How to select a given column from a line of text?

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Suppose I have this sentence:

My name is bob.

And I want to copy the word "is" from that sentence into a variable. How would I access that word, without knowing in advance the word I am looking for? If I know a specific word or string is in the third column of text in a five column text line, how can I take the word in the third column?

I'm using the bourne shell.

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