Parts of Speech: Complete Notes and MCQs for OPSC ASO and OAS

These parts of speech notes for OPSC ASO begin with the one rule that decides every question: a word’s part of speech is fixed by its function in the sentence, not by the word itself. The chapter covers nouns and their five kinds, pronouns, verbs including non-finite forms, adjectives and adverbs with degrees of comparison, prepositions, conjunctions, interjections and articles, then closes with PYQ-based MCQs. OPSC and OSSC ask this topic both as direct identification and as the hidden reason behind error-spotting questions.

The eight parts of speech: a function-based classification

Traditional grammar divides every word into eight classes. Modern grammar treats articles and determiners as a sub-class of adjectives, but OPSC and OSSC papers still use the eight-part scheme and frequently test articles separately. Learn the function column, because the question is always “what is this word doing here?”

Nouns: the five kinds OPSC tests

A noun names a person, place, thing, idea or event. OPSC’s favourite format is to bracket one word and ask its part of speech, and nouns are the most common answer because names of persons and things are easy to disguise.

Countable and uncountable nouns

Countable nouns take numbers and have plurals: one book, three books. Uncountable or mass nouns are treated as a whole and normally take no plural and no ‘a/an’: information, furniture, luggage, advice, knowledge, water, air, happiness. Errors such as ‘furnitures’, ‘informations’ and ‘an advice’ are common in Odia-medium writing because Odia freely pluralises many of these words.

Number has its own traps. Some nouns look plural but take a singular verb: news, mathematics, economics, politics, measles. Some look singular but are always plural: scissors, trousers, spectacles, cattle, police. Some keep the same form: sheep, deer, fish, series, species. Irregular plurals include man–men, child–children, foot–feet, tooth–teeth, mouse–mice, ox–oxen, criterion–criteria, phenomenon–phenomena.

Pronouns: nine types and the traps inside them

A pronoun substitutes for a noun to avoid repetition. OPSC tests the type more often than the definition, so memorise the nine labels with one example each.

Verbs: action, linking, auxiliary and non-finite forms

A verb asserts action, occurrence or state, and it carries tense, person, number, mood and voice.

Many verbs change class with use: ‘He runs a shop’ is transitive, ‘He runs fast’ is intransitive, and ‘He is running’ uses ‘run’ as the main verb of a progressive construction. Linking verbs are the ones examiners use to trap adjective/adverb choice, because a linking verb takes an adjective complement, not an adverb.

Finite and non-finite verbs

A finite verb changes with the subject and shows tense: ‘She walks’, ‘They walk’, ‘He walked’. A non-finite verb does not change with the subject and shows no tense of its own. It appears in three forms: the infinitive (‘to walk’), the gerund (‘walking’ as a noun) and the participle (‘walked’ or ‘walking’ as an adjective or part of a verb phrase).

Adjectives and degrees of comparison

An adjective modifies a noun or pronoun and answers what kind, how many, which one or whose. The main types are descriptive (beautiful, cold), demonstrative (this, that, these, those), quantitative (some, much, few, several), numeral (one, first, second), possessive (my, your, his, her, its, our, their), interrogative (which, what, whose), proper (Indian, Odishan, Shakespearean) and distributive (each, every, either, neither).

The three degrees are positive, comparative (two items) and superlative (three or more). Short adjectives take ‘-er/-est’; longer ones take ‘more/most’. Learn the irregulars: good–better–best, bad–worse–worst, little–less–least, many/much–more–most, far–farther–farthest (distance) or further–furthest (additional).

Adverbs: manner, degree and the adjective trap

An adverb modifies a verb, an adjective or another adverb. The main types are manner (slowly, well, badly), time (now, soon, yesterday), place (here, there, everywhere), frequency (always, often, rarely, never), degree (very, quite, almost, enough, too), interrogative (when, where, why, how) and conjunctive (however, therefore, moreover, nevertheless).

Some words are identical in adjective and adverb form: fast, hard, late, early, high, low, near, far, little, much. Others change meaning with ‘-ly’: ‘hard’ means with effort while ‘hardly’ means scarcely; ‘late’ means after time while ‘lately’ means recently; ‘near’ means close while ‘nearly’ means almost.

Prepositions, conjunctions and interjections

Prepositions show relationships of place (in, on, under, between, among), time (at, on, in, since, for, during, until, by), direction (to, from, into, onto, across, through), manner (with, without, like, by) and possession (of, belonging to). Compound prepositions include ‘in front of’, ‘on behalf of’, ‘in spite of’ and ‘because of’.

Conjunctions are coordinating (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so — remember FANBOYS), subordinating (because, since, although, though, while, if, unless, when, after, before, until) or correlative (either…or, neither…nor, both…and, not only…but also, whether…or). Correlative pairs demand parallel structure: ‘She is not only intelligent but also hardworking’, not ‘not only intelligent but hardworking also’. Interjections express sudden emotion and stand outside the grammar of the sentence: wow, oops, alas, hurrah, oh, ah.

Articles: the Odia-speaker trap

‘A’ and ‘an’ are indefinite articles used with singular countable nouns; ‘the’ is the definite article used for something specific, already mentioned, unique (the sun, the moon), superlative (the best), ordinal (the first), rivers, seas, mountain ranges, newspapers and holy books. Omission matters too: no article before uncountable nouns and general plurals — ‘Honesty is the best policy’, ‘Bamboo grows in Odisha’.

Same word, different parts of speech: the high-yield list

OPSC and OSSC repeatedly use the same familiar word in different roles. Build a table like this and revise it before the exam.

Odisha angle: how OPSC and OSSC frame these questions

OPSC ASO (English) 2022 asked the direct bracket format: “Choose the correct part of speech for the word in bracket: Eat (to live), but do not live to eat” — answer, infinitive — and “A great talker is a great (liar)” — answer, noun. OPSC ASO 2022 OSSC CGL Prelims 2024 (held 20 October 2024) used the sentence “The cat quickly jumped over the fence” and asked the part of speech of ‘quickly’ — adverb. OSSC CGL 2024 The pattern is one-line, four options, no explanation, so speed comes from recognising function instantly.

Odia-medium candidates face three predictable interference errors. First, Odia marks definiteness with suffixes such as -ଟି and -ଟା rather than with articles, so articles are often dropped (‘I bought book’) or overused (‘The honesty is the best policy’). Second, Odia uses postpositions and a subject-object-verb order, which produces preposition errors in English (‘discuss about’, ‘married with’). Third, Odia does not mark a separate adverb form for many words — ଭଲ can mean ‘good’ or ‘well’ — so adjective/adverb confusion after linking verbs is common. Deliberate practice on the table above removes most of these.

Practice questions