Question

Name the part of speech of the underlined word in the following sentence-
Bill reads the story clearly.
a) Pronoun
b) Adverb
c) Adjective
d) Noun

Answer 1

Hint: Part of speech is a category to which a word is assigned in accordance with its syntactic functions. Each and every word of any sentence comes under one or another part of speech.

Complete answer:
In English, the main parts of speech are noun, pronoun, adjective, determiner, verb, adverb, preposition, conjunction, and interjection. In traditional grammar, a part of speech is a category of words that have similar grammatical properties. In the given question, we have to identify the part of speech of the underlined word. The underlined word is – clearly.
Now, let us examine all the given options to find out the correct answer -
Option ‘a’ is Pronoun. It is a noun which means a word that can function as a noun phrase used by itself and that refers either to the participants in the discourse (I, you) or to someone or something mentioned elsewhere in the discourse.
Option ‘b’ is Adverb. It is something that describes a noun or a verb at the same time.
Option ‘c’ is Adjective. It is a word naming an attribute of a noun such as sweet, red, or technical. These words generally end with “-ly”.
Option ‘d’ is a Noun. It is the name of a person, place, or thing. The underlined word in the given sentence is not a noun.
As we have analyzed all the given options, we can easily figure out the correct answer. Here, the part of speech of the underlined what is – adjective. Hence, option ‘c’ is the correct option.

Note:
There are three degrees of adjective – positive, comparative, and superlative. Here, don’t get confused between ‘adverb' and an ‘adjective’. Both of them perform different functions. 'Clearly' can only be an adjective and not an adverb.