Grammar for writing word classes

Word classes are parts of speech. They’re the building blocks that form every sentence ever uttered. They are categorized by the role they play in your sentences.

Everyone agrees on the following four main word classes:

  1. Noun
  2. Verb
  3. Adjective
  4. Adverb

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There are varying opinions as to whether the following are word classes or word forms. So we went straight to the experts: the Oxford and Cambridge Dictionaries. Per these two highly learned sources, the following are considered word classes also:

  1. Pronoun (e.g. I, you, me, we, mine, someone, he, she)
  2. Preposition (e.g. at, in, on, across, behind, for)
  3. Conjunction (e.g. and, but, when, if, because)
  4. Determiner (e.g. a, the, an, this, etc.)
  5. Exclamation or Interjection (e.g. oh, ah, wow, ouch)

The four main classes have thousands of members, and new nouns, verbs, and other words are being created every day. Consider the verb “google.” This verb didn’t exist just a few years ago and now it is firmly entrenched in everyday language. Just last month a new noun, “intersectionality” (the study of overlapping social identities and related systems of discrimination), was just added to Dictionary.com. Can you think of any other words that have recently been created and entered your own vocabulary?

Some words, however, can fall in multiple word classes depending on their context:

  • Put your money in the bank. (noun)
  • He began to bank the airplane into the wind. (verb)
  • Come warm up by the fire. (noun)
  • He will certainly fire her for coming in late again. (verb)
  • A book is a source of endless reading pleasure. (noun)
  • Book your holiday plans soon to get the best deal. (verb)
  • She loves fast cars. (adjective)
  • He’s driving fast to get to work on time. (adverb)
  • Her hourly complaints have got to stop. (adjective)
  • The weather report is reported hourly. (adverb)

The next step is to use your word classes to form phrase classes, like noun phrases, verb phrases, adjective phrases, etc. But we’ll save that for another post.

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Words don’t only mean something; they also do something. In the English language, words are grouped into word classes based on their function, i.e. what they do in a phrase or sentence. In total, there are nine word classes in English.

Word class meaning and example

All words can be categorised into classes within a language based on their function and purpose.

An example of various word classes is ‘The cat ate a cupcake quickly.’

  • The = a determiner

  • cat = a noun

  • ate = a verb

  • a = determiner

  • cupcake = noun

  • quickly = an adverb

Word class function

The function of a word class, also known as a part of speech, is to classify words according to their grammatical properties and the roles they play in sentences. By assigning words to different word classes, we can understand how they should be used in context and how they relate to other words in a sentence.

Each word class has its own unique set of characteristics and rules for usage, and understanding the function of word classes is essential for effective communication in English. Knowing our word classes allows us to create clear and grammatically correct sentences that convey our intended meaning.

Word classes in English

In English, there are four main word classes; nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. These are considered lexical words, and they provide the main meaning of a phrase or sentence.

The other five word classes are; prepositions, pronouns, determiners, conjunctions, and interjections. These are considered functional words, and they provide structural and relational information in a sentence or phrase.

Don’t worry if it sounds a bit confusing right now. Read ahead and you’ll be a master of the different types of word classes in no time!

All word classes Definition Examples of word classification
Noun A word that represents a person, place, thing, or idea. cat, house, plant
Pronoun A word that is used in place of a noun to avoid repetition. he, she, they, it
Verb A word that expresses action, occurrence, or state of being. run, sing, grow
Adjective A word that describes or modifies a noun or pronoun. blue, tall, happy
Adverb A word that describes or modifies a verb, adjective, or other adverb. quickly, very
Preposition A word that shows the relationship between a noun or pronoun and other words in a sentence. in, on, at
Conjunction A word that connects words, phrases, or clauses. and, or, but
Interjection A word that expresses strong emotions or feelings. wow, oh, ouch
Determiners A word that clarifies information about the quantity, location, or ownership of the noun Articles like ‘the’ and ‘an’, and quantifiers like ‘some’ and ‘all’.

The four main word classes

In the English language, there are four main word classes: nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. Let’s look at all the word classes in detail.

Nouns

Nouns are the words we use to describe people, places, objects, feelings, concepts, etc. Usually, nouns are tangible (touchable) things, such as a table, a person, or a building.

However, we also have abstract nouns, which are things we can feel and describe but can’t necessarily see or touch, such as love, honour, or excitement. Proper nouns are the names we give to specific and official people, places, or things, such as England, Claire, or Hoover.

Cat

House

School

Britain

Harry

Book

Hatred

‘My sister went to school.

Verbs

Verbs are words that show action, event, feeling, or state of being. This can be a physical action or event, or it can be a feeling that is experienced.

Lexical verbs are considered one of the four main word classes, and auxiliary verbs are not. Lexical verbs are the main verb in a sentence that shows action, event, feeling, or state of being, such as walk, ran, felt, and want, whereas an auxiliary verb helps the main verb and expresses grammatical meaning, such as has, is, and do.

Run

Walk

Swim

Curse

Wish

Help

Leave

‘She wished for a sunny day.’

Adjectives

Adjectives are words used to modify nouns, usually by describing them. Adjectives describe an attribute, quality, or state of being of the noun.

Long

Short

Friendly

Broken

Loud

Embarrassed

Dull

Boring

‘The friendly woman wore a beautiful dress.’

Word class, Image of woman in dress, StudySmarterFig 1. Adjectives can describe the woman and the dress

Adverbs

Adverbs are words that work alongside verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs. They provide further descriptions of how, where, when, and how often something is done.

Quickly

Softly

Very

More

Too

Loudly

The music was too loud.’

All of the above examples are lexical word classes and carry most of the meaning in a sentence. They make up the majority of the words in the English language.

The other five word classes

The other five remaining word classes are; prepositions, pronouns, determiners, conjunctions, and interjections. These words are considered functional words and are used to explain grammatical and structural relationships between words.

For example, prepositions can be used to explain where one object is in relation to another.

Prepositions

Prepositions are used to show the relationship between words in terms of place, time, direction, and agency.

In

At

On

Towards

To

Through

Into

By

With

They went through the tunnel.’

Pronouns

Pronouns take the place of a noun or a noun phrase in a sentence. They often refer to a noun that has already been mentioned and are commonly used to avoid repetition.

Chloe (noun) → she (pronoun)

Chloe’s dog → her dog (possessive pronoun)

There are several different types of pronouns; let’s look at some examples of each.

  • He, she, it, they — personal pronouns
  • His, hers, its, theirs, mine, ours — possessive pronouns
  • Himself, herself, myself, ourselves, themselves — reflexive pronouns
  • This, that, those, these — demonstrative pronouns
  • Anyone, somebody, everyone, anything, something — Indefinite pronouns
  • Which, what, that, who, who — Relative pronouns

She sat on the chair which was broken.’

Determiners

Determiners work alongside nouns to clarify information about the quantity, location, or ownership of the noun. It ‘determines’ exactly what is being referred to. Much like pronouns, there are also several different types of determiners.

  • The, a, an — articles
  • This, that, those — you might recognise these for demonstrative pronouns are also determiners
  • One, two, three etc. — cardinal numbers
  • First, second, third etc. — ordinal numbers
  • Some, most, all — quantifiers
  • Other, another — difference words

The first restaurant is better than the other.’

Conjunctions

Conjunctions are words that connect other words, phrases, and clauses together within a sentence. There are three main types of conjunctions;

  • Coordinating conjunctions — these link independent clauses together.

  • Subordinating conjunctions — these link dependent clauses to independent clauses.

  • Correlative conjunctions — words that work in pairs to join two parts of a sentence of equal importance.

For, and, nor, but, or, yet, so — coordinating conjunctions

After, as, because, when, while, before, if, even though — subordinating conjunctions

Either/or, neither/nor, both/and — correlative conjunctions

If it rains, I’m not going out.’

Interjections

Interjections are exclamatory words used to express an emotion or a reaction. They often stand alone from the rest of the sentence and are accompanied by an exclamation mark.

Oh

Oops!

Phew!

Ahh!

Oh, what a surprise!’

Word class: lexical classes and function classes

A helpful way to understand lexical word classes is to see them as the building blocks of sentences. If the lexical word classes are the blocks themselves, then the function word classes are the cement holding the words together and giving structure to the sentence.

Word class, lexical class, functional class, StudySmarterFig 2. Lexical and functional word classes

In this diagram, the lexical classes are in blue and the function classes are in yellow. We can see that the words in blue provide the key information, and the words in yellow bring this information together in a structured way.

Word class examples

Sometimes it can be tricky to know exactly which word class a word belongs to. Some words can function as more than one word class depending on how they are used in a sentence. For this reason, we must look at words in context, i.e. how a word works within the sentence. Take a look at the following examples of word classes to see the importance of word class categorisation.

The dog will bark if you open the door.

The tree bark was dark and rugged.

Here we can see that the same word (bark) has a different meaning and different word class in each sentence. In the first example, ‘bark’ is used as a verb, and in the second as a noun (an object in this case).

I left my sunglasses on the beach.

The horse stood on Sarah’s left foot.

In the first sentence, the word ‘left’ is used as a verb (an action), and in the second, it is used to modify the noun (foot). In this case, it is an adjective.

I run every day

I went for a run

In this example, ‘run’ can be a verb or a noun.

Word Class — Key takeaways

  • We group words into word classes based on the function they perform in a sentence.

  • The four main word classes are nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs. These are lexical classes that give meaning to a sentence.

  • The other five word classes are prepositions, pronouns, determiners, conjunctions, and interjections. These are function classes that are used to explain grammatical and structural relationships between words.

  • It is important to look at the context of a sentence in order to work out which word class a word belongs to.

Frequently Asked Questions about Word Class

A word class is a group of words that have similar properties and play a similar role in a sentence.

Some examples of how some words can function as more than one word class include the way ‘run’ can be a verb (‘I run every day’) or a noun (‘I went for a run’). Similarly, ‘well’ can be an adverb (‘He plays the guitar well’) or an adjective (‘She’s feeling well today’). 

The nine word classes are; Nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, prepositions, pronouns, determiners, conjunctions, interjections.

Categorising words into word classes helps us to understand the function the word is playing within a sentence.

Parts of speech is another term for word classes.

The different groups of word classes include lexical classes that act as the building blocks of a sentence e.g. nouns. The other word classes are function classes that act as the ‘glue’ and give grammatical information in a sentence e.g. prepositions.

The word classes for all, that, and the is:
‘All’ = determiner (quantifier)
‘That’ = pronoun and/or determiner (demonstrative pronoun)
‘The’ = determiner (article)

Final Word Class Quiz

Word Class Quiz — Teste dein Wissen

Question

A word can only belong to one type of noun. True or false?

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Answer

This is false. A word can belong to multiple categories of nouns and this may change according to the context of the word.

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Question

Name the two principal categories of nouns.

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Answer

The two principal types of nouns are ‘common nouns’ and ‘proper nouns’.

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Question

Which of the following is an example of a proper noun?

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Question

Name the 6 types of common nouns discussed in the text.

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Answer

Concrete nouns, abstract nouns, countable nouns, uncountable nouns, collective nouns, and compound nouns.

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Question

What is the difference between a concrete noun and an abstract noun?

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Answer

A concrete noun is a thing that physically exists. We can usually touch this thing and measure its proportions. An abstract noun, however, does not physically exist. It is a concept, idea, or feeling that only exists within the mind.

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Question

Pick out the concrete noun from the following:

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Question

Pick out the abstract noun from the following:

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Question

What is the difference between a countable and an uncountable noun? Can you think of an example for each?

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Answer

A countable noun is a thing that can be ‘counted’, i.e. it can exist in the plural. Some examples include ‘bottle’, ‘dog’ and ‘boy’. These are often concrete nouns. 

An uncountable noun is something that can not be counted, so you often cannot place a number in front of it. Examples include ‘love’, ‘joy’, and ‘milk’.

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Question

Pick out the collective noun from the following:

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Question

What is the collective noun for a group of sheep?

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Answer

The collective noun is a ‘flock’, as in ‘flock of sheep’.

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Question

The word ‘greenhouse’ is a compound noun. True or false?

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Answer

This is true. The word ‘greenhouse’ is a compound noun as it is made up of two separate words ‘green’ and ‘house’. These come together to form a new word.

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Question

What are the adjectives in this sentence?: ‘The little boy climbed up the big, green tree’

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Answer

The adjectives are ‘little’ and ‘big’, and ‘green’ as they describe features about the nouns.

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Question

Place the adjectives in this sentence into the correct order: the wooden blue big ship sailed across the Indian vast scary ocean.

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Answer

The big, blue, wooden ship sailed across the vast, scary, Indian ocean.

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Question

What are the 3 different positions in which an adjective can be placed?

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Answer

An adjective can be placed before a noun (pre-modification), after a noun (post-modification), or following a verb as a complement.

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Question

In this sentence, does the adjective pre-modify or post-modify the noun? ‘The unicorn is angry’.

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Answer

The adjective ‘angry’ post-modifies the noun ‘unicorn’.

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Question

In this sentence, does the adjective pre-modify or post-modify the noun? ‘It is a scary unicorn’.

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Answer

The adjective ‘scary’ pre-modifies the noun ‘unicorn’.

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Question

What kind of adjectives are ‘purple’ and ‘shiny’?

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Answer

‘Purple’ and ‘Shiny’ are qualitative adjectives as they describe a quality or feature of a noun

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Question

What kind of adjectives are ‘ugly’ and ‘easy’?

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Answer

The words ‘ugly’ and ‘easy’ are evaluative adjectives as they give a subjective opinion on the noun.

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Question

Which of the following adjectives is an absolute adjective?

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Question

Which of these adjectives is a classifying adjective?

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Question

Convert the noun ‘quick’ to its comparative form.

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Answer

The comparative form of ‘quick’ is ‘quicker’.

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Question

Convert the noun ‘slow’ to its superlative form.

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Answer

The comparative form of ‘slow’ is ‘slowest’.

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Question

What is an adjective phrase?

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Answer

An adjective phrase is a group of words that is ‘built’ around the adjective (it takes centre stage in the sentence). For example, in the phrase ‘the dog is big’ the word ‘big’ is the most important information.

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Question

Give 2 examples of suffixes that are typical of adjectives.

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Answer

Suffixes typical of adjectives include -able, -ible, -ful, -y, -less, -ous, -some, -ive, -ish, -al.

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Question

What is the difference between a main verb and an auxiliary verb?

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Answer

A main verb is a verb that can stand on its own and carries most of the meaning in a verb phrase. For example, ‘run’, ‘find’. Auxiliary verbs cannot stand alone, instead, they work alongside a main verb and ‘help’ the verb to express more grammatical information e.g. tense, mood, possibility.

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Question

What is the difference between a primary auxiliary verb and a modal auxiliary verb?

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Answer

Primary auxiliary verbs consist of the various forms of ‘to have’, ‘to be’, and ‘to do’ e.g. ‘had’, ‘was’, ‘done’. They help to express a verb’s tense, voice, or mood. Modal auxiliary verbs show possibility, ability, permission, or obligation. There are 9 auxiliary verbs including ‘could’, ‘will’, might’.

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Question

Which of the following are primary auxiliary verbs?

  • Is

  • Play

  • Have

  • Run

  • Does

  • Could

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Answer

The primary auxiliary verbs in this list are ‘is’, ‘have’, and ‘does’. They are all forms of the main primary auxiliary verbs ‘to have’, ‘to be’, and ‘to do’. ‘Play’ and ‘run’ are main verbs and ‘could’ is a modal auxiliary verb.

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Question

Name 6 out of the 9 modal auxiliary verbs.

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Answer

Answers include: Could, would, should, may, might, can, will, must, shall

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Question

‘The fairies were asleep’. In this sentence, is the verb ‘were’ a linking verb or an auxiliary verb?

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Answer

The word ‘were’ is used as a linking verb as it stands alone in the sentence. It is used to link the subject (fairies) and the adjective (asleep).

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Question

What is the difference between dynamic verbs and stative verbs?

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Answer

A dynamic verb describes an action or process done by a noun or subject. They are thought of as ‘action verbs’ e.g. ‘kick’, ‘run’, ‘eat’. Stative verbs describe the state of being of a person or thing. These are states that are not necessarily physical action e.g. ‘know’, ‘love’, ‘suppose’.

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Question

Which of the following are dynamic verbs and which are stative verbs?

  • Drink

  • Prefer

  • Talk

  • Seem

  • Understand

  • Write

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Answer

The dynamic verbs are ‘drink’, ‘talk’, and ‘write’ as they all describe an action. The stative verbs are ‘prefer’, ‘seem’, and ‘understand’ as they all describe a state of being.

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Question

What is an imperative verb?

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Answer

Imperative verbs are verbs used to give orders, give instructions, make a request or give warning. They tell someone to do something. For example, ‘clean your room!’.

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Question

Inflections give information about tense, person, number, mood, or voice. True or false?

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Question

What information does the inflection ‘-ing’ give for a verb?

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Answer

The inflection ‘-ing’ is often used to show that an action or state is continuous and ongoing.

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Question

How do you know if a verb is irregular?

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Answer

An irregular verb does not take the regular inflections, instead the whole word is spelt a different way. For example, begin becomes ‘began’ or ‘begun’. We can’t add the regular past tense inflection -ed as this would become ‘beginned’ which doesn’t make sense.

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Question

Suffixes can never signal what word class a word belongs to. True or false?

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Answer

False. Suffixes can signal what word class a word belongs to. For example, ‘-ify’ is a common suffix for verbs (‘identity’, ‘simplify’)

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Question

A verb phrase is built around a noun. True or false?

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Answer

False. A verb phrase is a group of words that has a main verb along with any other auxiliary verbs that ‘help’ the main verb. For example, ‘could eat’ is a verb phrase as it contains a main verb (‘could’) and an auxiliary verb (‘could’).

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Question

Which of the following are multi-word verbs? 

  • Shake

  • Rely on

  • Dancing

  • Look up to

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Answer

The verbs ‘rely on’ and ‘look up to’ are multi-word verbs as they consist of a verb that has one or more prepositions or particles linked to it.

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Question

What is the difference between a transition verb and an intransitive verb?

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Answer

Transitive verbs are verbs that require an object in order to make sense. For example, the word ‘bring’ requires an object that is brought (‘I bring news’). Intransitive verbs do not require an object to complete the meaning of the sentence e.g. ‘exist’ (‘I exist’).

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Answer

An adverb is a word that gives more information about a verb, adjective, another adverb, or a full clause.

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Question

What are the 3 ways we can use adverbs?

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Answer

We can use adverbs to modify a word (modifying adverbs), to intensify a word (intensifying adverbs), or to connect two clauses (connecting adverbs).

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Question

What are modifying adverbs?

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Answer

Modifying adverbs are words that modify verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs. They add further information about the word.

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Question

‘Additionally’, ‘likewise’, and ‘consequently’ are examples of connecting adverbs. True or false?

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Answer

True! Connecting adverbs are words used to connect two independent clauses.

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Question

What are intensifying adverbs?

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Answer

Intensifying adverbs are words used to strengthen the meaning of an adjective, another adverb, or a verb. In other words, they ‘intensify’ another word.

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Question

Which of the following are intensifying adverbs?

  • Calmly

  • Incredibly

  • Enough

  • Greatly

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Answer

The intensifying adverbs are ‘incredibly’ and ‘greatly’. These strengthen the meaning of a word.

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Question

Name the main types of adverbs

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Answer

The main adverbs are; adverbs of place, adverbs of time, adverbs of manner, adverbs of frequency, adverbs of degree, adverbs of probability, and adverbs of purpose.

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Question

What are adverbs of time?

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Answer

Adverbs of time are the ‘when?’ adverbs. They answer the question ‘when is the action done?’ e.g. ‘I’ll do it tomorrow

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Question

Which of the following are adverbs of frequency?

  • Usually

  • Patiently

  • Occasionally

  • Nowhere

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Answer

The adverbs of frequency are ‘usually’ and ‘occasionally’. They are the ‘how often?’ adverbs. They answer the question ‘how often is the action done?’. 

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Question

What are adverbs of place?

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Answer

Adverbs of place are the ‘where?’ adverbs. They answer the question ‘where is the action done?’. For example, ‘outside’ or ‘elsewhere’.

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Question

Which of the following are adverbs of manner?

  • Never

  • Carelessly

  • Kindly

  • Inside

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Answer

The words ‘carelessly’ and ‘kindly’ are adverbs of manner. They are the ‘how?’ adverbs that answer the question ‘how is the action done?’. 

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In English grammar, a word class is a set of words that display the same formal properties, especially their inflections and distribution. The term «word class» is similar to the more traditional term, part of speech. It is also variously called grammatical category, lexical category, and syntactic category (although these terms are not wholly or universally synonymous).

The two major families of word classes are lexical (or open or form) classes (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs) and function (or closed or structure) classes (determiners, particles, prepositions, and others).

Examples and Observations

  • «When linguists began to look closely at English grammatical structure in the 1940s and 1950s, they encountered so many problems of identification and definition that the term part of speech soon fell out of favor, word class being introduced instead. Word classes are equivalent to parts of speech, but defined according to strict linguistic criteria.» (David Crystal, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press, 2003)
  • «There is no single correct way of analyzing words into word classes…Grammarians disagree about the boundaries between the word classes (see gradience), and it is not always clear whether to lump subcategories together or to split them. For example, in some grammars…pronouns are classed as nouns, whereas in other frameworks…they are treated as a separate word class.» (Bas Aarts, Sylvia Chalker, Edmund Weiner, The Oxford Dictionary of English Grammar, 2nd ed. Oxford University Press, 2014)

Form Classes and Structure Classes

«[The] distinction between lexical and grammatical meaning determines the first division in our classification: form-class words and structure-class words. In general, the form classes provide the primary lexical content; the structure classes explain the grammatical or structural relationship. Think of the form-class words as the bricks of the language and the structure words as the mortar that holds them together.»

The form classes also known as content words or open classes include:

  • Nouns
  • Verbs
  • Adjectives
  • Adverbs

The structure classes, also known as function words or closed classes, include:

  • Determiners
  • Pronouns
  • Auxiliaries
  • Conjunctions
  • Qualifiers
  • Interrogatives
  • Prepositions
  • Expletives
  • Particles

«Probably the most striking difference between the form classes and the structure classes is characterized by their numbers. Of the half million or more words in our language, the structure words—with some notable exceptions—can be counted in the hundreds. The form classes, however, are large, open classes; new nouns and verbs and adjectives and adverbs regularly enter the language as new technology and new ideas require them.» (Martha Kolln and Robert Funk, Understanding English Grammar. Allyn and Bacon, 1998)

One Word, Multiple Classes

«Items may belong to more than one class. In most instances, we can only assign a word to a word class when we encounter it in context. Looks is a verb in ‘It looks good,’ but a noun in ‘She has good looks‘; that is a conjunction in ‘I know that they are abroad,’ but a pronoun in ‘I know that‘ and a determiner in ‘I know that man’; one is a generic pronoun in ‘One must be careful not to offend them,’ but a numeral in ‘Give me one good reason.'» (Sidney Greenbaum, Oxford English Grammar. Oxford University Press, 1996)

Suffixes as Signals

«We recognize the class of a word by its use in context. Some words have suffixes (endings added to words to form new words) that help to signal the class they belong to. These suffixes are not necessarily sufficient in themselves to identify the class of a word. For example, -ly is a typical suffix for adverbs (slowly, proudly), but we also find this suffix in adjectives: cowardly, homely, manly. And we can sometimes convert words from one class to another even though they have suffixes that are typical of their original class: an engineer, to engineer; a negative response, a negative(Sidney Greenbaum and Gerald Nelson, An Introduction to English Grammar, 3rd ed. Pearson, 2009)

A Matter of Degree

«[N]ot all the members of a class will necessarily have all the identifying properties. Membership in a particular class is really a matter of degree. In this regard, grammar is not so different from the real world. There are prototypical sports like ‘football’ and not so sporty sports like ‘darts.’ There are exemplary mammals like ‘dogs’ and freakish ones like the ‘platypus.’ Similarly, there are good examples of verbs like watch and lousy examples like beware; exemplary nouns like chair that display all the features of a typical noun and some not so good ones like Kenny (Kersti Börjars and Kate Burridge, Introducing English Grammar, 2nd ed. Hodder, 2010)

Words are the building blocks in any sentence. They just don’t ‘mean’ something, they ‘do’ something in every sentence. Hence words are grouped into word classes based on what they do. A word class is a group of words that have certain common features. The term “word class” is analogous to the more conventional term, “part of speech.” It is also variously named grammatical category, lexical category, and syntactic category.

  • Types of Word Classes
  • Open and Closed Word Classes
  • Open Word Classes
  • Closed Word Classes
  • How to identify the word classes in a sentence?
  • How to classify a word class?
  • What is the difference between a word class and part of speech?

Word classes can be divided into two families:

  • Lexical Classes: Also known as open classes and form classes. The lexical classes include nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.
  • Function Classes: Also known as closed classes and structure classes. Includes: pronouns, determiners, conjunctions, prepositions, and interjections.

Open and Closed Word Classes

As previously mentioned some word classes are open, that is, the class can be expanded with the addition of new words. Take the example of the class of nouns, it is potentially infinite as the number of words in the class is increasing as new scientific and technological discoveries are made.

The latter half of the twentieth century witnessed developments in computer technology which have in turn given rise to many new nouns like the Internet, URL website, bitmap, email, etc.

On the other hand, the word classes of prepositions, determiners, or conjunctions are known as closed word classes. Words like of, the, and but come under these. They are named closed word classes because they consist of a definite set of words. These classes never expand even though the words included in the class may change their spelling.

Open Word Classes

1) Nouns

This class includes words that you frequently use in everyday life. Nouns are most commonly understood as “naming” words, that is, it performs the function of naming “people, places or things”.

  • A person – Boy, Girl, John, etc
  • A thing- House, Dog, etc
  • A place- China, America, etc

However, the use of nouns is not restricted to just names of people, places, or things. Nouns also denote abstract and intangible concepts such as an idea, quality, or state. Example: Danger, Happiness, Love, etc.

2) Verbs

The words that you use to describe an action are known as verbs. Hence verbs are generally known as “action” words. Have a look at the given example: Rahul rides a scooter. The verb in the above sentence denotes an action that Rahul performs which is the action of riding a scooter.

However, the idea of verbs as “action” words is somewhat restricted. Many verbs don’t stand for action at all as in the given instance: Rahul seems desperate. We cannot say that the verb ‘seems ‘ refer to an action.

3) Adverbs

In English, an adverb describes a word that alters the meaning of a verb, adjective, or another adverb. Adverbs in a sentence give you more information about the sentence. They are used to express how an action is fulfilled. Adverbs can broadly be categorized into Simple Adverbs, IInterrogative adverbs, and Relative Adverbs.

Remember:

  • Most adverbs end with the common ending – ly.
  • An adverb that modifies an adjective or another adverb usually goes before it.

4) Adjectives

Adjectives describe the quality of a noun. For example They stay in a beautiful house

The word beautiful indicates or refers to one of the attributes of the house that is described. Hence beautiful becomes the adjective in the above sentence.

A point to keep in mind: Some adjectives can be identified by their ending. Typical adjective endings include: able, al, ful, ic, etc.

You can even try out our other articles on How to Improve Your Vocabulary as well to expand your knowledge base.

Closed Word Classes

1) Determiners

You might have often noticed that nouns are preceded by words like the, a, or an. These words are known as Determiners. They suggest the type of reference that the noun has.

  • The determiner ‘the’ is called a Definite Article. It can be placed both before singular and plural nouns. For example The Taxi, The taxis
  • The determiner a or an is known as the Indefinite Article. It is used along with a singular noun. Example: A taxi

Apart from these, many other determiners express quantity. These include ‘al’, ‘both’, ‘many’ etc.

2) Conjunctions

These are used to express connections between different words.

Example: John and David are friends. And is used as a conjunction in the given sentence.
The most familiar conjunctions in English are: and, but, and or.

Conjunctions are further divided into two:

  • Coordinating Conjunctions: These conjunctions connect elements of equal syntactic structure. Example: Paul and David study together.
  • Subordinating Conjunctions: Connects elements of unequal syntactic structure. Example: I left early because I had an interview the next day.

3) Prepositions

Prepositions indicate the relation between different words. They occur before a noun, pronoun, or noun phrase and indicate a direction, time, place, location, and spatial relationship. Common prepositions include across, after, at, before, by, during, from, in, into, of, on, to, under, with, without, etc.

4) Pronouns

If we did not have the pronoun word families we would have to repeat a whole lot of nouns. A word that takes the position of a noun is named as a pronoun. Pronouns can be employed as a substitute for a noun.

  • Pronouns are divided into 5 categories:
  • Personal Pronouns: I, you, she, etc
  • Demonstrative Pronouns: This, these, etc
  • Possessive Pronouns: Yours, His, etc
  • Interrogative Pronouns: Which, What, etc
  • Reflexive Pronouns: Herself, Himself, etc.
  • Reciprocal Pronouns: Each other
  • Indefinite Pronouns: Few, Nobody, etc.
  • Relative Pronouns: Which, Whom, etc.

5) Interjections

Short exclamations like Oh!, Ah! etc are known as Interjections. Even though they have no grammatical value, we often use them in daily speech. Interjections are primarily used to express emotions such as anger, surprise, etc. Given below are a few examples.

Well! That hurts
Hey! Don’t be so clumsy

Remember, an interjection is always followed by an exclamation mark.

Read More:

  • English Idioms
  • Literary Devices

FAQs on Word Classes

1. How to identify the word classes in a sentence?

A word class is a group of words that have certain common features. To find out the word classes within a sentence it is important that you familiarise yourself with the most common word classes in English. These include nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, prepositions, etc.

2. How to classify a word class?

Word classes in English belong to two major categories. These are Open word classes that include nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. The second category is closed word classes that include: pronouns, determiners, interjections, etc.

3. What is the difference between a word class and part of speech?

The term “word class” is analogous to the more conventional term, “part of speech”. Both these terms refer to a group of words that have certain common features.

Conclusion

To understand the grammatical structures of sentences in a better way it’s best if you begin with word classes. Even though comprehending the different word classes may initially be a hectic task, once you master word classes, you will reach the exact meaning or message conveyed by a sentence.

Word Classes

Unit 1: Education and
Humanity (Page 9)

Word classes

A. Word class refers to the category of
words of similar form or function. Another name of word class is a part of
speech. In the text below, certain words are underlined. While you read, try to
identify which word class they belong to.

Most governments around the world have temporarily closed
educational institutions in an attempt to contain the spread of the COVID-19
pandemic. These nationwide closures are impacting over 60% of the world’s
student population. Some 1 billion students and youth across the planet are
affected by school and university closures due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
Several other countries have implemented localized closures impacting millions
of additional learners. UNESCO is supporting countries in their efforts to
mitigate the immediate impact of school closures, particularly for more
vulnerable and disadvantaged communities, and to facilitate the continuity of education
for all through remote learning.
English: Grade 11

The Global Education Coalition launched by UNESCO seeks to
facilitate inclusive learning opportunities for children and youth during this
period of sudden and unprecedented educational disruption. Investment in remote
learning should both mitigate the immediate disruption caused by COVID-19 and
establish approaches to develop more open and flexible education systems for
the future. The Global Coalition members and prospective members are encouraged
to pledge for the protection of learners’ personal information, privacy and
security.

In the text, the
underlined words belong to different word classes or parts of speech.

governments — noun

temporarily — adverb

affected — verb

and — conjunction

in — preposition

immediate — adjective

the — determiner

B. Classify the
underlined words into different word classes.

a. The man who is
wearing glasses is my uncle’s friend.

b. I bought a round
table in the supermarket.

c. Alas, she is
dead.

d. Hari works very hard
all the time but his wife is very lazy.

e. I have never
been to Japan.

Answer: a. who-
connective, wearing- verb, my-determiner

              b. round-
adjective, the-determiner

              c. Alas-
interjection, is-verb

              d. hard- adverb,
but- connective, wife- noun

              e. never- adverb,
to- preposition

C. Read a paragraph
of an English newspaper and make a list of about

20 words.
Categorize them into different ‘Word classes’. You can refer

to the grammar book
for help.

honour-
noun                           so that-
conjunction

speaking-
verb                         against-
preposition

honourable-
adjective               really- adverb

person-
noun                            she-
pronoun

know-
verb                               upon-
preposition

activists-
noun                          and- conjunction

up-
preposition                         Wow-
interjection

the-
determiner                         strength-
noun

but-
conjuction                         simply-
adverb

weakness-
noun                        Ouch-
interjection

For grammar of

Next unit (unit 2) CLICK HERE.

(For rules go to
grammar rules section of this blog.)

The words
of language, depending on various formal and semantic features,
are divided into grammatically relevant sets or classes. The
tra­ditional grammatical classes of words are called «parts
of speech». Since the
word is distinguished not only by grammatical, but also by
semantico-lexemic properties, some scholars refer to parts of speech
as «lexico-grammatical»
series of words, or as «lexico-grammatical categories.

It
should be noted that the term «part of speech» is purely
traditional and
conventional, it cannot be taken as in any way defining or
explana­tory. This name was introduced in the grammatical
teaching of Ancient Greece, where the concept of the sentence was not
yet explicitly identi­fied
in distinction to the general idea of speech, and where,
consequently, no
strict differentiation was drawn between the word as a vocabulary
unit and the word as a functional element of the sentence.

In
modern linguistics, parts of speech are discriminated on the basis of
the three
criteria
:
«semantic»,
«formal», and «functional»
.

The
se­mantic
criterion
presupposes the evaluation of the generalized meaning, which
is characteristic of all the subsets of words constituting a given
part of speech. This meaning is understood as the «categorial
meaning of
the part of speech».

The
formal
criterion
provides for the exposition of the
specific inflexional and derivational (word-building) features of
allthe
lexemic subsets of a part of speech.

The
functional
criterion
concerns the
syntactic role of words in the sentence typical of a part of speech.
The said
three factors of categorial characterization of words are
conven­tionally
referred to as, respectively, «meaning», «form»,
and «function».

In accord
with the described criteria, words on the upper level of
classification
are divided into notional
and functional,
which reflects their division
in the earlier grammatical tradition into changeable and
un­changeable.

To the
notional
parts of speech

of the English language belong the noun, the adjective, the numeral,
the pronoun, the verb, the adverb.

Contrasted against the
notional parts of speech are words of incom­plete nominative
meaning and non-self-dependent, mediatory functions in the sentence.
These are functional parts of speech.

To
the basic functional
series of words

in English belong the article, the
preposition, the conjunction, the particle, the modal word, the
inter­jection.

Each part of speech after its
identification is further subdivided into subseries in accord with
various particular semantico-functional and formal features of the
constituent words. This subdivision is some­times called
«subcategorization» of parts of speech.

Thus, nouns
are subcategorized into proper and common, ani­mate and
inanimate, countable and uncountable, concrete and ab­stract,
etc.

Verbs
are subcategorized into fully predicative and partially pred­icative,
transitive and intransitive, actional and statal, purely nomi­native
and evaluative, etc.

Adjectives
are subcategorized into qualitative and relative, of con­stant
feature and temporary feature (the latter are referred to as
«statives» and identified by some scholars as a separate
part of speech un­der the heading of «category of state»),
factual and evaluative, etc.

The adverb,
the numeral, the pronoun are also subject to the cor­responding
subcategorizations.

We have
drawn a general outline of the division of the lexicon into part
of speech classes developed by modern linguists on the lines of
tra­ditional
morphology.

Alongside
the three-criteria principle of dividing the words into grammatical
(lexico-grammatical) classes, modern linguistics has de­veloped
another, narrower principle
of word-class identification based on syntactic featuring of words

only.

The fact is
that the three-criteria principle faces a special difficulty in
determining the part of speech status of such lexemes as have
mor­phological characteristics of notional words, but are
essentially distin­guished from notional words by their playing
the role of grammatical mediators in phrases and sentences. Here
belong, for instance, modal verbs
together with their equivalents — suppletive fillers, auxiliary
verbs, aspective
verbs, intensifying adverbs, determiner pronouns. This diffi­culty,
consisting in the intersection of heterogeneous properties in the
established
word-classes, can evidently be overcome by recognizing only one
criterion of the three as decisive.

Comparing
the syntactico-distributional classification of words with the
traditional part of speech division of words, one cannot but see the
similarity of the general schemes of the two: the opposition of
notional and
functional words, the four absolutely cardinal classes of notional
words (since numerals and pronouns have no positional functions of
their
own and serve as pro-nounal and pro-adjectival elements), the
in­terpretation of functional words as syntactic mediators and
their formal representation
by the list.

However,
under these unquestionable traits of similarity are distinctly
revealed
essential features of difference, the proper evaluation of which
allows us to make some important generalizations about the structure
of the
lexemic system of language.

As
a result of the undertaken analysis

we have obtained a founda­tion
for dividing the whole of the lexicon at the upper level of
classifica­tion
into three unequal parts.

The
first part of the lexicon forming an open set includes an
indefi­nitely large number of notional words which have a
complete nomina­tive
function. In accord with the said function, these words can be re
ferred to as «names»: nouns as substance names, verbs as
process names, adjectives
as primary property names and adverbs as secondary proper­ty
names. The whole notional set is represented by the four-stage
deriva­tional
paradigm of nomination.

The
second part of the lexicon forming a closed set includes substi­tutes
of names (pro-names). Here belong pronouns, and also broad-mean­ing
notional words which constitute various marginal subsets.

The
third part of the lexicon also forming a closed set includes
spec­ifiers
of names. These are function-categorial words of various
servo-status.

Substitutes
of names (pro-names) and specifiers of names, while stand­ing
with the names in nominative correlation as elements of the lexicon,
at
the same time serve as connecting links between the names within the
lexicon
and their actual uses in the sentences of living speech.

ЛИТЕРАТУРА:

  1. Блох, М.Я.
    Теоретическая грамматика английского
    языка : Учеб. / М.Я. Блох. – 5–е изд.,
    стер. – М. : Высш. шк., 2006. – 423 с.

  2. Блох, М.Я.
    Теоретические основы грамматики :
    учеб. / М.Я. Блох. – 3–е изд., испр. –
    М. : Высш. шк., 2002. – 160 с.

  3. Blokh,
    M.Y. A course in theoretical English grammar / M.Y. Blokh. –
    M., 1983.

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