The beloved family dog loved to chase squirrels.

In the sentence above, the phrase "the beloved family dog" is serving as what part of speech?

an adjective

a noun

a verb

an adverb

a noun

The phrase "the beloved family dog" is also the subject of the sentence. The subject of a sentence is always a noun. The noun is then followed by the verb or verb phrase. In this case, it's the verb loved. Another way to check and see if a word is a noun is to put an article before it. Articles are the, a, an. These articles automatically tell you that a noun is next. Sometimes there are a few adjectives between the article and the actual noun, but the noun is there. The phrase "the beloved family dog" starts with the article the which indicates it is a noun.