The word take is what part of speech

Table of Contents

  1. What tense is the word take?
  2. Is taking a verb or noun?
  3. Is take a verb or adjective?
  4. What is pretty in parts of speech?
  5. Is took a real word?
  6. How do you use the word took in a sentence?
  7. What grasp means?
  8. How do you spell hour?
  9. What is the meaning of one hour?
  10. What is this word hour?
  11. What is 30 minutes called?
  12. What is Day mean?
  13. Is our a word?
  14. What is our in grammar?
  15. What is the word our in grammar?
  16. What word can I use instead of our?
  17. What can I say instead of like?
  18. What to say instead of says?
  19. What can I say instead of sorry?
  20. How do you apologize officially?
  21. How do you say I’m sorry without saying I’m sorry?
  22. How do you apologize sincerely?
  23. How do you apologize sincerely example?
  24. What is a genuine apology?
  25. How do you apologize sincerely in an email?
  26. How do you apologize professionally?

Become a Study.com member to unlock this answer! The word ‘took’ is a verb, so it shows action in a sentence. Specifically, it is the simple past tense of the irregular verb ‘take.

What tense is the word take?

The simple past tense of take is ‘took’. ‘Take’ is an irregular verb. The past participle is ‘taken’.

Is taking a verb or noun?

verb (used with object), took, tak·en, tak·ing. to get into one’s hold or possession by voluntary action: to take a cigarette out of a box; to take a pen and begin to write.

Is take a verb or adjective?

take (verb) take (noun) take–charge (adjective) take–no–prisoners (adjective)

What is pretty in parts of speech?

Pretty. We can use pretty as an adverb, before an adjective or another adverb, meaning ‘quite, but not extremely’.

Is took a real word?

verb. simple past tense of take. Nonstandard. a past participle of take.

How do you use the word took in a sentence?

Took sentence example

  1. What took you so long?
  2. She grabbed the coffee cup and took a sip as she stepped around him.
  3. Edward took the paper and thanked the kind minister.
  4. He came up behind her and took the coffee cup from her hands, sitting it on the table.
  5. Carmen took a breath.

What grasp means?

1 : to take or seize eagerly grasp the opportunity for advancement. 2 : to clasp or embrace especially with the fingers or arms grasped the pen and began writing. 3 : to lay hold of with the mind : comprehend failed to grasp the danger of the situation.

How do you spell hour?

Correct spelling for the English word “hour” is [ˈa͡ʊ͡ə], [ˈa‍ʊ‍ə], [ˈaʊə] (IPA phonetic alphabet).

What is the meaning of one hour?

A period of time equal to 1/24 (a twenty-fourth) of a day. 1 Day = 24 Hours. 1 Hour = 60 minutes. Example: The amount of time between 5:00 and 6:00 is one hour.

What is this word hour?

1 : a time or office for daily liturgical devotion especially : canonical hour. 2 : the 24th part of a day : 60 minutes. 3a : the time of day reckoned in two 12-hour periods.

What is 30 minutes called?

30 minutes is usually called half an hour, 15 minutes can be called a quarter of an hour, and 45 minutes can be called three-quarters of an hour.

What is Day mean?

A day is approximately the period during which the Earth completes one rotation around its axis, which takes around 24 hours. A solar day is the length of time which elapses between the Sun reaching its highest point in the sky two consecutive times.

Is our a word?

Our is an adjective – Word Type.

What is our in grammar?

· Grammar. Possessive pronouns show that something belongs to someone. The possessive pronouns are my, our, your, his, her, its, and their. There’s also an “independent” form of each of these pronouns: mine, ours, yours, his, hers, its, and theirs. Possessive pronouns are never spelled with apostrophes.

What is the word our in grammar?

pronoun. (a form of the possessive case of we used as an attributive adjective): Our team is going to win.

What word can I use instead of our?

In this page you can discover 24 synonyms, antonyms, idiomatic expressions, and related words for our, like: ours, our own, used by us, due to us, owned by us, belonging to us, a part of us, of us, with us, in our employ and near us.

What can I say instead of like?

In place of “like,” try, “for example,” “say,” “nearly,” or “about.” Eventually, you may want to correct for additional words altogether, but for now, use these words as a crutch to stop using “like.”

What to say instead of says?

272 Words to Use Instead of “Said”

accused corrected lamented
argued demurred mumbled
asked denied murmured
asserted described mused
assured disagreed muttered

What can I say instead of sorry?

The following are some of the phrases and words you can use instead of Sorry to prove your point.

  • Say Thank You.
  • Actions Speak Louder than Words.
  • Replace “I am Sorry” with “I Desire”
  • Apologize Without Using the Word Sorry.
  • A Simply Sorry is Nothing Without Any Sympathy.
  • Do Not Apologize for Bothering People.

How do you apologize officially?

The Elements of a Good Apology Letter

  1. Say you’re sorry. Not, “I’m sorry, but . . .” Just plain ol’ “I’m sorry.”
  2. Own the mistake. It’s important to show the wronged person that you’re willing to take responsibility for your actions.
  3. Describe what happened.
  4. Have a plan.
  5. Admit you were wrong.
  6. Ask for forgiveness.

How do you say I’m sorry without saying I’m sorry?

Eight Ways to Apologize Without Saying “I’m Sorry”

  1. It’s unfortunate that…
  2. How sad for you that (this) happened…
  3. I sympathize with your situation/disappointment/frustration…
  4. What a shame that…
  5. Will you please forgive my insensitivity/error/indiscretion…
  6. I am completely at fault here, and I apologize…

How do you apologize sincerely?

I realize I hurt your feelings, and I’m sorry,” acknowledges that you know what it was you said that hurt the other person, and you take responsibility for it. Don’t make assumptions and don’t try to shift the blame. Make it clear that you regret your actions and that you are sincerely sorry.

How do you apologize sincerely example?

For example, you could say: “I’m sorry that I snapped at you yesterday. I feel embarrassed and ashamed by the way I acted.” Your words need to be sincere and authentic . Be honest with yourself, and with the other person, about why you want to apologize.

What is a genuine apology?

An apology containing the words “if” or “but” is not a real apology. Saying “I’m sorry if I hurt you” signals that we’re not accepting that we did caused the hurt. You’re so neglectful!” A genuine apology means we feel sorry for our behavior and for how our behavior caused hurt.

How do you apologize sincerely in an email?

Apologize sincerely – Start your email by simply saying you’re sorry, not “I’m sorry but…” A recipient should feel that you really mean it. Writing “I’m sorry that you took my words so emotionally” just shifts blame on the wronged person and makes them feel even worse.

How do you apologize professionally?

How to apologize professionally in an email

  1. Explain what happened simply. While there’s no need for a detailed play-by-play, your recipient does need some context about what happened.
  2. Acknowledge your error. Don’t tiptoe around this.
  3. Apologize.
  4. Commit to doing better.
  5. Close gracefully.

The word “THE” is a Definite Article and an Adverb.Take a look at the definitions and examples below and you will see how this little word can be used as different parts of speech.

 1. Definite Article

This word “The” is considered as a definite article because it is used to refer to something specific. It is also placed before a noun, if the audience already knows what is being referred to (there is only one or the subject has already been mentioned). For example, let’s look at the sentence below:

The pope will visit the Philippines in 2015.”

The” is used because there is only one pope in the whole world.

Definition:

a. used to indicate a person or thing that has already been mentioned or seen or is clearly understood from the situation

  • Joe is the tallest boy in class.

b. used to refer to things or people that are common in daily life

  • The moon is aligned between the Sun and the Earth.

c. used to refer to things that occur in nature

  • The inner planets of the solar system are denser compared to the outer planets.

2. Adverb

Aside from acting as a definite article, “The” can also be used as an adverb. Take for example the sentence below:

“Since getting a new computer, he was able to produce outputs all the quicker.”

In that sentence, “the” serves as an adverb because it modifies the adjective quicker. Take note that the word can only be used as an adverb if it is used together with an adjective or another adverb which is in the comparative degree.

Definition:

a. than before: than otherwise —used before a comparative

  • The sooner the better.

b. to what extent

  • Mercury is the most cratered planet in our Solar System.

c. beyond all others

  • The more the merrier.

If you’ve ever found yourself wondering what part of speech a word is, you’re not alone. In this lesson, we’ll explore how to answer that question as well as why that answer can seem a bit confusing. You’ll also find a quiz at the bottom of the page so that you can test yourself, along with a free PDF download. Jackpot!

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If you’d like to print it out and you’re serious about conserving the ink in your printer, print only pages 4, 9, 10, and 11. 

Pop quiz, hot shot! Let’s say you’re at the grocery store deciding between chunky and creamy peanut butter (tough choice) when someone walks up to you and asks, «What part of speech is the word love

Obviously, the first thing to do is run away from this person. But then, your mind might linger on that question, and you might start to wonder Hmm … what part of speech is the word love anyway?

At that point, you would probably think of some example sentences to figure it out.

I love peanut butter. 

From this sentence, you might conclude that love is a verb since you know that verbs express action, and love is showing an action in this sentence.

You wouldn’t be wrong, but then you might think of this sentence:

Love for peanut butter brought me to the store today. 

Wait a minute! Here, love is a noun. It’s an idea, and it’s the subject of the sentence. What’s the deal? How can love be a verb and a noun?

Here’s a secret about the parts of speech that many people don’t realize: 

Many words can function as more than one part of speech.

They will only be doing one part-of-speech job at a time, though. In our example sentences above, we can see that love can be a verb and a noun, and we can also see that it’s doing just one of those jobs in each sentence.

How can you figure out what part(s) of speech a word can be, and how will you know what the word is acting as in any given sentence?

The first thing to do is to study the parts of speech and understand how they work. 

Here’s what you can do after you have a sense of what the parts of speech are and how they work:

What part(s) of speech can this word be?

Look up the word in a dictionary. Dictionaries will show you the possible parts of speech that a word can function as. You can use a dictionary that’s an actual book, an online dictionary, or your device’s built-in dictionary. The dictionary will list each word’s possible part of speech, and it will give you definitions for all of the meanings of a word within each part of speech. 

What part of speech is this word in this sentence?

In order to figure out how a word is functioning, we need to look at the word within the context of a sentence. Look over your sentence, and then open up your dictionary. Match the meaning of the word in your sentence with the most fitting dictionary definition. Then you’ll be able to tell what part of speech it is in your sentence.

Let’s look at two examples of words acting as different parts of speech.

We’ll look at the words for and iron, and we’ll see them acting as different parts of speech. We’ll also take a peek at what the dictionary says for each word. 

What part of speech are the words in bold?

I asked for pie. 

I cried, for I knew that the pie was gone.

Where is the iron

Please iron my shirt.

For

I asked for pie. (preposition)

1. Just below the word that you look up, you’ll find a listing for a part of speech. The first listing is usually the most common way that the word is used. For is most commonly used as a preposition. 

2. Next, you’ll find definitions of the word for each part of speech. If there is more than one definition, they’ll be numbered. There are many definitions for for as a preposition, and here you can see two.

3. After the definition, you’ll often find an example of how to use the word as that part of speech and definition. You can see the examples in italics. 

I cried, for I knew that the pie was gone. (conjunction)

1. Below all of the definitions for for as a preposition, we can see a listing for another part of speech. It’s here that we see that for can also be a conjunction.  

2. Here’s the definition. It’s not numbered because there is only one entry for for as a conjunction. 

3. Here is an example sentence for us. (It’s strange, though, that they also used for as a preposition in this example as well as a conjunction!)

Iron

Where is the iron? (noun)

1. The first part of speech listed under iron is noun. 

2. The first two definitions of iron as a noun weren’t the ones used in the sentence above, but the third entry was what I was looking for. 

3. They don’t give us an example sentence. Boohoo!

Please iron my shirt. (verb)

1. Underneath all of the definitions for iron as a noun, I came here which let me know that iron can also be used as a verb.

2. There’s only one definition for iron as a verb, so they didn’t number this entry. 

3. Again, there’s no example sentence. Perhaps everyone at the dictionary company called in sick on the day that they had to write example sentences for iron

Test Yourself

I. Label the Parts of Speech

Directions: Name the part of speech for the underlined word in each sentence. Use a dictionary if you need one. For extra credit, diagram the sentences. :) Scroll down to see the answers.

1. LIGHT

a) I will light the fire.

b) Can you see that red light?

c) This light jacket isn’t warm enough.

2. FAST 

a) Hadley is a fast runner.

b) The 12-hour fast cleared my mind.

c) He drives fast!

3. GENERAL

a) I had a general sense of how it works. 

b) The general sank low in his chair.

4. BEFORE

a) Practice piano before you play with your friends.

b) Practice piano before dinner.

5. ROLL

a) Roll the dice.

b) I will eat the soup with a roll.

6. LIKE

a) I like old books.

b) They acted like old friends.

c) The boys had like interests.

7. TILL

a) The kids were awake till midnight.

b) Open the till and count the money.

c) My grandpa, a farmer, would till his soil in the spring.

8. CUP

a) Cup your hands around your mouth and yell.

b) I’ll use the red cup.

9. DRIVE

a) The long drive through the countryside lifted my spirits.

b) I always drive within the speed limit.

10. BLUE

a) Everyone in the family photo wore blue.

b) Jackie lives in the blue house.


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II. Write Your Own Sentences

Directions: Write your own sentences using the words below. Make sure the word is being used as the part of speech indicated on the left side. Underline the word in your sentence. The first one is done for you. Feel free to use a dictionary!

1. Drive

Noun: The long drive through the countryside lifted my spirits.

Verb: I always drive within the speed limit.

2. Baby

Noun: ___________________________________

Adjective: ________________________________

Verb: ___________________________________

3. Up

Preposition: ________________________________

Adverb: ___________________________________

Answers

I. Label the Parts of Speech

1. LIGHT

a) I will light the fire. VERB

b) Can you see that red light? NOUN

c) This light jacket isn’t warm enough. ADJECTIVE

6. LIKE

a) I like old books. VERB

b) They acted like old friends. PREPOSITION

c) The boys had like interests. ADJECTIVE

2. FAST 

a) Hadley is a fast runner. ADJECTIVE

b) The 12-hour fast cleared my mind. NOUN

c) He drives fast! ADVERB

7. TILL

a) The kids were awake till midnight. PREPOSITION

b) Open the till and count the money. NOUN

c) My grandpa, a farmer, would till his soil in the spring. VERB

3. ABOVE

a) I had a general sense of how it works. ADJECTIVE

b) The general sank low in his chair. NOUN

8. CUP

a) Cup your hands around your mouth and yell. VERB

b) I’ll use the red cup. NOUN

4. BEFORE

a) Practice piano before you play with your friends. CONJUNCTION

b) Practice piano before dinner. PREPOSITION

9. DRIVE

a) The long drive through the countryside lifted my spirits. NOUN

b) I always drive within the speed limit. VERB

5. ROLL

a) Roll the dice. VERB

b) I will eat the soup with a roll. NOUN

10. BLUE

a) Everyone in the family photo wore blue. NOUN

b) Jackie lives in the blue house. ADJECTIVE

* The sentence diagrams for 4, 5, 9, and 10 are available in the downloadable version of this lesson.

Answers for II. Write Your Own Sentences are also available in the free, downloadable version of this lesson.


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Would you like to see another example of this concept? Let’s look at how the word balance can be a noun or a verb, and how it can help you think about your life.

A part of speech is a term used in traditional grammar for one of the nine main categories into which words are classified according to their functions in sentences, such as nouns or verbs. Also known as word classes, these are the building blocks of grammar.

Parts of Speech

  • Word types can be divided into nine parts of speech:
  • nouns
  • pronouns
  • verbs
  • adjectives
  • adverbs
  • prepositions
  • conjunctions
  • articles/determiners
  • interjections
  • Some words can be considered more than one part of speech, depending on context and usage.
  • Interjections can form complete sentences on their own.

Every sentence you write or speak in English includes words that fall into some of the nine parts of speech. These include nouns, pronouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, articles/determiners, and interjections. (Some sources include only eight parts of speech and leave interjections in their own category.)

Learning the names of the parts of speech probably won’t make you witty, healthy, wealthy, or wise. In fact, learning just the names of the parts of speech won’t even make you a better writer. However, you will gain a basic understanding of sentence structure and the English language by familiarizing yourself with these labels.

Open and Closed Word Classes

The parts of speech are commonly divided into open classes (nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs) and closed classes (pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, articles/determiners, and interjections). The idea is that open classes can be altered and added to as language develops and closed classes are pretty much set in stone. For example, new nouns are created every day, but conjunctions never change.

In contemporary linguistics, the label part of speech has generally been discarded in favor of the term word class or syntactic category. These terms make words easier to qualify objectively based on word construction rather than context. Within word classes, there is the lexical or open class and the function or closed class.

Read about each part of speech below and get started practicing identifying each.

Noun

Nouns are a person, place, thing, or idea. They can take on a myriad of roles in a sentence, from the subject of it all to the object of an action. They are capitalized when they’re the official name of something or someone, called proper nouns in these cases. Examples: pirate, Caribbean, ship, freedom, Captain Jack Sparrow.

Pronoun

Pronouns stand in for nouns in a sentence. They are more generic versions of nouns that refer only to people. Examples:​ I, you, he, she, it, ours, them, who, which, anybody, ourselves.

Verb

Verbs are action words that tell what happens in a sentence. They can also show a sentence subject’s state of being (is, was). Verbs change form based on tense (present, past) and count distinction (singular or plural). Examples: sing, dance, believes, seemed, finish, eat, drink, be, became

Adjective

Adjectives describe nouns and pronouns. They specify which one, how much, what kind, and more. Adjectives allow readers and listeners to use their senses to imagine something more clearly. Examples: hot, lazy, funny, unique, bright, beautiful, poor, smooth.

Adverb

Adverbs describe verbs, adjectives, and even other adverbs. They specify when, where, how, and why something happened and to what extent or how often. Examples: softly, lazily, often, only, hopefully, softly, sometimes.

Preposition

Prepositions show spacial, temporal, and role relations between a noun or pronoun and the other words in a sentence. They come at the start of a prepositional phrase, which contains a preposition and its object. Examples: up, over, against, by, for, into, close to, out of, apart from.

Conjunction

Conjunctions join words, phrases, and clauses in a sentence. There are coordinating, subordinating, and correlative conjunctions. Examples: and, but, or, so, yet, with.

Articles and Determiners

Articles and determiners function like adjectives by modifying nouns, but they are different than adjectives in that they are necessary for a sentence to have proper syntax. Articles and determiners specify and identify nouns, and there are indefinite and definite articles. Examples: articles: a, an, the; determiners: these, that, those, enough, much, few, which, what.

Some traditional grammars have treated articles as a distinct part of speech. Modern grammars, however, more often include articles in the category of determiners, which identify or quantify a noun. Even though they modify nouns like adjectives, articles are different in that they are essential to the proper syntax of a sentence, just as determiners are necessary to convey the meaning of a sentence, while adjectives are optional.

Interjection

Interjections are expressions that can stand on their own or be contained within sentences. These words and phrases often carry strong emotions and convey reactions. Examples: ah, whoops, ouch, yabba dabba do!

How to Determine the Part of Speech

Only interjections (Hooray!) have a habit of standing alone; every other part of speech must be contained within a sentence and some are even required in sentences (nouns and verbs). Other parts of speech come in many varieties and may appear just about anywhere in a sentence.

To know for sure what part of speech a word falls into, look not only at the word itself but also at its meaning, position, and use in a sentence.

For example, in the first sentence below, work functions as a noun; in the second sentence, a verb; and in the third sentence, an adjective:

  • Bosco showed up for work two hours late.
    • The noun work is the thing Bosco shows up for.
  • He will have to work until midnight.
    • The verb work is the action he must perform.
  • His work permit expires next month.
    • The attributive noun [or converted adjective] work modifies the noun permit.

Learning the names and uses of the basic parts of speech is just one way to understand how sentences are constructed.

Dissecting Basic Sentences

To form a basic complete sentence, you only need two elements: a noun (or pronoun standing in for a noun) and a verb. The noun acts as a subject and the verb, by telling what action the subject is taking, acts as the predicate. 

  • Birds fly.

In the short sentence above, birds is the noun and fly is the verb. The sentence makes sense and gets the point across.

You can have a sentence with just one word without breaking any sentence formation rules. The short sentence below is complete because it’s a command to an understood «you».

  • Go!

Here, the pronoun, standing in for a noun, is implied and acts as the subject. The sentence is really saying, «(You) go!»

Constructing More Complex Sentences

Use more parts of speech to add additional information about what’s happening in a sentence to make it more complex. Take the first sentence from above, for example, and incorporate more information about how and why birds fly.

  • Birds fly when migrating before winter.

Birds and fly remain the noun and the verb, but now there is more description. 

When is an adverb that modifies the verb fly. The word before is a little tricky because it can be either a conjunction, preposition, or adverb depending on the context. In this case, it’s a preposition because it’s followed by a noun. This preposition begins an adverbial phrase of time (before winter) that answers the question of when the birds migrate. Before is not a conjunction because it does not connect two clauses.

Parts of Speech. Principles of Classification of the Parts of Speech.

Курсы изучения разговорного английского языка

√ Parts of speech.
√ Semantic.
√ Morphological.
√ Syntactic.
√ Meaning.
√ Form.
√ Function
√ Meaning


Parts of speech

Parts of speech are grammatical classes of words which are distinguished on the basis of four criteria:
— semantic;
— morphological;
— syntactic;
that of valency (combinability)

1) Meaning. Each part of speech is characterized by the general meaning which is an abstraction from the lexical meaning of the constituent word. Thus, the general meaning of nouns is thingness (substance), the general meaning of verbs is action, state, process; the general meaning of adjectives — quality, quantity.

The general meaning is understood as categorial meaning of the class of words.

Semantic properties of every part of speech find their expression in their grammatical properties. If we take «to sleep, a night sleep, sleepy, asleep» they all refer to the same phenomena of the objective reality but belong to different parts of speech as they have different grammatical properties.

Meaning is supportive criterion in the English language which only helps to check purely grammatical criteria — those of form and function.

Глокая куздра штэка будланула бокра и кудрячит бокрёнка. V. V. Vinogradov
Green ideas sleep furiously.

Such examples though being artificial help us to understand that — grammatical meaning is an objective thing by itself though in real speech it never exists without lexical meaning.

2) Form, (morphological properties) The formal criterion concerns the inflectional and derivational features of words belonging to a given class. That is the grammatical categories they possess, the paradigms they form and derivational and functional morphemes they have.

With the English language this criterion is not always reliable as many words in English are invariable, many words have no derivational affixes and besides the same derivational affixes may be used to build different parts of speech.(e.g. «~ly»: quickly , daily , weakly(n.)).

Because of the limitation of meaning and form as criterion we should rely mainly on words’ syntactic functions (e.g. «round» can be adjective, noun, verb, preposition).

3) Function. Syntactic properties of any class of words are: combinability (distributional criterion), typical syntactic functions in a sentence. The three criteria of defining grammatical classes of words in English may be placed in the following order: syntactic, distribution, form, meaning (Russian: form, meaning, syntactic distribution).

Parts of speech are heterogeneous classes and the boundaries between them are not clearly cut especially in the area of meaning. Within a part of speech there are subclasses which have all the properties of a given class and subclasses which have only some of these properties and may even have features of another class.

So a part of speech may be described as a field which includes both central (most typical) members and marginal (less typical) members. Marginal areas of different parts of speech may overlap and there may be intermediary elements with contradicting features (modal words, statives, pronouns and even verbs).

Words belonging to different parts of speech may be united by common feature and they may constitute a class cutting across other classes (e.g. determiners or quantifiers).

Possible Ways of the Grammatical Classification of the Vocabulary.

The parts of speech and their classification usually involves all the four criteria mentioned and scholars single out from 8 to 13 parts of speech in modern English. The founder of English scientific grammar Henry Sweet finds the following classes of words: noun-words ( here he includes some pronouns and numerals), adjective-words, verbs 4 particles (by this term he denotes words of different classes which have no grammatical categories).

The opposite criterion — structural or distributional — was used by an American scholar Charles Freeze. Each class of words is characterized by a set of positions in a sentence which are defined by substitution test. As a result of distributional analysis Freeze singles out 4 main classes of words roughly corresponding to verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs and 15 classes of function-words.

Notional and Functional Parts of Speech.

Both the traditional and distributional classification divide parts of speech into notional and functional. Notional parts of speech are open classes, new items can be added to them, we extend them indefinitely. Functional parts of speech are closed systems including a limited number of members. As a rule they cannot be extended by creating new items.

Main notional parts of speech are nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs. Members of these four classes are often connected derivationally. Functional parts of speech are prepositions, conjunctions, articles, interjections & particles. Their distinctive features are:

— very general & weak lexical meaning;
— obligatory combinability;

The function of linking and specifying words.

Pronouns constitute a class of words which takes an intermediary position between notional and functional words: on the one hand they can substitute nouns and adjectives; on the other hand they can be used as connectives and specifiers. There may be also groups of closed-system items within an open class (notional, functional and auxiliary verbs).

A word in English is very often not marked morphologically. It makes it easy for words to pass from one class to another. Such words are treated as either lexico-semantic phonemes or as words belonging to one class. The problem which is closely connected with the selection of parts of speech is the problem of conversion.

There are usually the cases of absolute, phonetic identity of words belonging to different parts of speech. About 45% of nouns can be converted into verbs and about 50% of verbs — into nouns. There are different viewpoints on conversion: some scholars think that it is a syntactic word-building means. If they say so they do admit that the word may function as parts of speech at the same time.

Russian linguist Galperin defines conversion as a non-affix way of forming words. There is another theory by French linguist Morshaw who states that conversion is a creation of new words with zero-affix. In linguistics this problem is called «stone-wall-construction problem».

Another factor which makes difficult to select parts of speech, in English is abundance of homonyms in English. They are words and forms identical in form, sounding, spelling, but different in meaning. Usually the great number of homonyms in English is explained by monosyllabic structure of words but it’s not all the explanation.

The words are monosyllabic in English because there are few endings in it, because English is predominantly analytical. We differentiate between full and partial homonymity, we usually observe full homonymity within one pan of speech and partial — within different parts of speech. If we have two homonyms within one part of speech their paradigms should fully coincide.

Homonyms can be classified into lexical, lexico-grammatical and purely grammatical. We should differentiate between homonymity and polysemantic words.

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