Parts of Speech

For most readers, “parts of speech” is a schoolroom memory: noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, conjunction, interjection. For a judge, they are the load-bearing beams of every statute. The literal rule commands that a court give words their ordinary grammatical meaning, and grammar is built out of parts of speech — so the classification of a word as noun or verb, the choice between the auxiliaries shall and may, the difference between the conjunctions and and or, even the reach of an indefinite pronoun like anything, routinely settle disputes worth crores or liberty. This article works through the eight parts of speech as an English-for-judiciary candidate must know them, and then shows, case by case, how each has been the hinge of a reported decision of the Supreme Court of India. Master the grammar, and the interpretation papers — and the language sections of every state judiciary prelims — become far easier.

Why a Judge Cares About Parts of Speech

The first and golden rule of construction is that the words of a statute are to be read in their ordinary, natural and grammatical sense. Grammar is therefore not a decoration on legal language; it is its skeleton. A word’s part of speech fixes what work it can do in a sentence — a noun names, a verb asserts, a conjunction joins, a preposition relates — and the court’s task of finding the legislature’s intention begins by identifying that function. As Chinnappa Reddy J. put it in Reserve Bank of India v. Peerless General Finance and Investment Co. Ltd. (1987) 1 SCC 424, “no part of a statute and no word of a statute can be construed in isolation”; “interpretation must depend on the text and the context,” and a statute “must be read, first as a whole and then section by section, clause by clause, phrase by phrase and word by word.” That sequence — whole, section, clause, phrase, word — is grammatical analysis dressed in judicial robes.

The eight traditional parts of speech are the noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, conjunction and interjection (some grammars add the article and the determiner as separate classes). Each recurs in statutory drafting, and each has generated litigation. The sections that follow take them in turn, pairing the grammar with the leading Indian authority. For the wider framework of how courts read words, this article should be read alongside the subject hub, and with the sister topics on articles, prepositions and subject–verb agreement.

The Noun: Naming the Thing the Statute Governs

A noun is a naming word — of a person, place, thing, quality or idea. Grammar distinguishes common nouns (judge, court, document), proper nouns (Parliament, Supreme Court), collective nouns (jury, bench, council), abstract nouns (negligence, intention, malice) and material nouns (gold, water). The distinction matters in law because the defined terms of a statute — the words a definition clause fixes — are almost always nouns, and the entire dispute frequently reduces to whether a given object falls within the noun the legislature chose.

Two grammatical features of nouns repay attention. The first is number: the General Clauses Act, 1897 enacts by Section 13 that, unless the context otherwise requires, words in the singular include the plural and words in the plural include the singular. So a power conferred over “a document” ordinarily extends to documents. The second is the collective noun, whose grammatical singularity can mask a plural reality — a point that surfaces in subject–verb agreement, where “the Committee has decided” treats the body as one, while “the Committee were divided” treats its members severally. A careful drafter, and a careful candidate, watches whether a collective noun is being used as a unit or as an aggregate of individuals.

Abstract Nouns and the Definition Clause

Abstract nouns — “manufacture,” “income,” “prize chit,” “industry” — are where statutory interpretation is fought hardest, because their boundaries are inherently elastic. The classic illustration is the noun “manufacture” in Siddeshwari Cotton Mills (P) Ltd. v. Union of India AIR 1989 SC 1019. Section 2(f) of the Central Excises and Salt Act, 1944 defined “manufacture” in relation to cotton fabrics to include a list of processes ending in “any other process.” The question was whether “plain calendering” — a finish that brought about no lasting change in the fabric — answered that noun. Applying noscitur a sociis and ejusdem generis, the Court held that the enumerated processes shared a genus (each effected a lasting change), so the residuary noun-phrase “any other process” was confined to that genus and did not catch a merely temporary finish.

The lesson is that the meaning of a noun in a statute is rarely its dictionary meaning alone; it is the meaning the noun takes from its statutory company. That is why the choice between an exhaustive definition (“means”) and an inclusive one (“includes”) is decisive. In P. Kasilingam v. P.S.G. College of Technology AIR 1995 SC 1395 the Court explained that where a definition uses “means,” it is hard-and-fast and exhaustive, whereas “includes” is enlarging and leaves the noun’s ordinary meaning intact while extending it. The combined formula “means and includes” generally signals an exhaustive definition. Identifying which verb of definition governs the noun is therefore the first step in construing any defined term.

The Pronoun: Standing in for the Noun

A pronoun is a word used in place of a noun to avoid repetition — he, she, it, they, who, which, that, anyone, anything, whoever. Grammar sorts them into personal (he, they), relative (who, which, that), demonstrative (this, that), interrogative (who? what?), indefinite (anyone, everything, none) and reflexive (himself, themselves) pronouns. In statutes the recurring difficulty is the antecedent: every pronoun must point unambiguously to the noun it replaces, and litigation erupts when the antecedent is unclear — does “it” refer to the company or the contract, does “such person” reach back to the offender or the witness?

The indefinite pronoun is the most powerful word in the drafter’s pronoun kit, because its very office is to be all-embracing. The leading authority is Tej Kiran Jain v. N. Sanjiva Reddy (1970) 2 SCC 272 (also AIR 1970 SC 1573). Article 105(2) of the Constitution protects a Member of Parliament from liability “in respect of anything said or any vote given” in Parliament. Sued for allegedly defamatory speeches on the floor of the Lok Sabha, the members pleaded the privilege. A Constitution Bench gave the indefinite pronoun “anything” its full literal width, holding that the word is “of the widest import and is equivalent to ‘everything,’” so that the only relevant question was whether the words were spoken in the course of parliamentary business; once they were, no action could lie. The case is the model demonstration that an indefinite pronoun, left unqualified, is construed at its broadest — a point examiners love because it links grammar directly to the literal rule.

The Verb: The Engine of the Sentence

A verb asserts — it tells what the subject does, is, or suffers. Verbs are transitive (taking an object: “the court quashed the order”) or intransitive (“the appeal abates”); finite (limited by subject and tense) or non-finite (the infinitive “to convict,” the participle “convicting,” the gerund “convicting is hard”). Two verb features dominate legal drafting. The first is voice — the choice between the active and passive; statutes lean heavily on the passive (“the accused shall be produced”) to fix duties without always naming the actor. The second is tense, which interacts with the principle that a statute is “always speaking.” For the full treatment of tense, see tenses and their usage; the short point is that the present tense in a statute is generally read as continuously operative, applying to facts as they arise after enactment rather than freezing meaning at the date of passing.

The auxiliaries (helping verbs) are the most litigated verbs in the statute book. “Shall,” “may,” “must,” “will” and “ought” are modal auxiliaries, and the difference between command and permission rides on them. They are important enough to deserve their own treatment, below.

Modal Verbs: “Shall”, “May” and the Mandatory–Directory Question

No grammatical question recurs more often in Indian law than whether the modal verb “shall” makes a provision mandatory (non-compliance fatal) or merely directory (substantial compliance enough), and whether “may” is purely permissive or sometimes obligatory. The settled starting point is that “shall” is prima facie mandatory and “may” prima facie directory — but the presumption is rebuttable by the object and context of the statute. In State of U.P. v. Babu Ram Upadhya AIR 1961 SC 751, the Court held that when a statute uses “shall,” prima facie it is mandatory, but the court may ascertain the real legislative intention by examining the whole scope, nature and design of the statute and the consequences that would flow from each construction.

Earlier, in Hari Vishnu Kamath v. Syed Ahmad Ishaque AIR 1955 SC 233, the Court had already warned that the use of “shall” is “not conclusive” — a provision may be mandatory in form yet directory in substance — and that the various rules for distinguishing the two are only aids for discovering the true intention, which remains the determining factor. The grammatical word, in other words, raises a presumption but does not close the inquiry. The same logic runs in reverse for “may”: where a public authority is empowered “may” for the benefit of a person who has a right to its exercise, the permissive verb can be read as compulsory. This is the verb-driven core of the interpretation syllabus, and it is best learnt as a presumption-plus-context rule rather than a mechanical equation of “shall = must.”

When “May” and “Shall” Sit Side by Side

A particularly instructive grammatical situation arises when the legislature uses both “may” and “shall” within the same provision. The natural inference is that the drafter intended a deliberate contrast — the permissive verb to confer a discretion and the imperative verb to impose a duty. In Shri Mohan Singh v. International Airport Authority of India (1997) 9 SCC 132, the Supreme Court explained that whether language is mandatory or directory depends on the object, purpose and effect of the provision rather than on the verb in the abstract, and that the deliberate use of “may” in one limb and “shall” in another is a strong, though not conclusive, pointer that the legislature meant the one to be directory and the other mandatory.

The qualification — “not conclusive” — matters. Courts have repeatedly read “shall” as directory where a mandatory reading would defeat the statute’s purpose or visit disproportionate consequences on the citizen, and have read “may” as mandatory where a duty coupled with a power was plainly intended. The grammatical contrast between the two modal verbs is thus the beginning of analysis, not the end. A candidate who states the presumption, then immediately tests it against object and consequence, demonstrates exactly the technique the courts in Babu Ram Upadhya and Mohan Singh require.

The Conjunction: “And”, “Or” and the Whole Case

A conjunction joins words, phrases or clauses. Grammar divides them into coordinating conjunctions (and, or, but, nor), which link elements of equal rank, and subordinating conjunctions (if, unless, because, although, provided that), which tie a dependent clause to a main one. The two little coordinating words “and” and “or” carry an extraordinary interpretive load. “And” is ordinarily conjunctive (cumulative — all the listed conditions must be satisfied); “or” is ordinarily disjunctive (alternative — any one will do). But context can force a court to read one as the other.

The leading authority is Ishwar Singh Bindra v. State of U.P. AIR 1968 SC 1450, where the Court, construing the definition of “drug” under the Drugs Act, 1940, held that “and” need not always bear its cumulative sense and may, by force of the context, be read as “or.” Approving Stroud’s Judicial Dictionary — “the word ‘and’ has generally a cumulative sense… but is sometimes read as ‘or’” — the Court read the conjunction disjunctively to serve the evident purpose of the provision. The same move was made in Joint Director of Mines Safety v. Tandur and Nayandgi Stone Quarries (P) Ltd. (1987) 3 SCC 208, where the High Court had read “and” at the end of one paragraph as making three conditions cumulative; the Supreme Court reversed, holding that “and” should be construed as “or” and read disjunctively, because a cumulative reading would defeat the Mines Act’s object of protecting the safety of workmen. These cases are the standard authorities for the proposition that the grammatical default of a conjunction yields to legislative intent.

Subordinating Conjunctions, Provisos and Conditions

Subordinating conjunctions — “if,” “unless,” “provided that,” “notwithstanding,” “subject to” — do the structural work of statutes, because they signal conditions, exceptions and overrides. “Provided that” introduces a proviso, whose office is normally to carve an exception out of the main enactment rather than to enlarge it. “Notwithstanding anything contained…” introduces a non obstante clause, a conjunction-led device that gives the provision overriding effect over the matters it names. “Subject to” does the opposite — it subordinates the provision to whatever follows. Mis-reading these connectives reverses the meaning of a clause entirely.

The grammatical sensitivity of such connectives was at the heart of Aswini Kumar Ghose v. Arabinda Bose AIR 1952 SC 369, where the placement of a comma just before the word “or” in a non obstante clause was pressed as decisive of whether a qualifying clause reached back to earlier words. The Court held that, while a carefully punctuated statute may allow weight to be given to punctuation, punctuation is “a minor element” and cannot control the construction where the sense is otherwise clear; the meaning of the connective and the qualifying clause had to be settled on the grammar and scheme of the sentence, not on the comma. The case is the classic Indian authority on the limited role of punctuation — itself a near-relative of the conjunction in fixing how clauses join.

Adjectives and Adverbs: Words That Qualify

An adjective qualifies a noun (a reasonable time, a genuine document, immovable property); an adverb qualifies a verb, an adjective or another adverb (act reasonably, knowingly conceal, immediately produce). In statutes, qualifying words narrow the breadth of the term they attach to, and the dispute is usually about how far. The adjective “reasonable” — in “reasonable time,” “reasonable cause,” “reasonable doubt” — imports an objective standard to be judged on the facts, and the adverb “knowingly” or “dishonestly” before a verb supplies the mental element (mens rea) of an offence, so that its presence or absence can be the difference between guilt and innocence.

The grammatical position of a qualifier matters too. A word like “only,” depending on where it sits, can restrict different parts of a sentence (“only the accused may apply” versus “the accused may apply only…”). Adjectives and adverbs also interact with the associative maxim noscitur a sociis — a word is known by its companions — so that the colour of a qualifier is drawn from the words around it. This is why a court reads the qualifying word in the setting of its clause rather than in isolation, exactly as Peerless directs.

The Preposition: Small Words, Large Consequences

A preposition shows the relation between a noun or pronoun and another word — in, on, at, by, for, of, from, to, under, with, within. In statutes these small relational words fix jurisdiction, time-limits and connection: “within thirty days,” “under the Act,” “by reason of,” “in respect of,” “from the date of.” The reach of a provision frequently turns on whether something is done “under” a statute or merely “in pursuance of” it, whether a period runs “from” or “after” a date, and whether a liability arises “in respect of” a transaction or only “on” it. Because prepositions are easy to overlook, they are a favourite of examiners; the dedicated chapter on prepositions works through the recurring statutory pairs.

The interpretive sensitivity of prepositions surfaced in Aswini Kumar Ghose v. Arabinda Bose AIR 1952 SC 369 itself, where the Court relied on the preposition “in” following the disjunctive “or” (“anything contained… in…”) to conclude that the qualifying clause could not reach back to an earlier statute. The grammatical relation expressed by the preposition, read with the structure of the sentence, decided the scope of the override. The episode shows that a court construing a clause attends not only to the nouns and verbs but to the connectors — prepositions and conjunctions — that fix how the parts relate.

The Interjection — and Articles, the Forgotten Class

The interjection — an exclamatory word expressing sudden feeling (“Alas!”, “Oh!”, “Bravo!”) — is the one part of speech that virtually never appears in a statute, for the obvious reason that legislation is not in the business of expressing emotion. Candidates should nonetheless be able to name and define it, since prelims grammar sections test the full set of eight. Its absence from statutory prose is itself a useful illustration that the register of legal drafting is deliberately flat and assertive, built on nouns and verbs rather than feeling-words.

Modern grammars often promote the article — the definite “the” and the indefinite “a/an” — to a part of speech in its own right (a sub-class of determiners). Articles carry real interpretive weight: “the” particularises and limits (“the court” means a specific court), whereas “a” or “an” generalises (“a court” means any court of the class). A drafter’s shift from the indefinite to the definite article can therefore narrow a right or a power. Because the topic is rich enough to stand alone, it is treated fully in the chapter on articles, definite and indefinite; here it is enough to flag that the article is the ninth class the modern syllabus expects you to know.

The Same Word, Different Parts of Speech

A trap for the unwary — in grammar and in law — is that a single word can belong to different parts of speech depending on its use, and its legal effect shifts with its grammatical role. “File” is a noun (the case file) and a verb (to file a suit); “return” is a noun (an income-tax return) and a verb (to return the verdict); “wrong” is a noun, an adjective and a verb. A court construing such a word must first fix its part of speech in the sentence before assigning meaning, because the meaning available to a noun is not the meaning available to a verb. This is the most concrete way in which grammatical classification controls statutory sense.

The disciplined method, drawn straight from Peerless, is to read the word in its clause and the clause in the statute as a whole: identify the part of speech, identify the function, then identify the meaning that function permits. Doing so guards against the common error of importing a noun’s dictionary meaning into a word the statute uses as a verb, or stretching an indefinite pronoun beyond the antecedent its grammar supplies. Grammar, in short, is the first filter through which every word of a statute must pass.

Examination Pointers and Common Errors

For judiciary prelims and CLAT-PG, three things repay attention. First, be able to name and define all eight (or nine) parts of speech with one statutory example each — noun (“document”), pronoun (“anything” in Tej Kiran Jain), verb/modal (“shall” in Babu Ram Upadhya), adjective (“reasonable”), adverb (“knowingly”), preposition (“within”), conjunction (“and” in Ishwar Singh Bindra), interjection (rare in statutes), and the article (“the” versus “a”). Second, master the verb pair “shall/may” as a rebuttable presumption — “shall” prima facie mandatory, “may” prima facie directory, both yielding to object and context per Hari Vishnu Kamath and Mohan Singh. Third, master the conjunction pair “and/or” — cumulative and alternative respectively, but interchangeable where the purpose demands, per Ishwar Singh Bindra and Tandur.

The commonest errors are: treating “shall” as automatically mandatory without testing object and consequence; assuming “and” can never mean “or”; ignoring the antecedent of a pronoun; over-reading punctuation against the clear warning of Aswini Kumar Ghose; and forgetting that a word’s legal meaning depends on its part of speech in the sentence. Anchor every proposition to a verified authority, read each word in its context as Peerless commands, and the grammar questions — and the interpretation questions that grow out of them — fall into place. Pair this chapter with subject–verb agreement and tenses to complete the grammar core.

Frequently asked questions

How many parts of speech are there, and which matter most in law?

Traditional grammar recognises eight — noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, adverb, preposition, conjunction and interjection — and many modern grammars add the article as a ninth. In legal interpretation the verb (especially the modals “shall” and “may”) and the conjunction (“and” and “or”) matter most, because they decide whether a provision is mandatory or directory and whether conditions are cumulative or alternative.

Does “shall” always make a provision mandatory?

No. “Shall” is only prima facie mandatory. In State of U.P. v. Babu Ram Upadhya (AIR 1961 SC 751) and Hari Vishnu Kamath v. Syed Ahmad Ishaque (AIR 1955 SC 233) the Supreme Court held that the use of “shall” is not conclusive; the court must ascertain the real legislative intention from the scope, object and consequences, and a provision mandatory in form may be directory in substance.

Can the conjunction “and” ever be read as “or”?

Yes. Although “and” is ordinarily conjunctive (cumulative) and “or” disjunctive (alternative), context can force one to be read as the other. In Ishwar Singh Bindra v. State of U.P. (AIR 1968 SC 1450) and Joint Director of Mines Safety v. Tandur ((1987) 3 SCC 208) the Supreme Court read “and” as “or” to serve the evident purpose of the statute.

Why is the indefinite pronoun “anything” important in interpretation?

Because an unqualified indefinite pronoun is read at its widest. In Tej Kiran Jain v. N. Sanjiva Reddy ((1970) 2 SCC 272) the Court held that “anything” in Article 105(2) is of the widest import and equivalent to “everything,” so a Member of Parliament has complete immunity for anything said in the course of parliamentary business.

What role does punctuation play in construing parts of speech?

A limited one. In Aswini Kumar Ghose v. Arabinda Bose (AIR 1952 SC 369) the Court held that punctuation is a minor element and cannot control construction where the grammatical sense is otherwise clear; the meaning of the conjunctions, prepositions and qualifying clauses is settled on the grammar and scheme of the sentence, not on a comma.

Does the difference between “a” and “the” affect statutory meaning?

Yes. The definite article “the” particularises and limits the noun it precedes, while the indefinite “a” or “an” generalises it to any member of the class. A drafter’s choice between them can narrow or widen a right or power; the topic is developed fully in the chapter on articles, definite and indefinite.