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UNIT 2 - Lesson 1

The document discusses word classes and parts of speech. It defines two main categories of words in English - open lexical word classes that include nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs, and closed function word classes that include auxiliaries, conjunctions, prepositions, determiners and pronouns. Lexical words are the main carriers of meaning, can head phrases, and are stressed. Function words indicate relationships between lexical words and interpret how they are used.

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Millie Alonso
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60 views4 pages

UNIT 2 - Lesson 1

The document discusses word classes and parts of speech. It defines two main categories of words in English - open lexical word classes that include nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs, and closed function word classes that include auxiliaries, conjunctions, prepositions, determiners and pronouns. Lexical words are the main carriers of meaning, can head phrases, and are stressed. Function words indicate relationships between lexical words and interpret how they are used.

Uploaded by

Millie Alonso
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UNIT 2

Lesson 1

WORD CLASSES

Introduction

Word classes (also known as “Parts of Speech”) are established on the basis of three types
of criteria: notional (meanings), morphological (forms), and grammatical (relations with
other words and larger units).

Notional (or semantic) criteria involve generalizations about the meaning of words in a
class. For example, a common notional definition of the noun class is that nouns are names
of persons, things and places.

Morphological criteria refer to the forms of words that belong to one class. For example,
forms of plurals of nouns, comparatives and superlatives of adjectives, etc.

Grammatical (or syntactic) criteria involve the grammatical functions of the word in its
relations to other words.

For the purposes of this lesson, we will focus our attention on grammatical criteria.

Categories

Even though grammarians have varied on the number of word classes, the broadest
classification of words in English corresponds to two categories:

Open classes (also known as lexical words): they are by far the largest because they
readily admit new words. They are: noun, verb, adjective and adverb.

Closed classes (also known as function words): they are auxiliary, conjunction,
preposition, determiner, and pronoun. Interjections (which we will refer to as “inserts”)
have recently been recognized as one of the closed classes.
LEXICAL WORDS

Lexical words are those words that convey meaning. That is to say, they are carriers of
meaning in the text. They can be heads of phrases and, in speech, they are generally
stressed. Their morphology is variable. They are:

a) Nouns: they typically function as subject and direct object. They may be classified
into sub-classes such as common, proper, count, non-count, concrete, abstract, etc.
They may be in the common case or the genitive case. Gender differences are
signaled only through some associated pronouns.

As the head of a noun phrase, a noun may be:

 the head of a subject noun phrase. Example: “The new teachers are not
aware of how they can work with the disabled student”
 the head of the object noun phrase. Example: The people we were staying
with cooked us a traditional Italian dinner

b) Verbs: they function as the head of a verb phrase, either alone or preceded by one
or more auxiliaries.

Examples: They prepared the meal.

They have been preparing the meal.

c) Adjectives: they serve as the head of an adjective phrase. They have two main
functions:
 modifier of a noun. Example: “She was one of those honorable people I will
never forget”.
 Subjective predicative (a word, related to the subject, necessary to complete
the meaning of the verb. Example: “Weather has been great these last few
days.”

d) Adverbs: they may have three different functions:


 modifier of a verb. Example: They can walk quickly” (“quickly” is an adverb
that indicates the manner in which the action of walking can be performed)
 modifier of an adjective: Example: “These questions are too difficult” (“too” is
an adverb that modifies or intensifies the meaning of the adjective “difficult”).
 modifier of an adverb. Example: “He behaved very carefully” (“very” is an
adverb which modifies the adverb “carefully”)

FUNCTION WORDS

Function words serve two purposes:

 They indicate the relationship between lexical words or larger units


 They indicate the way in which a lexical word or a larger unit is to be interpreted.

They are:

a) Auxiliaries: They precede verbs to express notions such as time, permission,


possibility. They may be primary auxiliaries (be, have, do) and modals (can, will,
etc.).

b) Conjunctions: They may be coordinators (and, or, but, etc.), used to link units of
equal status or subordinators (although, if, however, etc.) to link subordinate clauses
to their main clauses.

c) Prepositions: They function as the first constituent of prepositional phrases and are
typically followed by noun phrases as their complements. They may be simple
(consisting of only one word, e.g. of, to, for, etc.) or complex (e.g. according to, as
well as, etc.).

d) Determiners: They introduce noun phrases. Different words may act as


determiners, for example, the definite (the) and the indefinite article (a/an). Some
sets of pronouns (demonstratives, reciprocals, possessive, etc.)

e) Numerals: They may be of three types: cardinals (e.g. two, ten thousand, etc);
ordinals (e.g. first, second, etc), fractions (a half, two-thirds, etc.)

f) Interjections (or Inserts): They are exclamatory emotive words loosely attached to
the rest of the sentence. Examples: ah, ouch, sh, wow
Main differences between lexical words and function words

FEATURES LEXICAL WORDS FUNCTION WORDS

Head of phrase yes no

Length long short

Lexical meaning yes no

Morphology variable invariable

openness open closed

stress strong weak

Bibliography

 Biber, D., S. Conrad & G. Leech (2002). Longman Student Grammar of Spoken


and Written English. Essex: Pearson Education Limited. CHAPTER 2

 Greenbaum, S. (1996). The Oxford English Grammar- CHAPTER 4

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