WORD FORM (2)

Word
Forms/Classes

Major Word
Classes

Minor Word
Classes

MINOR CLASSES
(CLOSED CLASSES)
The word classes whose membership is restricted
since they do not allow the creation of new
members.
There are 8 members of closed classes (Aarts and
Aarts, 1988), they are:
1) Prepositions
2) Conjunctions
3) Articles
4) Numerals
5) Pronouns
6) Quantifiers
7) Interjections

1. PREPOSITIONS
Prepositions are distinguished into simple (one
word) and complex (multi word) prepositions.
Simple prepositions:
at, in, on, of, by, up, with, from, before, between,
etc.
Complex prepositions
according to
in front of
because of
in spite of
by means of
in terms of
in addition to
on behalf of
etc.

2. CONJUNCTIONS
Conjunctions are divided into two: simple and
complex.
Simple conjunctions: and, if, but, because, while,
since, while etc.
Complex conjunctions:
as if
in case
so that
as long as
as soon as
as though

FUNCTION OF CONJUNCTIONS
Coordinating conjunctions (Coordinators)
to link sentences, clauses, and phrases. English
has four coordinators: and, but, or, for.
Subordinating conjunctions (Subordinators)
to introduce subclauses.
e.g.
Do you mind if I smoke? (as sentence constituent)
The day before he died (constituent of NP)
Easier than we expect (constituent of AP)
as effectively as we had hoped. (constituent of AdvP)

3. ARTICLES
There are two types of articles, definite article
(the) and indefinite article (a, an).
e.g.
the man, the use
a book, a unit
an uncle, an honour

4. NUMERALS

There are two sets of numeral: cardinal and ordinal

numbers.
Cardinal Numbers:
0, 1, 2 ,3 zero, one, two, three
They can be modified by adverbs: about, almost,
approximately, nearly, over etc.
e.g. There were about 200 students
Ordinal numbers
1st, 2nd, 1001st first, second, one thousand and first

Both cardinal and ordinal numbers function in the structure

of the NP or as constituents of the sentence.
Forty is an interesting age
he was the first to arrive

5. PRONOUNS
The subclasses of Pronouns:
Personal pronouns: Subjective case (They, we, I)
Objective Case (Them, us, me)
-self-pronouns: myself, herself
Demonstrative pronouns: This, that, these, those
Possessive pronouns: Their, our, my
Relative pronouns: who, whose, whom, which, that
The boy whose bike was stolen is sick
Interrogative pronouns: who, whose, whom, which
Who wrote Romeo and Juliet?
Reciprocal pronouns: each other, one another
So and One : I think so.
Could you lend me a bike? I havent got one.

6. QUANTIFIERS
The subclasses of quantifiers:
1. As head of NP

Someone (body/thing) , anyone, everyone, no one, none

e.g. someone must have the window open

2. As Determiner
every, no
e.g. He has no money
Every politician is responsible for his promises.
3. As head of NP and Determiner
some, much, fewer, enough, several, both, all
e.g. Much of what he said is irrelevant
I rang my parents but both were out.

7. INTERJECTIONS
To express emotions such as surprise, disgust,
joy, pleasure, pain, etc.
ah
hey
yippee
eh
wow
ouch
damn
oho
ugh
etc.
e.g. Wow, isnt she a beauty?
Damn, Ive dropped that glass!

NOUN PHRASE
Phrase: a unit which consists of one or more than
one word (Thomas, 1993)
Noun Phrase is a unit which consists of one or
more than one whose head is a noun
boy
a boy
a naughty boy

NP: (det) + (adj) + N

TREE DIAGRAM
To describe sentence in diagramatic form and to
make a pattern/template to make sentence.
It functions to tell us something about word order
and kinds of words which can go together
Sentence
word + word + word .
Sentence

word

word

word

Since the sentence consists of phrases as

constituents of it, so
Sentence
phrase A + phrase (Verb) + phrase B
and the tree diagram becomes:

From its function, sentence can be seen as

Sentence
Subject + Predicate
the tree diagram is: