assumes the quoted content within <meta> attributes uses double quotes. Does not correctly convert <meta> attributes containing single quotes.

The source for this transformation is located at http://www.w3.org/TR/speech-grammar/grammar-transformer.xsl .

Appendix G. Media Types and File Suffix

The W3C Voice Browser Working Group has applied to IANA to register a media type each for the ABNF Form and XML Form of this Speech Recognition Grammar Specification.

The ABNF media type identifies ABNF grammars. The media type applied for is "application/srgs" .

Similarly, the XML Form grammar media type identifies XML Form grammars. The media type applied for is "application/srgs+xml" .

The W3C Voice Browser Working Group has adopted the convention of using the ".gram" filename suffix for ABNF grammar documents and the ".grxml" filename suffix for XML Form grammar documents.

Appendix H. Logical Parse Structure

This section defines an informative representation of a parsed result of speech recognition or other user agent processing. This representation may be used as the basis for subsequent processing of user input, in particular, semantic interpretation . For instance, the W3C Semantic Interpretation for Speech Recognition specification [SEM] is defined around the logical parse structure.

This Appendix adopts the terminology and nomenclature of Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages, and Computation [HU79] .

Denote the tokens of the alphabet of all tokens accepted by a grammar as t1, t2... .

An input or output token sequence is a space separated string of tokens. The logical parse structure contains white-space-normalized tokens . The tokens in the logical parse structure are optionally delimited by double quotes so that white space and others characters can be parsed unambiguously. e.g. t1,t2,"t3 with space" . (For consistency, all examples in this Appendix include double quotes.)

Let ε (epsilon) or "" denote the unique string of length 0, also known as the empty string.

Denote the tags of the alphabet of all tags accepted by a grammar as {tag1}, {tag2}, ... .

Denote a legal expansion as E . (A legal expansion is defined in Section 2 .)

The expressive power of a rule expansion is a Regular Expression (see HU79) and has an equivalent Finite Automaton (see HU79). [The handling of rule references requires special treatment: see Section H.2 .] The expressive power of the grammar specification consists of:

Tokens: a finite automaton transition with symbol
Tag: a finite automaton transition on ε
Sequence: concatenation operation on finite automaton
Alternatives: union operation on finite automaton
Repeats: representable by combinations of concatenation, closure and union.

We formalize the logical parse structure by creating a Finite Automaton with Output (see HU79). This construct is also referred to as a Finite State Transducer .

We define the transitions for tokens and tags as producing an output symbol.

Token: transition that accepts token t and produces as output token t . In the notation of HU79: t/t
Tag: transition that accepts ε (no token) and produces as output {!{tag}!} In the notation of HU79: ε/{!{tag}!}

We represent parse output as an ordered array of output entities: [e1,e2,e3,...] .

An entity e may be a token, a tag or a rule expansion (see H.2 ).

The empty output array is represented as [ε] or simply [] .

A $NULL reference is equivalent to a transition that accepts as input ε and produces as output ε. In the notation of HU79: ε/ε .

A $VOID reference is logically equivalent to a missing transition. It accepts no input and produces no output.

A $GARBAGE reference is equivalent to a transition that accepts platform specific input and produces as output ε.

An ambiguity occurs when for a specified sequence of input tokens matched to a specified rule of a grammar there is more than one distinct logical parse structure that can be produced.

An ambiguity can occur at points of disjunction (choice) in a grammar. Disjunction exists with the use of alternatives and repeats .

A grammar processor may preserve any number of ambiguous logical parse structures to create a set of alternative logical parse structures for the input. It is legal for a grammar processor to maintain all possible logical parse structures or to dispose of all but one of the alternatives. There is no specified behavior for selection of ambiguities amongst possibilities by a grammar processors. As a result grammars that contain ambiguity do not guarantee portability of performance. Developers and grammar tools should be ambiguity-aware.

This Appendix does not illustrate all forms of ambiguous expansions but provides examples of some of the form common forms.

Matching a token to a token produces an array of 1 token.

A $NULL reference is matched by an empty input sequence and output is an empty array.

A tag is matched by an empty input sequence and output is an array of 1 tag.

Concatenation: An expansion consisting of a token and a tag is matched by input containing the token and produces as output a token, tag array.

Concatenation: an expansion consisting of a sequence of tokens, tags and $NULLs is matched by input that consists of the contained tokens. Output consists of the sequence of tokens and tags with order preserved. e.g.

Parenthetical structure is not preserved in the result. The following is the same sequence as the previous example but with parentheticals added to the expansion definition.

Alternatives: a set of many alternative tokens is matched by input of a single token and produces as output a single token.

Alternatives: if any single expansion in a set of alternatives can be matched by null input then the set of alternatives may be matched by null input and the output is the output of null-accepting expansion. ($NULL, {tag} and repeat counts of zero all permit null input.)

With a different null-accepting expansion:

Alternatives and ambiguity: several examples of ambiguous expansions with the ambiguity arising from alternatives that accept the same input but produce different output.

In this example null input is ambiguous.

The following is not ambiguous because the different paths through the expansion produce the same output.

Repeats: an optional expansion can be either matched by an empty token sequence or by any token sequence that matches the expansion contained within the optional.

Repeats: order is preserved upon multiple expansions.

Repeats and null input: If the contents of an optional expansion can be matched by an empty input sequence AND the output of matching the contained expansion is always an empty array then the output of matching the optional expansion by an empty sequence is also an empty array.

Ambiguous repeats: If a repeated or optional expansion can be matched by an empty input sequence BUT the output of matching the contained expansion may contain tags then the parse is ambiguous. It is recommended that the parse be minimal: Output 1 is preferred.

A similar ambiguity arises if the repeated expansion contains a alternative expansion that has a null-accepting expansion.

A sequence with two repeat expansion can be ambiguous if the two repeated expansions can accept the same input but produce different output.

A rule reference is a legal rule expansion (see Section 2.2 ).

We denote output obtained by matching the token sequence "t1,t2,..." against the expansion $rulename as $rulename[e1,e2,...] where "e1,e2,..." is the entity sequence obtained by matching that token sequence against the rule expansion defined for $rulename. Where a rule reference to an external rule is used the ABNF syntax for the rule reference is used (without any media type). For example, $<http://www.example.com/grammar. grxml #rulename">[e1,e2,...] or a n implicit root rule reference $<http://www.example.com/grammar. grxml ">[e1,e2,...] . For brevity, all the examples below use only local rule references.

The rulename of the top-level rule should enclose the logical parse structure.

A distinct structure for matching rule references maintains the parse tree for the result. This structure may be utilized in the semantic interpretation process or other computational processes that derive from the parse output structure.

There is no distinction between local rule references (within the same grammar) and external rule references .

There is no distinction between a root reference and a reference to a named grammar.

The following is a simple rule reference example.

The following is a rule reference in sequence.

The following includes a reference to a rule that outputs a tag.

Multiple references to the same rule are permitted.

Rule references may be repeated.

The Speech Recognition Grammar Specification has the expressive power of a Context Free Grammar . This arises because the language permits a rule to directly or indirectly reference itself. [Note: a Conforming XML Form Grammar Processor or Conforming ABNF Form Grammar Processor is not required to support recursive grammars.]

There is no distinct representation for a recursive rule reference.

Simple right recursion. Note: this grammar can be written in a non-recursive (regular expression) form.

Embedded recursion. Note that this matches any sequence of n t1's followed by n t2's.

Appendix I. Features under Consideration for Future Versions

The following features are under consideration for versions of the Speech Recognition Grammar Specification after version 1.0:

Optimizations for dynamic grammars: e.g. "static" or "volatile" keywords on rule definitions.
Dynamic variation of weights on alternatives
Definition of grammar fragments
Specified handling of morphological variants of tokens
Inline definition of token pronunciations
Guidance to recognizers on acoustic models
Support for W3C pronunciation lexicon when it is available
Declaration of semantic return types of rules
Possible distinction of "activable" and "exported" rules (currently merged as "public")
Multi-modal grammars: e.g. speech and DTMF mixed, speech and keyboard, speech and pointer...
Conformance criteria for grammar generators
Support for timeout parameters within grammars (e.g. inter-digit timeout for DTMF)
Support for long DTMF tones — e.g. accept a tone of 1000ms or longer
XLink for URI references

Appendix J: Example Grammars in ABNF Form and XML Form

J.1: simple examples (english).

The following shows a simple grammar that supports commands such as "open a file" and "please move the window". It references a separately-defined grammar for politeness which is not shown here.

ABNF Form #ABNF 1.0 UTF-8; language en; mode voice; root $basicCmd; meta "author" is "Stephanie Williams"; /** * Basic command. * @example please move the window * @example open a file */ public $basicCmd = $<http://grammar.example.com/politeness.gram#startPolite> $command $<http://grammar.example.com/politeness.gram#endPolite>; $command = $action $object; $action = /10/ open { TAG-CONTENT-1 } | /2/ close { TAG-CONTENT-2 } | /1/ delete { TAG-CONTENT-3 } | /1/ move { TAG-CONTENT-4 }; $object = [the | a] (window | file | menu); XML Form <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE grammar PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD GRAMMAR 1.0//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/speech-grammar/grammar.dtd"> <grammar xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/06/grammar" xml:lang="en" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.w3.org/2001/06/grammar http://www.w3.org/TR/speech-grammar/grammar.xsd" version="1.0" mode="voice" root="basicCmd"> <meta name="author" content="Stephanie Williams"/> <rule id="basicCmd" scope="public"> <example> please move the window </example> <example> open a file </example> <ruleref uri="http://grammar.example.com/politeness. grxml #startPolite"/> <ruleref uri="#command"/> <ruleref uri="http://grammar.example.com/politeness. grxml #endPolite"/> </rule> <rule id="command"> <ruleref uri="#action"/> <ruleref uri="#object"/> </rule> <rule id="action"> <one-of> <item weight="10"> open <tag> TAG-CONTENT-1 </tag> </item> <item weight="2"> close <tag> TAG-CONTENT-2 </tag> </item> <item weight="1"> delete <tag> TAG-CONTENT-3 </tag> </item> <item weight="1"> move <tag> TAG-CONTENT-4 </tag> </item> </one-of> </rule> <rule id="object"> <item repeat="0-1"> <one-of> <item> the </item> <item> a </item> </one-of> </item> <one-of> <item> window </item> <item> file </item> <item> menu </item> </one-of> </rule> </grammar>

J.2: Cross-Reference Examples (English)

These two grammars illustrate referencing between grammars. The same grammar is shown in both XML Form and ABNF Form.

ABNF: http://www.example.com/places.gram #ABNF 1.0 ISO-8859-1; language en; mode voice; root $city_state; public $city = Boston | Philadelphia | Fargo; public $state = Florida | North Dakota | New York; // References to local rules // Artificial example allows "Boston, Florida!" public $city_state = $city $state; ABNF: http://www.example.com/booking.gram #ABNF 1.0 ISO-8859-1; language en; mode voice; // Reference by URI syntax public $flight = I want to fly to $<http://www.example.com/places.gram#city>; // Reference by URI syntax public $exercise = I want to walk to $<http://www.example.com/places.gram#state>; // Implicit reference to root rule by URI public $wet = I want to swim to $<http://www.example.com/places.gram>; XML Form Grammar: http://www.example.com/places. grxml <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?> <!DOCTYPE grammar PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD GRAMMAR 1.0//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/speech-grammar/grammar.dtd"> <grammar xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/06/grammar" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.w3.org/2001/06/grammar http://www.w3.org/TR/speech-grammar/grammar.xsd" xml:lang="en" version="1.0" root="city_state" mode="voice"> <rule id="city" scope="public"> <one-of> <item>Boston</item> <item>Philadelphia</item> <item>Fargo</item> </one-of> </rule> <rule id="state" scope="public"> <one-of> <item>Florida</item> <item>North Dakota</item> <item>New York</item> </one-of> </rule>   <rule id="city_state" scope="public"> <ruleref uri="#city"/> <ruleref uri="#state"/> </rule> </grammar> XML Form Grammar: http://www.example.com/booking. grxml <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?> <!DOCTYPE grammar PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD GRAMMAR 1.0//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/speech-grammar/grammar.dtd"> <grammar xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/06/grammar" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.w3.org/2001/06/grammar http://www.w3.org/TR/speech-grammar/grammar.xsd" xml:lang="en" version="1.0" mode="voice">  <rule id="flight" scope="public"> I want to fly to <ruleref uri="http://www.example.com/places. grxml #city"/> </rule>  <rule id="exercise" scope="public"> I want to walk to <ruleref uri="http://www.example.com/places. grxml #state"/> </rule>  <rule id="wet" scope="public"> I want to swim to <ruleref uri="http://www.example.com/places. grxml "/> </rule> </grammar>

J.3: Korean Examples

The following two grammars are XML Form grammars with Korean yes/no content. The first represents the Korean symbols as Unicode characters and has UTF-8 encoding. The second represents the same Unicode characters using character escaping.

ABNF Form Grammar with Unicode Characters in UTF-8 Encoding #ABNF 1.0 UTF-8; language ko; mode voice; root $yes_no_ko; /* * Simple Korean yes/no grammar * @example 예 */ public $yes_no_ko = 예 | 아니오 ; XML Form Grammar with Unicode Characters in UTF-8 Encoding <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE grammar PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD GRAMMAR 1.0//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/speech-grammar/grammar.dtd"> <grammar xml:lang="ko" version="1.0" mode="voice" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/06/grammar" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.w3.org/2001/06/grammar http://www.w3.org/TR/speech-grammar/grammar.xsd" root="yes_no_ko">  <rule id="yes_no_ko" scope="public"> <example>예</example> <one-of> <item>예</item> <item>아니오</item> </one-of> </rule> </grammar> XML Form Grammar with Character Escaping of Unicode Characters <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?> <!DOCTYPE grammar PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD GRAMMAR 1.0//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/speech-grammar/grammar.dtd"> <grammar xml:lang="ko" version="1.0" mode="voice" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/06/grammar" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.w3.org/2001/06/grammar http://www.w3.org/TR/speech-grammar/grammar.xsd" root="main">  <rule id="yes_no_ko" scope="public"> <example>예</example> <one-of> <item>예</item> <item>아니오</item> </one-of> </rule> </grammar>

J.4: Chinese Examples

The following two grammars are XML Form grammars with Chinese number content. The first represents the Chinese symbols as Unicode characters with the UTF-8 encoding. The second represents the same Unicode characters using character escaping.

ABNF Form Grammar with Unicode Characters in UTF-8 Encoding #ABNF 1.0 UTF-8; language zh; mode voice; root $main; public $main = $digits1_9; /* * @example 四 */ private $digits1_9 = 一 | 二 | 三 | 四 | 五 | 六 | 七 | 八 | 九; XML Form Grammar with Unicode Characters in UTF-8 Encoding <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <!DOCTYPE grammar PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD GRAMMAR 1.0//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/speech-grammar/grammar.dtd"> <grammar version="1.0" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/06/grammar" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.w3.org/2001/06/grammar http://www.w3.org/TR/speech-grammar/grammar.xsd" xml:lang="zh" mode="voice" root="main"> <rule id="main" scope="public"> <ruleref uri="#digits1_9"/> </rule> <rule id="digits1_9" scope="private"> <example>四</example> <one-of> <item>一</item> <item>二</item> <item>三</item> <item>四</item> <item>五</item> <item>六</item> <item>七</item> <item>八</item> <item>九</item> </one-of> </rule> </grammar> XML Form Grammar with Character Escaping of Unicode Characters <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?> <!DOCTYPE grammar PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD GRAMMAR 1.0//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/speech-grammar/grammar.dtd"> <grammar version="1.0" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/06/grammar" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.w3.org/2001/06/grammar http://www.w3.org/TR/speech-grammar/grammar.xsd" xml:lang="zh" mode="voice" root="main"> <rule id="main" scope="public"> <ruleref uri="#digits1_9"/> </rule> <rule id="digits1_9" scope="private"> <example>四</example> <one-of> <item>一</item> <item>二</item> <item>三</item> <item>四</item> <item>五</item> <item>六</item> <item>七</item> <item>八</item> <item>九</item> </one-of> </rule> </grammar>

J.5: Swedish Examples

This Swedish XML Form grammar provides a comprehensive set of forms of "yes" and "no". All characters are contained within the ISO-8859-1 (Latin-1) character set.

XML Form Grammar with ISO-8859-1 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?> <!DOCTYPE grammar PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD GRAMMAR 1.0//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/speech-grammar/grammar.dtd"> <grammar version="1.0" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2001/06/grammar" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.w3.org/2001/06/grammar http://www.w3.org/TR/speech-grammar/grammar.xsd" xml:lang="sv" mode="voice" root="main"> <rule id="main" scope="public"> <example>ja det är rätt</example> <example>nej det är fel</example> <one-of> <item> <ruleref uri="#yes_rule"/> </item> <item> <ruleref uri="#no_rule"/> </item> </one-of> </rule> <rule id="yes_rule" scope="private"> <example>ja det är rätt</example> <one-of> <item>exakt</item> <item>javisst</item> <item> ja <item repeat="0-1"> <ruleref uri="#yes_emphasis"/> </item> </item> <item>jepp</item> <item>korrekt</item> <item>okej</item> <item>rätt</item> <item>si</item> <item>säkert</item> <item>visst</item> </one-of> </rule> <rule id="yes_emphasis" scope="private"> <example>det stämmer</example> <one-of> <item>det gjorde jag</item> <item> <item repeat="0-1">det</item> stämmer </item> <item>det är rätt</item> <item>det är korrekt</item> <item>det är riktigt</item> </one-of> </rule> <rule id="no_rule" scope="private"> <example>nej det är fel</example> <one-of> <item>icke</item> <item>fel</item> <item> nej <item repeat="0-1"> <ruleref uri="#no_emphasis"/> </item> </item> <item>nix</item> <item>no</item> </one-of> </rule> <rule id="no_emphasis" scope="private"> <example>det är fel</example> <one-of> <item>det gjorde jag inte</item> <item> <item repeat="0-1">det</item> stämmer inte </item> <item>det är fel</item> <item>absolut inte</item> <item>inte alls</item> </one-of> </rule> </grammar>

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Unit 3: Parts of speech: the pronoun

About this unit, introduction to pronouns.

What is a pronoun? (Opens a modal)
Personal pronouns (Opens a modal)
The question word Get 3 of 4 questions to level up!
Meet the personal pronoun Get 3 of 4 questions to level up!

Possessive and reflexive pronouns

Possessive pronouns (Opens a modal)
Reflexive pronouns (Opens a modal)
Possessive pronouns and adjectives Get 3 of 4 questions to level up!
Reflexive pronouns Get 3 of 4 questions to level up!

Relative pronouns

Relative pronouns (Opens a modal)
"That" versus "which" (Opens a modal)
"Who" versus "whom" (Opens a modal)
Relative pronouns Get 3 of 4 questions to level up!

Subject, object, person, and number

Subject and object pronouns (Opens a modal)
Grammatical person and pronouns (Opens a modal)
Pronoun number (Opens a modal)
Choosing between subject and object pronouns Get 3 of 4 questions to level up!
Pronoun person Get 3 of 4 questions to level up!
Pronoun number Get 3 of 4 questions to level up!

Indefinite pronouns, pronoun vagueness, and emphatic pronouns

Indefinite pronouns (Opens a modal)
Emphatic pronouns (Opens a modal)
BONUS VIDEO – The singular they (Opens a modal)
Indefinite pronouns Get 3 of 4 questions to level up!
Pronoun vagueness Get 3 of 4 questions to level up!
Emphatic pronouns Get 3 of 4 questions to level up!

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Grammar Goals for Speech Therapy (IEP Objectives)

Need some ideas for grammar goals for speech therapy? If you’re feeling stuck, keep on reading! In this post, I’ll provide some suggestions you could use for writing iep goals for grammar and sentence structure. Think of this blog post as an informal goal bank- one you can use to get some ideas for goal writing. Not only that, but I’ll also share some strategies for language intervention.

The important thing to remember is that grammar and syntax are very important areas to target in your therapy room (or classroom, if you do push-in therapy). This is because grammar and syntax affect reading comprehension . Children with language disorders on your caseload will likely need explicit and intentional instruction in this area. P.S. Read this blog post to see speech goals for 4th and 5th graders .

Smart Goals

As a reminder: you know your student best and will want to individualize all goals and make them measurable . This is really an “informal iep goal bank of ideas”. These goal ideas are simply intended to help get your creative juices flowing. Feel free to modify or expand on them . In fact, please do!

If you need help writing a measurable goal, you may want to read about the SMART framework. Smart goals are specific, measurable, attainable, results-oriented, and time-bound. You’ll need to decide on factors like what % progress will be measured, how many consecutive sessions you would like your student to demonstrate that percentage, and by what date you’d like your student to achieve this goal.

To read more about writing measurable IEP smart goals using the SMART framework, read this article from n2y.com .

The Areas of Grammar

Do you feel like you need a quick grammar review? This article explains more about the five areas of grammar , which include:

punctuation
tense and aspect
determiners

Reference: The 5 Fundamental Elements of English Grammar. (2021). Retrieved 13 June 2022, from https://www.englishcollege.com/what-5-elements-grammar

Grammatical Parts of Speech

Speech pathologists are language experts- but we aren’t English teachers! It’s super helpful to have a quick “go to” reference for the 8 grammatical parts of speech. You can access that article here .

noun (person, place, thing, idea)
pronoun (a word used in place of a noun)
verb (action or state of being)
adjective (a modifier that describes a noun or a pronoun, such as pretty )
adverb (a modifier that describes a verb, adjective, or another adverb)
preposition (a word placed before a noun or a pronoun in order to form a phrase)
conjunction (joins words, phrases, and clauses together)
interjection (a word that expresses emotion)

Reference: The Eight Parts of Speech- TIPS Sheets- Butte College. (2022). Retrieved 13 June 2022, from http://www.butte.edu/departments/cas/tipsheets/grammar/parts_of_speech.html#:~:text=There%20are%20eight%20parts%20of,as%20grammatically%20within%20the%20sentence.

Verb Tense Review

Do you need a reminder on the different verb tenses? If so, I like this article . There are present, past, and future verb tenses . Verb tense tells us when the action happens. Each of these 3 “main” tenses can be broken down into further components, including simple, continuous, perfect, and perfect continuous .

Speech pathologists often work on verb tense with school-age children.

Reference: Verb Tenses: How to Use The 12 English Tenses with Useful Tenses Chart (2018). Retrieved 13 June 2022, from https://7esl.com/verb-tenses/

Conjunctions Review for SLPs

I wanted to make sure you had a quick reference for conjunctions as well!

I explain that conjunctions are words that join sentences or sentence parts together to my students.

Here are the types of conjunctions:

coordinating conjunctions (for, and, nor, but, or, so, yet)
correlative conjunctions (coordinating conjunctions that work as a pair, such as both…and)
subordinating conjunctions (conjunctions that tell us about cause and effect, time, condition, or concessions)

How I Write IEP Goals for Younger Children

Younger students can- and SHOULD- work on grammar and syntax, too! Verbs are a great place to start when targeting expressive language. In fact, research tells us that focusing on “harder” verbs may be more effective . Therefore, I not only work on labeling verbs in therapy, but I also address grammatical morphemes . I additionally believe that exposure to a variety of sentence structures and sentence types (interrogative, negative sentences, interrogative sentences) during speech therapy sessions is very important.

We can use intervention strategies with young children in language therapy such as direct teaching, modeling, expansion, verbal prompts to use the grammatical target, and recasts .

If you need a quick review, morphemes are the smallest unit of language. There are grammatical morphemes (such as a plural -s ending) and derivational morphemes (prefixes and suffixes).

Early grammatical morphemes can include present progressive -ing (i.e. eating), plural -s (i.e. shoes), prepositions (in, on), possessive ‘s’ (i.e. mommy’s bag), regular past tense -ed, articles, and conjunctions. For a more comprehensive list of grammatical morphemes, see this chart from ASHA .

Our speech goals for grammar and syntax should involve encouraging young children to use more morphemes to create longer utterances. When we don’t use morphemes, the result is telegraphic speech. (Reference: Pence, Khara L. “Building Blocks of Language.” Language Development From Theory To Practice ,” Pearson Education, Inc. , Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2008, pp. 82–101.)

It’s also important to remember that to work on grammatical endings, our students must be able to SAY the required speech sounds. This will likely mean explicit instruction in articulation, which I why I am including articulation goals in this list .

Grammar Goals for Speech Therapy (Preschoolers):

label actions or pictured actions during play-based activities
use grammatical markers (i.e. verb + ing) to describe actions or pictured actions
use present progressive verbs (verb +ing) to describe actions
create simple sentences using 2-3 word utterances (i.e. agent + action) to show a variety of communicative intents
express negation (no, can’t, won’t, don’t) in utterances or simple sentences of 2-3 words in length
ask questions (wh questions, yes- no questions) during play
use early prepositions (in, on) in simple sentences
use grammatical markers (i.e. possessive ‘s: the cat’s toy) in sentences
create complex sentences using conjunctions (i.e. and)
create spoken sentences containing embedded prepositional phrases
label common objects using grammatical endings (i.e. plural ‘s ending: toys)
correctly produce final consonant clusters to indicate a past tense grammatical ending (i.e. /t/, /d/, “id”)
correctly produce final consonants and/ or final consonant clusters to mark plurals
correctly produce final consonant clusters to mark possessive ‘s’ grammatical endings

How I Write IEP Goals for School Age Children

What are some good grammar goals for speech therapy with school age children? By the way, I discussed my speech goals for 4th and 5th graders earlier. This blog post, however, specifically is focusing on grammar goals and syntax goals. I’ve already discussed that I feel like it is super important to include morphology in expressive language intervention. That’s why you’ll specifically see some goals devoted to grammatical morphemes and derivational morphemes.

I think there is a huge importance, as well, in teaching our students how to pronounce grammatical endings (especially for past tense and plurals).

Our students also need to know how these grammatical endings will look in print.

For structured language activities that target past tense verbs and morphology, you can check out this grammar program . If you need a resource that addresses a variety of grammar and complex syntax targets for older children, be sure to look into the Entire Year of Grammar and Sentence Structure program .

Grammar Goals for Speech Therapy: School Age Children

correctly pronounce past tense -ed verbs (sounds like /t/, sounds like /d/, sounds like “id”)
sort base verbs by the correct past tense suffix ending (d or ed)
identify the base and suffix within words (i.e. dance/d)
create the past tense form of a verb by adding a suffix (d or ed)
use regular past tense verbs at the sentence level to describe actions or pictured actions
correctly pronounce plural -s nouns (sounds like /s/, sounds like /z/, sounds like “is”)
retell a short story using transitional words
explain cause and effect about a picture or story event using causal conjunctions
use irregular past tense verbs in sentences to describe actions or pictured actions
sort words into correct piles based on part of speech (i.e. noun vs verb)
identify parts of speech or sentence parts within sentences
complete sentence fill-in tasks using targeted parts of speech or sentence parts
arrange scrambled words into meaningful sentences
complete spoken/ written sentences using relative clauses
create a sentence about a picture using a targeted coordinating conjunction
finish spoken sentence starters using targeted subordinating conjunctions
use a target word (i.e. adjective) to describe a picture
add modifiers (i.e. adjectives, adverbs) to spoken/ written sentences
join sentences or sentence parts together using a target conjunction (coordinating, subordinating) or conjunction pair (correlative)
create a complex sentence about a picture when provided with a target conjunction
choose the correct modifier (ie. adjective, adverb) to correctly complete a sentence
when provided with a dependent clause (i.e. Although I studied…), generate an independent clause to finish the sentence
create a compound sentence about a picture using a targeted coordinating conjunction

How I Teach Past Tense Verbs in Speech Therapy

In this video , I explain exactly how I teach regular past tense verbs in speech therapy. As I’ve mentioned throughout this post, I like to make sure I’m also addressing morphology. Past tense verbs can be very tricky for our students to figure out. That’s why I like to take a structured approach and really break things down. I make sure to explain what the past tense suffix endings look like and what they mean. We practice sorting verb cards by suffix ending. After that, we practice pronouncing the verbs. I explain the rules for pronouncing past tense verbs to my students. Check out the Past Tense Verbs Program to see how it will be beneficial for your speech therapy students.

when the base word ends with a voiceless sound, -ed or -d sounds like /t/ (example: laughed)
when the base word ends with a voiced sound, -ed or -d sounds like /d/ (example: waved)
when a base word ends with a /t/ or a /d/, -ed or -d sounds like “id” (example: painted)

Addressing Grammar Goals for Speech Therapy Using a Communication Device

Many students in special education may require some sort of aided communication. Whether they are using a communication board or a communication device, be sure to provide that student with access to increasing morphology, grammar, and syntax . This means that it’s a good idea to ensure that a communication system contains grammatical endings, for example. Often, communication boards contain core vocabulary. Core vocabulary is very important, of course. However, we want to increase language skills and help our students share information. To encourage the student to increase utterance length and overall communication skills, they need access to more than just single words. They also need access to grammatical morphemes, derivational morphemes, and grammatical parts of speech, to name just a few things.

My 10 Favorite Resources for Grammar in Speech Therapy

Here is a list of my favorite resources to work on grammar and sentence structure skills in speech and language or special education. These resources are wonderful for the school setting. They can be used in individual therapy sessions or small group.

Entire Year of Grammar and Sentence Structure (Grades 2-3)
Entire Year of Grammar and Sentence Structure (Grades 4-5)
Entire Year of Grammar and Sentence Structure (BUNDLE)
Regular Past Tense Verbs Program
Regular and Irregular Nouns Program
Relative Clauses (Worksheets)
Causal Conjunctions (Complex Sentences)
Coordinating Conjunctions
Subordinating Conjunctions
Creating Sentences with Conjunctions (Upper Elementary or Middle School)

The Entire Year of Grammar and Sentence Structure

I realize how overwhelming teaching grammar and syntax can be for any speech language pathologist! While I was working with my 4th and 5th graders, I realized I needed a better system for teaching grammar and sentence structure. There’s so much to cover- so, where to start? I realized my language kids simply needed to start with the basics and work their way up. We needed solid visual cues. We needed a system that would start with the basics before moving to compound sentences and complex sentences.

If you’re looking for an organized, effective approach to use in speech, then you’re in the right place! The Entire Year of Grammar and Sentence Structure provides you with a structured activity and lesson to use each week with your students. Try the first lesson here .

You don’t need to “re-learn” everything grammar. SLPs are too busy for that! Spend less time stressing and more time enjoying therapy. This handy program provides you with everything you need to jump in and get started.

The Basic Grammar Program

The Basic Grammar Program addresses areas of concern such as morphology and grammar. This program specifically focuses on teaching regular past tense verbs (-d and -ed) and regular and irregular plurals. Your students will start with the basics. They will learn what the past tense suffixes (-ed, d) and plural suffixes (-s, -es) mean. They will practice sorting words by suffix for increased understanding. Your student will work on pronouncing the suffixes correctly once they have been added to a base word. You can practice creating new words by adding a suffix to a base word to work on morphology. Finally, this program is also unique because it addresses spelling. This will help your student make the “speech to print” connection.

Grammar Worksheets to work on Grammar Goals in Speech Therapy

Do you need grammar worksheets to address specific areas of concern?

Clauses are an important area to address with our students. For students working on relative clauses, these worksheets come with a built-in “scaffolding of skills” support. In addition, they will make your upper elementary students smile as they create “silly” (and sometimes “gross”) sentences.

If you need a structured activity to work on cause and effect conjunctions, your students will love this conjunctions resource . It pairs perfectly with a magnetic wand and chips.

Finally, your older students will love this creating sentences using conjunctions activity. The pictures are not “childish” and are designed to be used with older students. Excellent examples are provided on every page.

Look At These 8+ Analogy Sentence Examples

Are you a speech-language pathologist or teacher teaching analogies to your students? Understanding analogies is an important skill for language development. Analogies are used within text and everyday speech. We use analogies to make comparisons, make writing more interesting, and even to persuade others. This blog post defines an analogy. In addition, it provides suggestions…

Quick List of 31 Homophones Examples (with Sentences)

Are you a speech-language pathologist, teacher, or intervention specialist teaching homophones to your students? Do you need a bit of a reminder of the difference between homonyms, homophones, and homographs? If so, keep reading for a clear explanation between these terms. This blog post contains a homophones list, homophones examples with sentences, and it also…

Need 3 Proven Sequencing Activities? (Speech Therapy Ideas)

Are you a speech-language pathologist targeting the sequence of events in your therapy sessions? This blog post suggests interactive sequencing activities speech therapy printables that are perfect for speech-language pathologists to use while targeting language goals. It also explains the importance of targeting this foundational skill for comprehension and language expression. This post contains affiliate…

Here Are 2 Simple Main Idea Examples Paragraph (+ Activities)

Are you a speech-language pathologist or teacher teaching the main idea of a passage to your students? Understanding the main idea of a paragraph is an important skill for language development. This blog post explains the components of a main idea passage and provides a main idea examples paragraph. It is important to teach the…

The Best WH Questions Speech Therapy Activities and Ideas

Speech-language pathologists often teach wh- questions in speech therapy sessions. There are different types of wh questions. WH questions contain the wh question words: Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How. A qualified speech-language pathologist may target wh questions in therapy to support language development. The ability to answer wh questions is very important for…

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The Invention of a Desert Tongue for ‘Dune’

Language constructors for the movies started with words Frank Herbert made up for his 1965 novel but went much further, creating an extensive vocabulary and specific grammar rules.

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In a crowd of people wearing earth-toned clothing, Zendaya stands out with her glowing blue eyes.

By Marc Tracy

In Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi “Dune” movies, Indigenous people known as Fremen use a device to tunnel rapidly through their desert planet’s surface.

The instrument is called a “compaction tool” in Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel, “Dune,” on which the films are based. But the professional language constructors David J. Peterson and Jessie Peterson wanted a more sophisticated word for it as the husband and wife built out the Fremen language, Chakobsa, for “Dune: Part Two,” which premiered earlier this month.

They started with a verb they had made up meaning “to press” — “kira” — and, applying rules David Peterson had devised for the language before the first movie, fashioned another verb that means “to compress” or “to free space by compression” — “kiraza.” From there, they used his established suffixes to come up with a noun. Thus was born the Chakobsa word for a sand compressor, “kirzib,” which can be heard in background dialogue in “Dune: Part Two.”

For language constructors — conlangers, as they are known — such small touches enhance the verisimilitude of even gigantic edifices like the “Dune” series. If the demand for conlangers’ work is any indication, filmmakers and showrunners agree.

“There’s a very big limit to what you can do with anything approaching gibberish,” said Jessie Peterson, who holds a doctorate in linguistics. “If you just shouted one word in gibberish, that would probably be fine. If you shouted a phrase of two words, OK. But if you tried to do a whole sentence structure in gibberish, it would fall apart very quickly. If somebody needed to respond or repeat information, it won’t cohere.”

Other languages are a significant part of the “Dune” films as well. For “Part One,” David Peterson devised a chant for the emperor’s fearsome military forces, the Sardaukar, and the sign language of discreet hand gestures employed by the central Atreides family.

In “Part Two,” Chakobsa is spoken — and often subtitled — extensively, not just by Fremen played by Javier Bardem and Zendaya, but also by outsiders like Rebecca Ferguson’s Lady Jessica and Timothée Chalamet’s Paul Atreides, the movies’ main character, who first wishes to travel to Arrakis to learn Chakobsa and by the end of the second movie delivers an entire monologue in the language.

Constructed languages (as opposed to so-called natural ones like English, Dutch or Japanese) date back roughly 1,000 years. J.R.R. Tolkien conceived several tongues for the Middle-earth of his celebrated books, including the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. (He called language construction his “secret vice.”) “The Klingon Dictionary,” based on the speech of the pugilistic people in “Star Trek,” was published in 1985.

More recently, conlangers expanded on the languages in George R.R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” books for the series “Game of Thrones” and “House of the Dragon.” (David Peterson is responsible for the Dothraki that the actor Jason Momoa delivered as Khal Drogo.) They also crafted vocabulary and grammar for the Na’vi who live on Pandora in James Cameron’s “Avatar” (2009) and “Avatar: The Way of Water” (2022).

“Before the movie even came out, there was already information about the language released to the fans — a survival guide to Pandora, with full glossary,” said Christine Schreyer, a professor of anthropology at the University of British Columbia as well as the constructor of Kryptonian for the 2013 Superman movie “Man of Steel.”

In the Petersons’ hands, Chakobsa has a specific grammatical structure. Like Latin, it regularly employs declensions, so even proper nouns sound slightly different depending on whether they are the subject or object of a sentence. And there are roughly 700 basic vocabulary words — a figure that does not include the myriad other words possible through adjustments that make kirza into kirzib or lija (to eat) into lijjin (a snack).

As with “Game of Thrones,” they had something to work with: dozens of words from the original “Dune” novel. Herbert’s Fremen — a nomadic desert people — in many ways resemble the Bedouin (though in others they recall the Native Americans of Herbert’s own Pacific Northwest), and their language had some obvious Arabic touches. It sounds roughly like Arabic without certain sounds, such as pharyngeals like the “h” sound you make when fogging a piece of glass, according to David Peterson.

Karin Ryding, a professor emerita at Georgetown University who has studied Herbert’s use of Arabic, said that in graduate school in the late 1960s, she and her colleagues read “Dune” together: “It was a secret among us that we all enjoyed this particular science-fiction novel and its references to Arabic.”

Certain titles Paul uses among the Fremen are particularly resonant: “Muad’Dib,” a desert mouse known as “the one who points the way,” is similar to the Arabic word for a respected kind of teacher, while “Lisan al-Gaib,” or “the voice from the outer world,” recalls the Arabic for “hidden tongue,” Ryding said. Paul is also called the “Mahdi,” an Arabic term for a messiahlike figure in Islam. (“Kwisatz Haderach,” the messianic appellation used by a different group in the “Dune” universe, is derived from Hebrew.)

Herbert intended these linguistic resonances to communicate the connections between our world and the world of his novels — which is our world some 20,000 years in the future. “If you want to give the reader the solid impression that he is not here and now, but that something of here and now has been carried to that faraway place and time,” Herbert said in a 1981 biography, in a passage Ryding quoted in an academic paper, “what better way to say to our culture that this is so than to give him the language of that place.”

Critics have questioned the decision by the filmmakers (including the Petersons) not to retain some of the linguistic vestiges of modern-day cultures that the novel uses. In the novel, for instance, the Fremen rebellion against their foreign overlords is referred to as a “jihad”; in the movie, it is called a “holy war.” Warner Bros., which produced the latest “Dune” films, declined to comment.

The choice not to import more modern-day resonances “dilutes Herbert’s anti-imperialist vision,” Haris A. Durrani wrote in The Washington Post upon the release of “Dune: Part One.” Manvir Singh argued last month in The New Yorker, “The world we see in ‘Dune’ was never meant to be fully sealed off from the one we know.”

David Peterson said that in constructing Chakobsa for “Dune: Part One,” he strove to accommodate the book’s Fremen vocabulary while building a fuller, coherent language.

Beyond that pre-existing glossary, which amounted to a collection of words, Peterson’s loyalty, he said, was to how language actually functions and develops. And the notion that a language 20,000 years in the future would retain substantial touches of a contemporary tongue, he argued, defies what we know about linguistics.

“There is very little understanding,” Peterson said, referring to the general public, “that languages change over time, that every aspect of language changes: how it is pronounced, what the words mean, the grammar.”

He added, “The entire recorded history of language is 6,000 years.”

Marc Tracy is a Times reporter covering arts and culture. He is based in New York. More about Marc Tracy

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Parts of Speech: Explanation and Examples
The 9 parts of speech are adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions, determiners, interjections, nouns, prepositions, pronouns, and verbs. (These are also known as "word classes.") A Formal Definition. A "part of speech" is a category to which a word is assigned in accordance with its syntactic functions. In English, the main parts of speech are noun ...
Academic Guides: Grammar: Main Parts of Speech
This comes before a noun or a noun phrase and links it to other parts of the sentence. These are usually single words (e.g., on, at, by ,…) but can be up to four words (e.g., as far as, in addition to, as a result of, …). I chose to interview teachers in the district closest to me. The recorder was placed next to the interviewee.
The 9 Parts of Speech: Definitions and Examples
A part of speech is a term used in traditional grammar for one of the nine main categories into which words are classified according to their functions in sentences, such as nouns or verbs. Also known as word classes, these are the building blocks of grammar. Parts of Speech. Word types can be divided into nine parts of speech:
The 8 Parts of Speech
Eliminate grammar errors and improve your writing with our free AI-powered grammar checker. Try for free. The 8 Parts of Speech | Chart, Definition & Examples. A part of speech (also called a word class) is a category that describes the role a word plays in a sentence. Understanding the different parts of speech can help you analyze how words ...
Parts of Speech
Grammar Tips & Articles » Parts of Speech We have eight parts of speech in the English language: (1) nouns, (2) verbs, (3) adjectives, (4) adverbs, (5) pronouns, (6) conjunctions, (7) prepositions, and (8) interjections. Every word you use in speech or writing falls into just one of these eight categories.
English Parts of Speech
The eight parts of speech are nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, conjunctions, prepositions, and interjections. You just learned about all of the parts of speech. Give yourself a high five! If you'd like to teach or learn grammar the easy way—with sentence diagrams—check out our Get Smart Grammar Program.
Parts of Speech
EnglishClub: Learn English: Grammar: Parts of Speech Parts of Speech. What is a Part of Speech? We can categorize English words into 9 basic types called "parts of speech" or "word classes". It's quite important to recognize parts of speech. This helps you to analyze sentences and understand them. It also helps you to construct good sentences.
Parts of Speech in English
1. but. 2. despite. 3. yet. 4. nevertheless. 5. although. Read the Full Script. In this lesson, you can learn about parts of speech in English.Understanding parts of speech can help you better understand sentence structure and grammar.
Parts of speech: the verb
Other. Grammar 10 units · 100 skills. Unit 1 Parts of speech: the noun. Unit 2 Parts of speech: the verb. Unit 3 Parts of speech: the pronoun. Unit 4 Parts of speech: the modifier. Unit 5 Parts of speech: the preposition and the conjunction. Unit 6 Punctuation: the comma and the apostrophe.
Parts of Speech: Complete Guide (With Examples and More)
The parts of speech refer to categories to which a word belongs. In English, there are eight of them : verbs , nouns, pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections. Many English words fall into more than one part of speech category. Take the word light as an example.
Reported speech
Reported speech - English Grammar Today - a reference to written and spoken English grammar and usage - Cambridge Dictionary
Parts of Speech: A Super Simple Grammar Guide with Examples
The Verb (v.) A verb is one of the most important parts of speech and is a word that is used to describe an action. There are three main types of verbs which are detailed below. Examples: Walk, is, seem, realize, run, see, swim, stand, go, have, get, promise, invite, listen, sing, sit, laugh, walk….
Grammar
Other. Grammar 10 units · 100 skills. Unit 1 Parts of speech: the noun. Unit 2 Parts of speech: the verb. Unit 3 Parts of speech: the pronoun. Unit 4 Parts of speech: the modifier. Unit 5 Parts of speech: the preposition and the conjunction. Unit 6 Punctuation: the comma and the apostrophe.
The Parts of Speech
For instance, the verb "eats" is a present-tense verb, and its past form is "ate.". 4. Adjective. Another part of speech is the adjective, which modifies or describes a noun or a pronoun. It typically answers the questions "what kind," "which one," or "how much.". For example: Blue.
Parts of Speech
8 Parts of Speech Definitions and Examples: 1. Nouns are words that are used to name people, places, animals, ideas and things. Nouns can be classified into two main categories: Common nouns and Proper nouns. Common nouns are generic like ball, car, stick, etc., and proper nouns are more specific like Charles, The White House, The Sun, etc.
Reported Speech
Watch my reported speech video: Here's how it works: We use a 'reporting verb' like 'say' or 'tell'. ( Click here for more about using 'say' and 'tell' .) If this verb is in the present tense, it's easy. We just put 'she says' and then the sentence: Direct speech: I like ice cream. Reported speech: She says (that) she likes ice cream.
Speech Recognition Grammar Specification Version 1.0
The character encoding declaration indicates the scheme used for encoding character data in the document. For example, for US applications it would be common to use US-ASCII, UTF-8 (8-bit Unicode) or ISO-8859-1. For Japanese grammars, character encodings such as EUC-JP and UTF-16 (16-bit Unicode) could be used.
Parts of speech: the pronoun
Unit 3 Parts of speech: the pronoun. Unit 4 Parts of speech: the modifier. Unit 5 Parts of speech: the preposition and the conjunction. Unit 6 Punctuation: the comma and the apostrophe. Unit 7 Punctuation: the colon, semicolon, and more. Unit 8 Syntax: sentences and clauses. Unit 9 Syntax: conventions of standard English. Unit 10 Usage and style.
Grammar
A common contemporary definition of grammar is the underlying structure of a language that any native speaker of that language knows intuitively. The systematic description of the features of a language is also a grammar. These features are the phonology (sound), morphology (system of word formation), syntax (patterns of word arrangement), and ...
Grammar Goals for Speech Therapy (IEP Objectives)
The Basic Grammar Program. The Basic Grammar Program addresses areas of concern such as morphology and grammar. This program specifically focuses on teaching regular past tense verbs (-d and -ed) and regular and irregular plurals. Your students will start with the basics.
Free Grammar Checker
Use QuillBot's free online grammar checker tool to perfect your writing by reviewing your text for grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors. Whenever you need to review your writing or grammar check sentences, QuillBot is here to help make the editing process painless. QuillBot's free online sentence corrector helps you avoid mistakes and ...
The Invention of a Desert Tongue for 'Dune'
Language constructors for the movies started with words Frank Herbert made up for his 1965 novel but went much further, creating an extensive vocabulary and specific grammar rules.
Keir Starmer's 'concern' for the Batley Grammar teacher has come three
"The Batley grammar School teacher has done nothing wrong. We will use whatever resources are necessary to keep him and his family safe and we will ensure he can return to a normal life. If 24/7 ...

Parts of Speech

The Part of Speech Is Determined by the Word's Function

Video for Each Part of Speech

The Most Important Writing Issues

The Top Issue Related to Conjunctions

The Top Issue Related to Determiners

The Top Issue Related to Interjections

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Preposition

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Common Endings

Common Noun Endings

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Position of Adverbs

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Main Parts of Speech Video Playlist

Writing Tools: Dictionary and Thesaurus Refresher Video

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Centers and Offices

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The 9 Parts of Speech: Definitions and Examples

Parts of Speech

Open and Closed Word Classes

The 9 Parts of Speech

Preposition

Conjunction

Articles and Determiners

Interjection

How to Determine the Part of Speech

Dissecting Basic Sentences

Constructing More Complex Sentences

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The 8 Parts of Speech | Chart, Definition & Examples

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Other parts of speech

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The 8 Parts of Speech

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