Word Classes

Definition:
A set of words that display the same formal properties, especially their inflections and distribution.
Similar to the more traditional term part of speech.
The two major families of word classes are (1) lexical (or open) classes (nouns, verbs, adjectives,
adverbs) and (2) function (orclosed) classes (determiners, particles, prepositions, and others).
Introduction to Word classes

Words are the smallest building blocks in the sentence. In this paper we are trying to analyze the
different word classes in English according to the numerous studies in the field of linguistics. The
traditional definition for word classes such as nouns and verbs give only a part of what it denotes.
So an elaborate sketch is given below that is an amalgamation of different approaches like the
semantic (meaning), morphological (the inflections), the syntactic (structure/ distribution) and also
draws from the traditional approach. As English is morphologically very poor, I will focus more on
a distributional definition for words. A distributional definition explains the word class in terms of
its syntactic behavior. A word belongs to a particular class of words because of its relation with
other words in a sentence.

We can tell almost instinctively that brother and car are the same type of word, and also that brother and
drives are different types of words. By this we mean that brother and car belong to the same word class.
Similarly, when we recognise that brother and drives are different types, we
mean that they belong to different word classes. We recognise seven MAJOR word classes:



Verb

be, drive, grow, sing, think

Noun

brother, car, David, house, London

Determiner

a, an, my, some, the

Adjective

big, foolish, happy, talented, tidy

Adverb

happily, recently, soon, then, there

Preposition

at, in, of, over, with

Conjunction

and, because, but, if, or




You may find that other grammars recognize different word classes from the ones listed here. They may
also define the boundaries between the classes in different ways. In some grammars, for instance,
pronouns are treated as a separate word class, whereas we treat them as a subclass of nouns. A difference
like this should not cause confusion. Instead, it highlights an important
principle in grammar, known as GRADIENCE. This refers to the fact that the boundaries between the
word classes are not absolutely fixed. Many word classes share characteristics with others, and there is
considerable overlap between some of the classes. In other words, the boundaries are "fuzzy", so different
grammars draw them in different places.

We will discuss each of the major word classes in turn. Then we will look briefly at some MINOR

WORD CLASSES. But first, let us consider how we distinguish between word classes in general.


Criteria for Word Classes

We began by grouping words more or less on the basis of our instincts about English. We somehow

"feel" that brother and car belong to the same class, and that brother and drives belong to different classes.
However, in order to conduct an informed study of grammar, we need a much more reliable and more
systematic method than this for distinguishing between word classes.

We use a combination of three criteria for determining the word class of a word:


1. The meaning of the word

2. The form or `shape' of the word

3. The position or `environment' of the word in a sentence

Meaning

Using this criterion, we generalize about the kind of meanings that words convey. For example, we could
group together the words brother and car, as well as David, house, and London, on the basis that they all
refer to people, places, or things. In fact, this has traditionally been a popular approach to determining
members of the class of nouns. It has also been applied to verbs, by saying that they denote some kind of
"action", like cook, drive, eat, run, shout, walk.

This approach has certain merits, since it allows us to determine word classes by replacing words in a
sentence with words of "similar" meaning. For instance, in the sentence My son cooks dinner every
Sunday, we can replace the verb cooks with other "action" words:


My son cooks dinner every Sunday

My son prepares dinner every Sunday

My son eats dinner every Sunday

My son misses dinner every Sunday

On the basis of this replacement test, we can conclude that all of these words belong to the same class,
that of "action" words, or verbs.

However, this approach also has some serious limitations. The definition of a noun as a word denoting a
person, place, or thing, is wholly inadequate, since it excludes abstract nouns such as time, imagination,
repetition, wisdom, and chance. Similarly, to say that verbs are "action" words excludes a verb like be, as
in I want to be happy. What "action" does be refer to here? So although this criterion has a certain validity
when applied to some words, we need other, more stringent criteria as well.

The form or `shape' of a word

Some words can be assigned to a word class on the basis of their form or `shape'. For example, many
nouns have a characteristic -tion ending:

action, condition, contemplation, demonstration, organization, repetition

Similarly, many adjectives end in -able or -ible:

acceptable, credible, miserable, responsible, suitable, terrible

Many words also take what are called INFLECTIONS, that is, regular changes in their form under certain
conditions. For example, nouns can take a plural inflection, usually by adding an -s at the end:

car -- cars

dinner -- dinners

book -- books

Verbs also take inflections:

walk -- walks -- walked -- walking

The position or `environment' of a word in a sentence

This criterion refers to where words typically occur in a sentence, and the kinds of words which typically
occur near to them. We can illustrate the use of this criterion using a simple example. Compare the
following:

[1] I cook dinner every Sunday

[2] The cook is on holiday

In [1], cook is a verb, but in [2], it is a noun. We can see that it is a verb in [1] because it takes the
inflections which are typical of verbs:

I cook dinner every Sunday I cooked dinner last Sunday I am cooking dinner today
My son cooks dinner every Sunday

And we can see that cook is a noun in [2] because it takes the plural -s inflection

The cooks are on holiday

If we really need to, we can also apply a replacement test, based on our first criterion, replacing

cook in each sentence with "similar" words:


Notice that we can replace verbs with verbs, and nouns with nouns, but we cannot replace verbs with
nouns or nouns with verbs:

*I chef dinner every Sunday

*The eat is on holiday

It should be clear from this discussion that there is no one-to-one relation between words and their
classes. Cook can be a verb or a noun -- it all depends on how the word is used. In fact, many words can
belong to more than one word class. Here are some more examples:

She looks very pale (verb)

She's very proud of her looks (noun)


He drives a fast car (adjective)

He drives very fast on the motorway (adverb)


Turn on the light (noun)

I'm trying to light the fire (verb)

I usually have a light lunch (adjective)


You will see here that each italicized word can belong to more than one word class. However, they only
belong to one word class at a time, depending on how they are used. So it is quite wrong to say, for
example, "cook is a verb". Instead, we have to say something like "cook is a verb in the sentence I cook
dinner every Sunday, but it is a noun in The cook is on holiday".

Of the three criteria for word classes that we have discussed here, the Internet Grammar will emphasize
the second and third - the form of words, and how they are positioned or how they function in sentences.


Open and Closed Word Classes

Some word classes are OPEN, that is, new words can be added to the class as the need arises. The class of
nouns, for instance, is potentially infinite, since it is continually being expanded as new scientific
discoveries are made, new products are developed, and new ideas are explored. In the late twentieth
century, for example, developments in computer technology have given rise to many new nouns:

Internet, website, URL, CD-ROM, email, newsgroup, bitmap, modem, multimedia

New verbs have also been introduced:

download, upload, reboot, right-click, double-click

The adjective and adverb classes can also be expanded by the addition of new words, though less
prolifically.

On the other hand, we never invent new prepositions, determiners, or conjunctions. These classes include
words like of, the, and but. They are called CLOSED word classes because they are made up of finite sets
of words which are never expanded (though their members may change their spelling, for example, over
long periods of time). The subclass of pronouns, within the open noun class, is also closed.

Words in an open class are known as open-class items. Words in a closed class are known as

closed-class items.

Constituents
Sentence is a string of words that is arranged according to certain rules. A word or group of words
that semantically and syntactically act as a unit is called constituents.
Constituent analysis
1 movement
constituents can be moved around in the sentence without changing
2 substitution
3 elipses
4 conjunction

Head and Modifier
these are terms that are used in the phrase structure. Head gives the phrase its basic characteristics
(grammatical features). The kind of modifiers attached and its semantic relations are dependent on
the head.

Lexical words/ open class/ content words

Word classes that expands with the progress in time are called open class words. The following are
the different open class words in English.

1. Verbs: Verbs can be seen as lexical items that inherently describe different situation types.
Semantically (according to the meaning that it conveys) it refers to an action, state or
possession. Accordingly a verb is divided into two. The difference between event and situation
can be made with the help of the when test by Vlach. The situation denoted by the main clause
can be construed as overlapping an event denoted by a temporal clause introduced by when it is
a state.



This can be divided into different sub parts:

Verbs
ru

States/ Stative Dynamic
ru
Processes Events
ru
Inchoatives resultatives

Processes can again be subdivided into durative versus punctual and telic versus atelic.
1.1 Stative: They are inherently unchanging conditions (be, feel, have, like) or static
positions (be at home, stay, live). State predication includes their reference times, this also
accounts for the fact the situations denoted by the stative predications are always temporally
extensible. (E.g. the driver was Latvian = the driver still can be/ is.) It is at the same time
unchanging during this time period.
1.2 Dynamic: they are eventualities that persist through time and involve change. These
verbs are either natural (grow, rust, float, leak) or agent controlled (walk, read, play). Every
event whether iterated or not has both an anterior state (the state that holds before the state
occurs) and posterior state (the state that holds after the event has occurred)

1.2.1 telic:
1.2.1.1 achievements
1.2.1.2 accomplishments
1.2.2 atelic:

Tense: The most important category that a verb carries is the tense. It is described as the
eventuality that is described by the verb has to be placed in Tense. A grammatical notion that
refer to the way language encodes the semantic notion of time is called tense. A verb that
carries tense is called finite verb and those verbs that carry no tense forms are called non-
finite. Tense is an inflectional category whose basic role is to indicate the time of an event,
etc in relation to the moment of speaking in the main clause and to the event time of the
main clause in a subordinate clause. It is divided notionally into present (at the moment of
speaking), past (earlier than the moment of speaking) and future (later than the moment of
speaking). Semantically a tensed sentence introduces the possibility that what is true when
uttered at one time may be false when uttered at other times. A car may be red at one time
and then be painted blue. So the sentence The car is red is not true now. The tense
interpretation can be pictured as below.
Time Line


Before/Past Speaking Time/Present After/Future

I sleep.
I slept.
I will sleep.


Modal auxiliary Mood is a morph syntactic category. In a sentence 'He may enter the
room' we have two different readings. The first reading 'Perhaps he will enter the room' that
expresses the speaker's belief concerning the state of affairs 'He enters the room. In the
second reading 'He is permitted to enter the room' the permission of performing the act is
expressed. The former is referred to as 'epistemic modality,' the latter as 'deontic modality.'
Epistemic modality is concerned with matters of knowledge and belief. Deontic modality, on
the other hand, is concerned with the necessity or possibility of acts performed by morally
responsible agents. (Kiefer, 1999) Alethic modality a third type of modality describes the
necessary or contingent and possible truth of propositions, e.g., in a sentence He must be on
this train means 'It is not possible that he is not on this train.' Structurally as well the
epistemic and alethic modals differ. The epistemic modals occupy a position distinct from,
and higher than, alethic modals that is intervened by the T(future) T(past) and negative
heads. will, can, must, may, shall are some of the modal auxiliary verbs in English. These
verbs add the meaning of ability, permission, possibility, obligation, necessity, intention or
prediction. The English modal verbs are inflected for only past tense (not for future).

Aspectual auxiliary The term 'aspect' refers to the grammatical categories that describe
the structure of a situation or the speaker's perspective on it. In other words it is a general
term that verbal categories take in order to distinguishe the status of events, etc in relation to
specific time periods as opposed to their simple location in time. Be and have the two most
common aspects that English verbs encode continuous and perfective aspect. The perfective

1 Laura Michaelis p. 11 & 14
1
aspect perceives the event as one complete whole without any concern as to how the event
was started, ended or even how the event proceeded (Comrie, 1976,18). Imperfective on the
other hand views the situation from within that is the internal temporal structure. The two
most common imperfective aspect are progressive and habitual.

Passive Auxiliary be. The term voice refers to an alternation of the verb form that
changes the grammatical function of subjects and objects.

Dummy Auxiliary do. Dummy auxiliary is used when we need to negate a sentence (do-
support) or make an yes/no question from a sentence (subject auxiliary inversion) that
does not have an auxiliary verb. It is also used as an emphatic particle in English.
syntactically (according to the number of NPs that is allowed) it is divided into three. It is
also called the valency (argument structure) of the verb
.
1 intransitive
2 transitive
3 ditransitive
A verb carries the PNG, TAM and Voice







2. Nouns: A notional definition explains nouns as words that refer to name, place, thing or animal.
But this does not explain why or how words that denote abstract ideas (sincerity, success),
emotional states (love, happiness), bodily sensation (pain, dizzy), etc forms part of the noun
class. Another criteria can be the morphological endings. Words that end in -ance, -hood, -tion, ship,

etc and plural ending -s, or genitive ending 's forms part of the noun class. But there are
words that does not have these endings that are part of the noun class and words that take
irregular plural ending (child children, sheep sheep).
A distributional definition of nouns says that a word belongs to the class of nouns if it can be
preceded by a determiner and/or adjective. Nouns can be divided into
2.1 common nouns
2.1.1 mass nouns - nouns that cannot be counted (milk, flour, etc). Mostly they describe
things that are amorphous and sometimes abstract.
2.1.2 count nouns nouns that can be counted (book, cat, fork, etc ) or individuated
2.2 Proper nouns it is also called Referring Expressions in that they uniquely refer to
one individual in the real world. Jack, London, etc
2.3 Numerals
2.3.1 Cardinal one, two, three, etc
2.3.2 Ordinal first, second, third, etc

2.4 Pronouns: the word pronoun consists of two words pro and noun. The word pro in
Latin means for and so the compound word means for a noun or instead of a noun. Thus
pronouns derive their referential content from the noun (or NP) that precedes it in the main
clause. The problem with pronouns are illustrated in the narration that follows. An old
blacksmith realized he was getting on in years and would quit work soon, so he took on an
apprentice. The old fellow was crabby and exacting. Dont ask me a lot of questions, he
told the boy. Just do whatever I tell you to do. One day the old blacksmith took an iron out
of the forge and laid it on the anvil. Get the hammer over there, he said. When I nod my
head, hit it good and hard. The boy did as he was told . . . and now the town is looking for a
new blacksmith.
2
And again for a question How can you drop an egg
onto a concrete
floor
j
without breaking it
? the answer can be It is very difficult to break a concrete
floor.
2.4.1 personal I, me, you, she, he. etc
2.4.2 possesive my, mine, yours. etc
2.4.3 reflexive myself, yourself, herself. etc
2.4.4 demonstrative this, that those, these. Etc. It is a word whose basic role is to locate a
i,j
i
referent in relation to a speaker, an addressee, or some other person, etc. referred to. E.g.

2 English Words
proximal this (physically and thence subjectively closer to the speaker) and distant that
(physically and subjectively remote from the speaker)
2.4.5 reciprocal each other, one another. etc
2.4.6 relative that, who, which. etc
2.4.7 interrogative what, why, where. etc
2.4.8 indefinite anybody, somebody. Etc
PNG, Case

Case: a case signals the relationship between the nouns and the verbs in a clause.(it is derived from
a latin word for fall casus). is the grammatical category by which the form of a noun phrase
varies for grammatical or semantic reasons. In other words it is a grammatical category used in
the analysis of word classes to identify the syntactic relationship between word classes in a
sentence through such constants as nominative accusative, etc.
The word case comes from the Latin word casus (=falling or derivation). It is a variation in the
form (from its normal upright form) of a lexeme according to the syntax of the language. In a
language that express grammatical relationships by means of inflection this term refer to the
form taken by a word. Only transitive verbs and prepositions can assign case.

Morphological case: It is a situation where the distinct cases are overtly marked as distinct
morphemes on nouns, adjectives, determiners and pronouns.

Abstract cases: overt case markings are not present.
Nominative- mark the subject of the sentnece
Accusative - mark the object of a transitive verb
Dative marks the indirect object
Genitive marks the case of possession
Vocative case fo address
Instrumental marking the instrument with which something is done

1 Person: there are three person marker in English. First, second and third
1.1 first: the speaker of a sentence
1.2 second: the person addressed by the speaker.
1.3 third: other participants or people, things talked about by the speker
2 Number
3 Gender


3 Adjectives: Morphologically adjectives end with suffixes such as -full, -less, -ive, etc. but not
all adjectives have such endings. Adjectives are gradable (that is they can be preceded by words
such as very and extremely), and can take comparative and superlative endings.
Adjectives in its attributive position qualify the nouns that succeed in terms of the character, nature
or state of the noun.
3.1 appearance
3.1.1 size
3.1.2 shape
3.1.3 condition
3.2 age
3.3 material
Adjectives also has a predicative position when it appears after a linking verb or copula. some
adjectives in English has a valency like verbs for eg; dependent (on something), independent (of
something), angry (with somebody), free (from something),

4 Adverbs: word class that modify the verb, adjective and adverb. The main classes of adverbs
include manner, frequency
4.1 manner
4.2 method
4.3 degree
4.4 aspect
4.5 time
4.6 speaker oriented


closed class/ function words/ grammatical or form words

Function words logically connects the content words together into one unit called sentence. Word
classes that remains static with the progress in time are called closed class words. The meaning of a
word also refer to the specific condition in which the word can be used truthfully and that is called
Truth condition. If we want to study the meaning of function words we need to understand the
term called entailment.

5 Preposition : A word (one of the parts of speech and a member of a closed word class) that
shows the relationship between a noun or pronoun and other words in a sentence. See the lists of
simple prepositions and deverbal prepositions below.
The combination of a preposition and a noun phrase is called a prepositional phrase. A word group (such
as in front of or on top of) that functions like a simple, one-word preposition is called a complex
preposition.
Prepositions convey the following relationships: agency (by); comparison (like, as . . . as); direction (to,
toward, through); place (at, by, on); possession (of); purpose (for); source (from, out of); and time (at,
before, on). See Observations, below.
Simple Prepositions:
aboard
about
above
across
after
against
along
amid
among
around
as
at
6 Determiners - articles & quantifiers. these words specify more precisely the meaning of the
nouns that they precede. There are two types of determiners quantifying and deictic. the
determiners that refer to how much or how many of the noun are referred to are called
quantifiers. Theres a joke that illustrates the interaction of the quantifiers with each other: Did
you know that someone is hit by a car every three minutes in the United States? Oh, that poor
person!
3

6.1 Definite determiner the
6.2 demonstrative determiner this, that, etc.
6.3 possessive determiner my

7 Connectives: They stick two elements of the same type together. And, or, but are the three
connectives that is more common in English. If two sentences that is connected by and is true
then the resultatant single sentence will also be true. In case of or only one sentence needs to be
true in order for the connected sentence to be true.

8 Complementisers/ subordinating conjunction: they tell us about the truth condition of
the subordinate clause.

Minor word classes
We have now looked at the seven major word classes in English. Most words can be assigned to at least
one of these classes. However, there are some words which will not fit the criteria for any of them.
Consider, for example, the word hello. It is clearly not a noun, or an adjective, or a verb, or indeed any of
the classes we have looked at. It belongs to a minor word class, which we call formulaic expressions.
9.1 Formulaic Expressions
To express greetings, farewell, thanks, or apologies, we use a wide range of FORMULAIC
EXPRESSIONS. These may consist of a single word or of several words acting as a unit. Here are
some examples:
bye goodbye hello farewell hi
so longexcuse me thanks thank you thanks a lot sorry
pardon
Some formulaic expressions express agreement or disagreement with a previous speaker:
yes, yeah, no, okay, right, sure
INTERJECTIONS generally occur only in spoken English, or in the representation of speech in novels.
They include the following:
ah, eh, hmm, oh, ouch, phew, shit, tsk, uhm, yuk
Interjections express a wide range of emotions, including surprise (oh!), exasperation (shit!), and disgust
(yuk!).
Formulaic expressions, including interjections, are unvarying in their form, that is, they do not take any
inflections.
9.2 Existential there
We have seen that the word there is an adverb, in sentences such as: You can't park there
I went there last year
Specifically, it is an adverb of place in these examples.
However, the word there has another use. As EXISTENTIAL THERE, it often comes at the start of a
sentence:
There is a fly in my soup
There were six errors in your essay
Existential there is most commonly followed by a form of the verb be. When it is used in a question, it
follows the verb:
Is there a problem with your car? Was there a storm last night?
The two uses of there can occur in the same sentence:
There is a parking space there
In this example, the first there is existential there, and the second is an adverb.
9.3 Uses of It
In the section on pronouns, we saw that the word it is a third person singular pronoun. However, this
word also has other roles which are not related to its pronominal use. We look at some of these other uses
here.
When we talk about time or the weather, we use sentences such as:
What time is it? It is four o'clock It is snowing
It's going to rain
Here, we cannot identify precisely what it refers to. It has a rather vague reference, and we call this
DUMMY IT or PROP IT. Dummy it is also used, equally vaguely, in other expressions:
Hold it!
Take it easy!
Can you make it to my party?
It is sometimes used to "anticipate" something which appears later in the same sentence:
It's great to see you
It's a pity you can't come to my party
In the first example, it "anticipates" to see you. We can remove it from the sentence and replace it with to
see you:
To see you is great
Because of its role in this type of sentence, we call this ANTICIPATORY IT.