Download Chapter 2 - Words and word classes

Words and word classes
Longman Student Grammar of
Spoken and Written English
Biber; Conrad; Leech (2009, p.12-36)
Parts of speech
a traditional view











Noun: a word that names a person, place, thing or idea; e.g. book.
Verb: a word that shows action, or links the subject to a word or
phrase that tells about the subject; e.g. produce.
Adjective: a word that tells what kind, how many or which one; e.g.
good.
Adverb: a word that tells when, where, how or how much; e.g. highly.
Determiner: a word that goes in front of a noun to identify what the
noun refers to; e.g. this.
Preposition: a word that shows a relationship between a noun and
another word in a sentence; e.g. to.
Pronoun: a word that takes the place of a noun or nouns; e.g. we.
Conjunction: a word that connects words or groups of words; e.g.
and.
Demonstrative: a word that serves to point out; e.g. those.
Article: a word used to indicate nouns and to specify their
application; e.g. the.
Interjection: a word that expresses a strong feeling; e.g. Ouch!
Other reports have remanstroted an even
chranger positive bitegration with plasma
charestarob, which is the main cholesterolcarrying wisotrotein. The grangest test of the
hypothesis that increased unintandal cholesterol
is redectative is that hyperextentment lawerity
should divarently reduce the incidence of
trischaemic heart disease.

In academic writing, we often encounter words that we
don’t know. However, by using the clues available from
morphology and grammatical context, we can usually
figure out the word class of these words. The previous
passage contains several nonsense words. Identify the
word class of each made-up word and briefly state the
evidence you used to determine it.
Meu dia a dia
Na minha skid moram eu, meu bigurrilhe e minha bigurrilha
e nosso pequeno flalelu. Eu tenho ainda um bigurtane que
não mora conosco pois já é bigurfistado...
Todos os dias minha bigurrilha me chama às 7 horas. Tomo
o meu chirçum e saio correndo para o ponto de poiux.
Chego à universidade às 8 horas e encontro os meus
quatacy. Assisto todas as warney e, ao meio dia, almoço
com alguns xorgany.
À noite, normalmente, vou até a skid de meu bigurtane
visitar meus bigurnissy. Ao voltar para skid, eu chirço algo e
assisto KP com minha bigurfist. Antes de dormir ligo para
minha petita para dar um beijo de boa noite.
Grammar



Grammatical units are meaningful elements
which combine with each other in a structured
pattern. Essentially, grammar is the system
which organizes and controls these formmeaning relationships.
Morphology is the part of grammar dealing with
morphemes (parts of words: stems, prefixes, and
suffixes).
Syntax is the part of grammar dealing with the
grammatical units: words, phrases, clauses and
sentences.
Dying right here is strictly prohibited
Grammatical units description

1.
2.
3.
4.
Grammatical units are described in terms of four
factors:
Structure: units can be described in terms of their
internal structure -words in terms of bases and
affixes. unimpressed
Syntactic role: a phrase can have the syntactic role
of object, or of subject, or of adverbial: In November,
Susie won those tickets.
Meaning: Adverbs, for instance, can express
information about time, place, and manner.
Use (or discourse function): how they behave in
discourse. This can include their uses in different
registers, their frequency in those registers, and the
factors which influence their use in speech or in
written texts.
Be careful with
how you put:
 PREFIXES: im
 STEMS: poort
 SUFFIXES: ed
 together!!!!!


Authentic source

Different senses of the word ‘word’





Ortographic words: words we are familiar with in
written language, where they are separated by
spaces.
Grammatical words: a word falls into one
grammatical word class or another. leaves
Lexemes: this is a set of grammatical words which
share the same basic meaning, similar forms, and
the same word class. leaves, left: verb lexeme
leave
Each occurrence of a word in a written or spoken
text is a separate TOKEN, while word TYPES are
the different vocabulary items.
The birds and the deer and who knows what else.
Three major families of words
1.
2.
3.
Lexical words: nouns, lexical verbs,
adjectives, and adverbs; their number is
growing all the time, they are members of
open classes.
Function words: prepositions,
coordinators, auxiliary verbs, and
pronouns; they belong to closed classes,
which have a very limited and fixed
membership.
Inserts do not form an integral part of a
syntactic structure, so they are peripheral
to grammar. Well, hm hm, yeah...
The structure of words:
morphology

1.
2.
3.
Lexical words can consist of a single morpheme or they
can have a more complex structure created by three
processes:
Inflection: inflectional suffixes signal meanings and roles
which are important to their word class, such as ‘plural’ in
the case of nouns, and ‘past tense’ in the case of verbs.
It does not change the identity of the word.
Derivation: it involves adding an affix and it changes the
meaning or word class of a word, and often both, and in
effect creates a new base form for the word.
Compounding: words that are compound contain more
than one stem. It is important to determine if the two
words are genuinely a compound or simply a sequence
of two words. e.g. goldfish or gold fish?
Multi-word units, collocations,
and lexical bundles




A multi-word unit is a sequence of orthographic words
which function like a single grammatical unit. e.g. on
top of
An idiom is a multi-word unit with a meaning that
cannot be predicted from the meaning of its
constituent words. e.g. fall in love
A collocation is the relationship between two or more
independent words which commonly appear together.
e.g. wide experience
A lexical bundle is a sequence of words which cooccur very frequently, especially when the sequence
consists of more than two words. e.g. Would you
mind... recurs in conversation.
Survey of lexical words

Nouns: words such as book are common nouns.
Words such as Microsoft are proper nouns.
Morphologically, nouns have inflectional suffixes
for plural number and for genitive case. Many
nouns are uncountable, and cannot have a plural
form. Nouns usually contain more than one
morpheme. Syntactically, nouns can occur as the
head of a noun phrase. Semantically, nouns
commonly refer to concrete, physical entities.
They can also denote abstract entities such as
qualities or states.
Survey of lexical words

Lexical verbs: words such as admit are lexical verbs.
They are distinct from auxiliary verbs, which we treat
as function words. The primary verbs occur as both
lexical and auxiliary. Morphologically, they have
different forms signaling tense, aspect and voice.
They quite often have a complex form with more than
one morpheme. Syntactically, they may occur on
their own, as a single-word verb phrase as the central
part of the clause. They also occur in the final or main
verb position of verb phases. Semantically, they
denote actions, processes, and states of affairs that
happen or exist in time.
Survey of lexical words

Adjectives: words such as dark are adjectives.
Morphologically, they can take the inflectional
suffixes –er (comparative) and –est (superlative).
They can be complex, as derived or compound
adjectives. Syntactically, they can occur as the
head of an adjective phrase. They are commonly
used as modifiers preceding the head of a noun
phrase or predicatives following the verb in a
clause. Semantically, they describe the qualities
of people, things or abstractions. Many adjectives
are gradable (degree or level of the quality).
Survey of lexical words

Adverbs: words such as now, there and usually are
adverbs. Morphologically, they are often formed by
adjectives adding the suffix –ly. Syntactically, they
occur as the head of adverb phrases. They are
often used as modifiers of an adjective or another
adverb. Otherwise, they can act as adverbials in the
clause. Semantically, they express the degree of a
following adjective or adverb. As elements of
clauses, they have a wide range of meanings:
expressing notions of time, place, and manner;
conveying the speaker’s attitude toward information
in the rest of the clause; expressing a connection
with what was said earlier.
LEXICAL ERRORS

I made a lot of homework last night.


I conversation with my friend every morning.


WORD CLASS
I earned a present from my mom.


DO X MAKE
COLLOCATION
I formed in medicine at UFTM

WORD CHOICE
Accidentally in love: analysis







WORD CLASSES: Lexical? Function? Inserts?
So she said what's the problem baby?
What's the problem I don't know
Well, maybe I'm in love
MORPHOLOGY: Inflection? Derivation?
Compounding?
Sunlight shimmering love
LEXICAL WORDS: Nouns? Lexical verbs?
Adjectives? Adverbs?
I surrender to the strawberry ice cream
We're accidentally in love
CONCORDANCERS

"A concordancer extracts real language from a database of
millions of words and present users with real examples of a
selected word in context. This allows the learner to draw
conclusions about the contexts in which words are used,
the different uses and meanings which a word can have,
and the grammatical constructions in which particular
words are found. e.g. Contexts, Microconcord."

Some Concordancers for English
http://www.lextutor.ca/concordancers/concord_e.html (fast - better for
words than expressions)
http://www.webcorp.org.uk/guide/howworks.html (be patient because it is
very slow)
http://www.collins.co.uk/Corpus/CorpusSearch.aspx (last time I tested I
couldn’t get an answer)
http://sara.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/lookup.html (good for expressions)
http://vlc.polyu.edu.hk/ (fast, based on academic texts)





Borderline cases in classifying
words




The classification of lexical words is not always clear-cut, and
some words have borderline status between two classes.
Nouns and verbs: In the example: The matter needed
checking. If one added an adverb (carefully), checking would
be a verb. If it were preceded by a modifying adjective
(careful), it would be clearly a noun.
Nouns and adjectives: living standards (noun + noun) x living
creatures (adjective + noun). ‘Paraphrase test’.
Verbs and adjectives: In the example: It was embarrassing. If
one added ‘me’, it would be a verb. If one added ‘very’, it
would be an adjective.
Survey of function words







Determiners: definite article (the, referent), indefinite article (an),
demonstrative determiners (those), possessive determiners (my), quantifiers
(every).
Pronouns: personal pronouns (I), demonstrative pronouns (this), reflexive
pronouns (themselves), reciprocal pronouns (each other), possessive
pronouns (mine), indefinite pronouns (somebody), relative pronouns (whom),
interrogative pronouns (which).
Auxiliary Verbs: primary auxiliaries (be, have, do), modal auxiliaries (shall).
Prepositions: linking words that introduce prepositional phrases, prepositional
complement (on the phone), complex preposition (such as, with regard to)
Adverbial particles: used to build phrasal verbs (broke down) and extended
prepositional phrases (back to the hotel).
Coordinators: coordinating conjunctions, relationship between two units such
as phrases or clauses (or); correlative coordinator (both... and).
Subordinators: subordinating conjunctions, linking words that introduce a
dependent clause to a main clause, adverbial clause (if), degree clause (as),
complement or nominal clause (that); complex subordinator (as if).
Special classes of words



Wh-words (begin with wh, - how; determiners, pronouns, adverbs).
 Introducing an interrogative clause What do they want?
 Introducing a relative clause (relativizers) whose father died
 Introducing a complement clause (complementizers) ...whatever I have
in my pocket
 Adverbial clause links However they vary...
Single word classes: (unique grammatically, do not fit a class)
 Existential there There were four bowls of soup.
 The negator not ... but you can’t do that.
 The infinitive marker to (complementizer preceding the infinitive) What
do you want to drink?
Numerals: (simple forms and complex forms built from the simple ones)
 Cardinals: (How many?) Four of the yen traders have pleaded guilty.
 Ordinals: (Which?) A fourth will be charged with having information...
http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/interactives/diamante/