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Word Classes, Lexical verbs, Adverbs, Wh-words, Nouns, Adverbs of manner…
Word Classes
All words belong to a particular grammatical category. There are
9 major word classes
and
2 minor ones.
Major classses
Nouns
Verbs
Adjectives
Adverbs
Pronouns
Determiners
Auxiliaries
Prepositions
Conjunctions
Minor Classes
Interjections
(little exclamations like
wow
)
Particles
(as
not
)
One group which is treated in different ways by linguists is the group of
numerals
(
cardinal numbers, ordinal numbers and fractions
)
Lexical verbs
They are verbs which are different from auxiliaries or auxiliary verbs;
auxiliary verbs are added to lexical verbs for several aims
.
Linguists make a distinction between
Dynamic verbs:
verbs that refer to physical processes
Stative verbs
: verbs that refer to states and conditions.
They are usually known as
full verbs
or
main verbs.
Adverbs
They have the ability not only to
give information about where and when,
but also to allow you to
comment on whole utterances.
They usually end in
-ly
They can be divided into:
1)
Adjuncts
They provide us with information about how, where, when and to what extent.
2)
Conjuncts
They usually link two sentences together or two parts of the same sentence
3)
Disjuncts
they comment on what is being said or indicate the "voice" in which something is said.
Probably, I should have told her what happened
Confidentially, ...
Wh-words
1) Wh-adverbs
how, when, where
2) Wh-pronouns
what, which, who, whom
3) Wh-determiners
what, which, whose, whatever
Nouns
They make up one of the most central categories of all word classes.
The simplest way to test whether a word is a noun is to isolate it and then see if it is possible to place
the
in front of it
All nouns which can be preceded by
the
are known as
common nouns
, which refer to measurable or tangible objects.
They are divided into:
Concrete nouns
, which refer to measurable or tangible objects.
Abstract nouns,
which refer to concepts and things that have no material existence.
On the other hand,
proper nouns
name something or someone unique and they are written with a capital letter.
Adverbs of manner
tell us
"how"
carefully
Adverbs of place
indicate
location or direction
here
Adverbs of time
denote
when something happened, hoe long it lasted or how often it happened
tonight, forever, nightly
Adverbs of degree
indicate
extent
,
particularly, simply
Pronouns
They function as substitutes for nouns or they are used to refer to what is unknown.
They can be divided into:
Primary pronouns
Personal pronouns
subjective form
objective form
Possessive pronouns
dependent form (
the pronoun precedes a noun which it qualifies)
Ex:
This is Jane's house.
This is her house.
Indipendent form
(the pronoun acts as a replacement for a complete noun phrase)
Ex:
This house is the doctor's house and her husband's.
This house is theirs.
Reflexive pronouns
they can be used for emphasis or to refer back to someone or something mentioned previously.
The pronoun
one
Wh-pronouns
Interrogative pronouns
are used to ask questions
who, whom, whose, what, which
Relative pronouns
are used to introduce relative clauses
who, whom, which, that
Nominal relative pronouns
introduce nominal relative clauses
who, whoever, whom, whomever, which, whichever, what, whatever
Conditional pronouns
introduce wh-conditional clauses
whoever, whomever, whichever, whatever
Indefinite pronouns
some, someone, somebody, something
none, no one, nobody, nothing
any, anyone, anybody, anything
all, everyone, everybody, everything
Demonstrative pronouns
this, these, that, those
Determiners
They're only found in noun phrases: it is a noun plus any other elements which belong to or depend on that head noun.
Determiners only occur at the beginning of noun phrase.
They will be always followed by a head noun.
They can bee divided into:
1) predeterminers
what, such, all (of), once
2) central determiners
the, a (an), whose, what which, your, some, any, each, every, another
3) postdeterminers
many/more/most, several, one, two, three...
Auxiliaries
They are a small group of verbs and they only occur in verb phrases, at the start of the phrase,
before the lexical verb
.
They are divided into:
- primary auxiliaries
have, be, do
They are very important for the construction of questions and for negation
- modal auxiliaries
can, could, shall, should, will, would, may, might, must
They provide shades of meaning relating to the lexical verb.
Prepositions
They are used to show the
relationship between two elements
They may be:
- simple
(a single word)
under, into
- complex
(2 or 3 words)
according to, behalf of
Prepositions of time
about, after, at, before, during, until
Prepositions of place
about, above, among, along, behind, by, between, beside
Prepositions of cause, attitude
about, according to, because of, instead of, without
Conjunction
They are used to
join linguistic elements
They can be subdivided into:
- coordinating conjunctions
(or
coordinators
)
and, but, or
- subordinating conjunctions
(or
subordinators
)
after, although, after, as far as, because, until, while
They occur at the beginning of clauses
They are open class words
(larger group)
They are known as
lexical words
They may be monosyllabic or polisyllabic
They are closed class words
(smaller group, very slow changes)
They are known as
grammatical words
They typically contain one or two syllables
Adjectives
We can identify adjectives by reference to 2 features:
1) the
positions
in which they appear in sentences
Central adjectives
are able to appear:
Before a noun
, with an
attributive function
(they give us information about an attribute of a noun)
After certain verbs
like
be
and
appear
(
copular verbs
) with a
predicative function
.
2) their
ability to be graded
Most adjectives are gradable
: we can indicate to what extent the quality referred to by an adjective applies