PARTS OF SPEECH
Different schools of
grammar present different classifications for the parts of speech.
Traditional
grammarians, for example, base designations on a word's meaning or signification.
|
|
Example:
|
A noun is a word that
names a person, place, thing, or idea.
|
Structural grammarians
see parts of speech as often identifiable through their position in sentences.
|
|
Example:
|
Her _________ was on
the table.
(noun)
|
Using valuable ideas
from both groups, we may divide parts of speech into two major groups:
|
|
2 Classes:
|
|
|
|
1) content words (open
class)
|
|
|
|
2) function words
(closed class)
|
Content words are
words that have meaning. They
are words we would look up in a dictionary, such as "lamp,"
"computer," "drove." New
content words are constantly added to the English language; old content words
constantly leave the language as they become obsolete.
Therefore, we refer to content words as an "open" class.
Nouns,
verbs, adjectives, and
adverbs are content parts of speech.
Function words are
words that exist to explain or create grammatical or structural relationships
into which the content words may fit. Words
like "of," "the," "to," they have little meaning
on their own. They are much fewer
in number and generally do not change as English adds and omits content words.
Therefore, we refer to function words as a "closed" class.
Pronouns,
prepositions, conjunctions,
determiners,
qualifiers/intensifiers, and interrogatives
are some function parts of speech.
Note the differences between
content and function parts of speech:
Generally, we can use
one or more of five signals to help us determine a word's part of speech
designation:
|
|
1. function words (the,
what, and)
|
|
|
2. inflectional
morphemes (-s, -ed)
|
|
|
3. derivational
morphemes
|
|
|
4. word order in
sentence patterns
|
|
|
5. stress patterns
(subJECT/SUBject, INsert/inSERT, IMprint/imPRINT)
|