UNIT 1

INTRODUCTION TO ENGLISH LANGUAGE STRUCTURE, LEXICAL

CATEGORIES/ WORD CLASSES/ROOTS AND AFFIXES

Introduction to English Language Structure

Language is a system of arbitrary vocal symbol through which members of a

group communicate. It is the vehicle through which the world can be understood and
appreciated; for without it, people are isolated and helpless. It is the key to all human
activities. It is a conscious or unconscious part of nearly everything we do. It is a
personal matrix for receiving, processing, and sharing ideas and information. It is
used to think, to communicate information and to direct behavior, we use language
for social and very personal ways. Language is an important aspect of human
relationships. It is used in greetings, conversation, organizational meeting,
ceremonies and informal written communications. It is also used as an expression of
emotion, as a release from tension, as a reaction to an emergency as a means of
hearing unique personal perceptions (Ulit, Salazar, Ferrer, Cruz, Espiritu, Sanchez,
Garcia, Victoria, Oyco, & Punsalan, 1995, pp.5-6).
From these definitions, we arrived at the nature of language:
1. Language is systematic. Language is consistent and predictable. It
follows patterns or rules that allow an infinite number of communication.
We develop an intuitive knowledge of the language system which allows
us to generate and receive messages that are totally new to us.
2. Language is arbitrary. The elements of a language system are arbitrarily
determined. Individuals cannot utter any spring of sounds in any order and
expect others to understand them. Communication is dependent on an
established system and decisions about the elements within that system
are necessarily arbitrary.
3. Language is vocal. Language is based on a set of speech sounds
produced by the vocal organs of the body. Words are made by combining
those sounds, thus, speech is the primary language of a group.
4. Language is symbolic. Writing is a symbolic representation of speech
and was developed thousands of years late.Words stand for objects and
things and they allow us to talk about them when they are not present. A
word is not the thing; it is a symbol for the thing. The symbolic nature of
our language allows us to think and talk about abstract ideas such as
democracy and love, as well as about concrete objects and things.
5. The purpose of language is group communication. The need for
communication among members of a group gives rise to language. The
language that develops belongs to the group and binds them together.
They in turn are responsible for knowing the language; it is a prerequisite
for functional membership in the group.

Where did the English language come from?

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 The English language as a separate idiom came into existence when the
Teutonic Tribe had made themselves masters of the great part of South Britain. The
settlers spoke dialects which were very much allied, and from a fusion of their
dialects resulted the English language. But the historical record of English do not go
so far back as this, the oldest written text in the English language dated from 700
A.D and from this time onwards, inspite of the lost of many manuscripts, there is an
adequate evidence for the language in use at that time. The history of the English
from the earliest days to the present time has been one of the continuous
development. But the language has been undergoing constant change ever since it
is a language, and it is changing still, but the transition from one period to another
has been quite gradual, though in some period, changes have taken place more
rapidly in the other periods. English is now divided, both in its language and
literature, into three divisions - Old, Middle and Modern English.
The English language common with all other languages existing today has an
eventful history in the past. It was not always as what we know at present. Historians
of the English language distinguish three great periods of its development. The
following may serve as a brief introduction to each of the periods of its growth.
The Old English Period (600-1100).The first is the old English period
sometimes called the Anglo –Saxon Period. This period was full of inflections
because during this period the endings of the noun, the adjective and the verb were
preserved almost unimpaired. Earlier the inhabitants of English were called the
Britons or Celts and their language was called Celtic. Probably Celtic language was
spoken in England throughout the period of Roman occupation from 55 B.C. to 410
A.D. Soon after the withdrawal of Romans from England, the ‘English’ tribes called
Anglons, Saxons and Jutes descended with their hordes and began to settle and
fight their way up the rivers and along the coasts from about the first half of the fifth
century. The Superior Celtic civilization, their spiritual and intellectual supremacy
came rapidly to an end. The English tribes drove them westwards. Coming of the
two races into contact brought a number of Celtic words and with them some Latin
words into the English language. But many of the celts fled into the hills of
Wales,Comwall and Scotland and there their language was perpetuated, and the
language of the invading tribes became the language of England and came to be
known as old English or Anglo Saxon.
The Middle English Period (1100-1500). The conquest of England in 1066
by William of Normandy is another most important landmark in the history of the
English language. The immediate results of the Norman Conquest were that
Government passed out of the hands of English men into those of the Normans.
Norman bishops, Norman knights, and Norman barons flooded the country. The
English language had come into contact with the French even before the Norman
Conquest for some years there were two languages spoken, English by the Saxon
Nobility and French by the Norman barons and official classes. But the Norman
French enjoyed greater prestige and higher social status, because it was the
language of court, of the nobility, of the law courts and of learned professions. But
the English men naturally clung to their own speech and about 90 percent of people
still spoke English. The result of such interaction of the two languages was the

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emergence of what is called Middle English. Gradually a change came over and
English replaced French as the language of law courts in 1362. Therefore we can
say that the Middle English period is one of the series of momentous changes in life
of the nation and in the history of the language.
The Modern English Period (1500 Onwards). It should not be imagined that
these three are sharply marked periods and that between the close of one period
and beginning of another were a complete and sudden change. With the closing
years of the fifteenth century, the New learning spread to England, from Italy, with
the introduction of Greek into Oxford and Cambridge, a new era began in the culture
of England. Another important event in the history of English language was the
invention of printing. Printing discredited dialect and contributed to the establishment
of ‘standard’ to the language. Printing also made it possible and convenient to bring
books within the reach of all. Thus, it proved a powerful force for promoting a
standard uniform language and to spread it all over England. There was a great
increase in the number of schools, and journalism came into existence and the novel
was beginning to grow popular.

Characteristics of English
The English language is spoken and read by the largest number of people in
the world. It is likely a mighty tree which has grown like such a mighty tree was for
many centuries unconscious of any English footfall. English is spoken by more
native speakers than any other language except presumably. North Chinese, if we
count the important factor of foreign speakers, English is the most widespread of
languages. The number of native speakers of English was estimated for 1920 at
about 170 millions. Almost all of these speakers use Standard English.
The wide appeal of the language is not merely due to historical, political
and economic reasons as some people seem to believe. The significance of
English is also due to certain inherent qualities and characteristics or features which
outstand in making it what it is today. Long before the Teutonic people settled in
Britain it formed part of a continent stretching far into the Northern and Western
seas. The inhabitants lived in caves or in the huts made of the branches of trees.
The climate was cold and wet, and a short summer was followed by a long dull and
severe winter. But the land had the charm of its own.
It is of course difficult to characterize a language in general terms. Languages
are not always amenable to such description. Nevertheless, it can be said that the
English Language is the most receptive and heterogeneous tongue. From almost
every language of the world it has taken to itself, the vocabulary, grammatical use
and habits of spelling and pronunciation. The historical study of the language shows
that in a fifth and sixth centuries when the Angelo Saxons, and Jutes conquered
England, it was a ‘pure’ unmixed language with an extraordinary flexibility to make
compound words from its elements, to express new ideas. But throughout its history
it has received foreign words with readiness and ease and has assimilated the alien
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elements to its own character, hence the copiousness and rich variety of its
vocabulary.
Another important characteristic feature of English is its extraordinary
simplicity of inflections. Old English was a highly inflected language but modern
English has evolved through progressive simplification of inflections. In inflected
languages like Latin, German, the inflections indicate the relationship of words in the
sentence and the word-order can be fairly free. But in English, word-order is fixed in
relation to meaning in the sentence like “the dog bit the man” without making it a
startling news.
Among three Teutonic tribes the Anglons were the last to arrive on the scene.
But they were more influential than the other two tribes -Jutes and Saxons, and
stamped itself on the land they won. From the Anglons’ name the nation was named
England which means “Land of the Anglons.” The word English is also derived from
the name of the Anglons. The form of the word was first English, from Angletisc.
Another characteristic which gives English an exceptional advantage is its
natural gender in place of grammatical gender of other European languages. In
learning English, the student does not have to labor under the burden of
memorizing, along with the meaning of every noun, its gender. In Roman language
there are only two genders. Everything on the earth is either masculine or feminine.
Though in Germanic languages there are three genders, the way the gender is
attributed to the noun is arbitrary to the point of being irrational. Thus in German, sun
is feminine, moon is masculine while child, woman and maiden are neuter. This is
undoubtedly a great advantage in facilitating the acquisition of English by foreigners.
Another characteristic is that in its phonetic structure, English presents an
impression of precision and neatness. The two groups of consonants, the voiced
and the voiceless, are well defined and present a picture of symmetry. They are so
precisely pronounced that there is no scope for ambiguity in sound. Fortunately
English is free from indistinct or half slurred consonants, excepting that r, when not
followed by a vowel sound is indistinct. But then it has been gradually giving up its
claims to the rank of a consonant by the surrounding vowels is less frequent than in
some other European languages. The vowel sounds, too are clear precise and
relatively independent of their surroundings.
Another feature of the English Language is that in great many ways it is
particularly suited to tense and vigorous ways of expressions. English sentences are
amenable to abbreviations which render the language business- like and convenient.
By avoiding hyperbolic expressions which do not mean what they say, English has
acquired a kind of balance and sobriety. Judged from the standard of logic there is
no other language so high as English. It has a tense system that is superior to any
other of European language while we find the time divided into present, past and
future in many languages, further division of each of those tenses into simple
perfect, perfect continuous and progressive is nowhere seen so consistently and
precisely as in English. The distinction subtle and difficult as it is, is superior to any
one found in other language. English Grammar, difficult as it is for a foreigner allows
certain freedom as, for instance, in the use of a number of words like family, clergy,
committee, club are of plural number from the logic of facts, and singular from the

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grammatical point of view. But are there are no rigorous rules in the uses of them
either as singular or plural or depending on the meaning to be conveyed,
According to Otto Jespersons, “The English Language is a methodical,
energetic, business-like and sober language that does not care much for finery and
elegance but does care for logical consistency and opposed to any attempt to
narrow-in life by police regulations and strict rules either of grammar or of lexicon”.
In this way we can say that the language reveals the soul of the nation. The
English language, it will be evident, very humble and obscure in its origin. It is no
sense native to England. The original speakers of the tongue from which English
was born were the three Teotonic tribes conquered the island in the fifth and sixth
centuries. The English language is not the result of any human design. It is the sum
total of a series of historical incidents.

Written Forms and Basic Functions of Language

The spoken form of any language is liable to undergo change and
development in the course of its history. The development undergone by the English
language in the last one thousand years can be understood by comparing a passage
of old writing English with a passage from Modern English. Written language always
comes later than spoken form and spoken form of any word is a symbol of the thing
referred to by that word. The written form is the symbol of that symbol; and so it is
twice removed from the referred thing. The primitive form of writing meant carving,
painting, or drawing of the symbolic elements or the visible features of an
experience. When the association between the written symbol and the spoken word
becomes fixed, the symbol may come to lose original pictorial value and to deviate
from its older form. At this stage the association has come to one of written symbol
and spoken sound regardless of the meaning borne by the sound. Later the symbols
are only used in phonetics and the numbers of symbols are reduced. The alphabets
of many Indian languages as well as the national alphabets of Japanese consist of
such syllabifies. Syllabifies is a further simplification of writing when this characters
are use to represent not whole syllables but single sounds of the language as in
Greek, Latin, and derived alphabets, including in English. Writing is an outgrowth of
drawing. Probably all peoples make pictures by painting drawing scratching or
carving. These pictures aside from other uses sometimes serve as message or
reminders that is they modify the conduct of the beholder and they maybe
persistently used in this way. The Indians of North America are skillful draftsmen and
in older times made extensive practical use of pictures.
The records and messages, like writing, have the advantage of being
permanent and transportable, but they fall short of writing in accuracy since they
bear no fixed relation of linguistic forms and accordingly do not share in the delicate
adjustment of the latter. In the use of pictures we can often see the beginning of the
transition, and traces of it remain in the actual systems of writing.
Real writing uses limited number of conventional symbols we must therefore
suppose that in the transition the picture become conventionalized. The way of
outlining each animal for instance, becomes so fixed that even a very imperfect
sketch leaves us doubt as to the species of animal. To some degree it is true to a

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picture of American Indians. In actual system of writing we often find symbols
which still betray this origin. When the picture has become rigidly conventionalized
we may call it a character. A character is a uniform mark or set of marks which
people produce under certain conditions and to which accordingly, they respond in a
certain way. Once this habit is established, the resemblance of the character to any
particular object is of secondary importance, and may be obliterated by the changes
in the convention of forming the character. The other more important place of the
transition from the use of picture to real writing is the association of the characters
with linguistic forms. Most situations contain features that do not lead themselves to
picturing; the picture-user resorts to all sorts of devices that will elicit the proper
response. Thus we saw the Indian drawing twenty nine strokes above his beaver to
represent the number of beavel-pelts. Instead of depicting the process of exchange
by a series of pictures, he represented it by two crossed lines with the sets of traded
objects at either side.
When a picture user was confronted by a problem of this kind, we may
suppose that he actually spoke to himself and tried out various wordings of the
troublesome message. Language, after all is our one way of communicating the kind
of things that do not lend themselves to drawing. If we make this supposition we can
understand that the picture-users might in time arrange the character in the order of
the spoken words of their language, and that they might develop a convention of
representing every part say every word, of the spoken utterance by some character.
In real writing some characters have a twofold value. For which they
represent both a picturable object and a phonetic or linguistic form, other characters
having lost their pictorial value, represent only phonetic or linguistic form, purely
pictorial characters that are not most associated with speech-forms sink into
subsidiary use. The linguistic value predominates more and more especially as the
characters because conventionalized in shape, losing their resemblance to pictured
objects. The characters become symbol that is marks or groups of marks that
conventionally represent some linguistic form and respond o the hearing of the
linguistic form. Actually the writer utters the speech from before or during the act of
writing and the hearer utters it in the act of reading, only after considerable practice.
Do we succeed in making these speech-movements inaudible and inconspicuous? It
is different that languages are used to serve a multiplicity of purposes. In
accordance with the different purposes to be served, language is used in different
ways and we respond differently to each particular use of language. For example,
there is the language of science, journalism, advertising, political oratory, political
effusion and prayer and worship. In these instances language is used as if it will a
multipurpose tool which could be put to a variety of uses as and when required.
Many people fail to understand the subtle and complicated nature of language.
One of the basic functions of languages is to communicate information of
some kind or another. Information here can include propaganda of all kinds. All
informative discourse is used to describe the world around us and to reason about it.
Besides informative there are two other basic functions of language. There
are expressive and the directive functions. Science provides us with instances of the
best informative discourse. Poetry gives us the finest examples of the expressive

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function of language. The poetry cannot be communicated whereas in information it
needs expression of language. All poets attempt to communicate their own feelings
and attitude. When the poet Robert Burns compares his love to a red rose, which is
newly sprung in June, or to melody that is sweetly played in tune, he is trying to
express the emotion which he feels keenly and trying to arouse similar feelings in
the readers. Not only poets but other people also use expressive language to
express their tender feelings. The lover uses the expressive language to convey his
passions and tenderness to his beloved. While dealing with expressive language we
are not to apply the common standard of truth or falsehood, correctness or
incorrectness. We must bear in mind the fact that the purpose of the poet in writing
his poetry is not to convey information but to express emotion and to arouse it in the
reader. There is no doubt that some poems have informative contents which cannot
be denied while dealing their total effect.
The third basic function of language is to cause some overt action. The
common examples of directive function of language are commands and requests.
Commands are distinguished from request in a very subtle way and any command
can be turned into a request by adding “please” at the beginning or by a suitable
change in the tone of the voice or in the expression of the face. As directive
discourse has no truth, value, it cannot be described as true or false.
The examples of informative, expressive, and directive language have been
compared by giving M. Copi to chemically pure specimens. This three-fold division
cannot be applied to all languages mechanically because very often we find in the
most ordinary use of languages, a combination of all three functions. For example a
poem may be both informative and directive. A sermon at the same time is both
directive and expressive. The serman preached may also contain some facts which
are conveyed through the informative use of language. A treatise on science, though
primarily informative can also convey to the reader something of the writers
enthusiasm and thus serve the expressive function of language. In addition to this, it
may also be directive in function in as much as it bids the reader to check for himself
whether the conclusions arrived at by the author is correct. Thus we find that the
most ordinary uses of language involve all the three basic function of conveying
information, evincing emotion and inducing action.
The scholars stated that the grammatical features of language in
philosophical terms took no account of the structural difference between languages,
but obscured it by forcing their descriptics into the scheme of Latin Grammar. They
had not observed the sources of speech and confused them with the written symbols
of the alphabets. This fails to distinguish between actual speech and the use of
writing distorted also their motions about the history of language. They saw that in
medieval and wisdom times highly cultivated persons wrote and also spoke good
Latin, while less educated or carden scribes made many mistakes; failing to see that
this Latin-writing was an artificial and academic exercise, they concluded that
languages are preserved by the usage of educated and careful people and changed
by the corruptions of the vulgar.
In the study of the structure of language such as English, we can study
classes of words (parts of speech), meanings of words, with or without considering

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changes of meaning (semantics), how words are organized in relation to each other
and in larger constructions (syntax), how words are formed from smaller meaningful
units (morphology), the sounds of words (perception and pronunciation or
articulation), and how they form patterns of knowledge in the speaker's mind
(phonetics and phonology) and how standardized written forms represent words
(orthography). Since this website is primarily devoted to the exploration of English
through its words, the focus in this website is on morphology (word structure) and
other aspects of words, such as etymology, lexical semantic change, word usage,
lexical types of words, and words marking specific linguistic varieties.
In the study of structure, we also learn these: classes of words (parts of
speech), the sounds of words (phonology); how words are formed (morphology);
meanings of words (semantics) with or without considering changes of meaning;
how words are organized in relation to each other (syntax); and how written forms
represent these (lexicography).
Outline structure of English

Sentences are analyzed into clauses are used to build sentences

clauses phrases are used to build clauses
clauses are analyzed into phrases words are used to build phrases
↓↑
phrases are analyzed into words morphemes are used to build words
words are analyzed
intomorphemes

Three-part model of English

Morphology Synta Discourse

x

morphemes phras relationships between sentences in

es longer stretches of language
↓
↓
words
claus
es

sente
nces

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 Words considered as wholes can be categorized according to how they work
within phrases, clauses or sentences. These categories, traditionally called parts of
speech are now more usually known as word classes. Parts of speech are labels for
categories in which words are usually placed. But in a given sentence a word from
one category may behave as if it were in another. A dictionary will only record
established or standard usage.
The traditional parts of speech were of eight kinds, excluding the two articles
(a/an, the). These were nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, prepositions,
conjunctions, adverbs, and interjections. Modern linguists prefer to list words in
classes that are coherent - all the words in them should behave in the same way.
But if this principle were applied rigidly, we would have hundreds of classes, so
irregularities are tolerated.

LEXICAL CATEGORY
A lexical category is a syntactic category for elements that are part of the
lexicon of a language. These elements are at the word level. This is also known as:
part of speech, word class, grammatical category, and grammatical class.
Grammatical categories are distinct from formal relational categories such
as subject, object and predicate, or functional categories such as agent, topic or
definite. There are major and minor lexical categories. Major categories: Every
language has at least two major lexical categories: noun and verb. Many languages
also have two other major categories: adjective and adverb. Minor categories:
Many languages have minor lexical categories such as: conjunctions, particles,
adpositions.
Every statement is a combination of words, and every statement says
something to communicate information. The simplest possible kind of statement - for
example, Dogs bark - has two kinds of words in it. It has a what word, dogs, and a
what happens word, bark. These kinds of words are the most basic parts of any
statement. If a person only says dog, no statement is made, and no information is
conveyed. A sound is made that calls to mind a common, four-footed animal, but
nothing regarding it is learned.

NOUNS
The what words are called nouns. They tell what is being talked about. They
are identifying words, or names. Nouns identify persons, places, or things. They may
be particular persons, places, or things: Michael Jackson, Reykjavik, World Trade
Center; or they may be general nouns: singer, town, building. Concrete nouns
indicate things that can be seen such as car, teapot, and potato. Abstract nouns
denote concepts such as love, honesty, and beauty.
It is rather odd that English grammar should retain this abstract-concrete
distinction for nouns. It appears to be a survival from the philosopher Plato, who
divided the world into mind and matter. If it has any value it is in the philosophical
field of epistemology (theory of knowledge). It does not really reveal anything for
linguists beyond itself. That is, we can, if we wish, try to place nouns in the
sub-categories of concrete and abstract, but once we have done so, this

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categorization has no further value for the study of language. Moreover, modern
science confuses the issue, since it shows that many things that we once supposed
to belong to mind, are in fact, embodied in matter. A thrill is not only abstract, since it
involves matter at the level of biochemistry.
The what happens words are called verbs. They are the action words in a
statement. Without them it is impossible to put sentences together. It is the verb that
says something about the noun: dogs bark, birds fly, fish swim. Verbs are the
important words that create information in statements. Although nouns alone make
no statement, verbs can occasionally do so. Help!gives the information that
someone is in trouble, and Go away! tells someone or something emphatically to
leave.
Besides nouns and verbs there are other kinds of words that have different
functions in statements. They are pronouns, adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions,
articles, prepositions, and a very few words that can be called function words
because they fit into none of the other categories. All of these kinds of words
together are called parts of speech. They can just as well be called parts of writing
because they apply to written as well as to spoken language.
A noun is a member of a syntactic class that includes words which refer to people,
places, things, ideas, or concepts whose members may act as any of the following:
subjects of the verb, objects of the verb, indirect object of the verb, or object of a
preposition (or postposition), and most of whose members have inherently
determined grammatical gender (in languages which inflect for gender).
Nouns embody one of the most time-stable concepts in a language. As with
verbs, however, this time-stability criterion defines only the prototypical nouns. Other,
non-prototypical nouns must be identified by distributional similarities to prototypical
nouns. Examples are rock, tree, dog, person.
These nouns are prototypical nouns in English because they are perceived as
concrete, physical, compact entities which do not change significantly over time. The
following nouns are less prototypical because they represent concepts or items that
are not perceived as staying the same for a long period of time, or are not concrete:
fist, beauty.
Here are some kinds of nouns:   abstract noun,collective noun, concrete
noun, count noun, inalienable noun, mass noun, verbal noun.

NOUNS AND ARTICLES

Nouns can be particular or general: the house, a house. The words the anda
are articles, or, in more technical terms, determiners. A house can be any house, but
the house is a quite definite building. When a noun begins with a vowel (a, e, i, o, u,
and, occasionally, y) the indefinite article a becomes an for the sake of easier
pronunciation - an apple, an elephant, an orange. Sometimes an is used before
words that start with h, especially if the h is silent: an honorary degree. If the h is
sounded a is the standard form: an 'otel, a hotel.
Nouns can be singular or plural in number: cat, cats.
● In some cases es is added to make nouns plural: dress, dresses.

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 ● Some nouns change their forms in the plural, without adding an s but by
changing or mutating a vowel: foot, feet; man, men; mouse, mice; goose,
geese.
● Some nouns do not change at all in the plural: sheep, fowl.

There are also group nouns, called noun phrases. This means that two or
more nouns, or a noun and an adjective, are put together to form what amounts to,
or works like, one noun: football stadium, rock concert, orange tree. In each case
certain nouns - football, rock, orange - are attached to other nouns, and each
modifies or describes the second noun in some way to convey a different kind of
object. A football and a football stadium are two entirely different things, though they
both have to do with the same game.
Some nouns are one-of-a-kind names: Suez Canal, Elvis Presley, Empire
State Building. Also called proper nouns, they are capitalized to set them off from
general nouns. Sometimes adjectives (words that describe nouns) are also
capitalized. This normally happens when the adjective is made from a proper noun,
especially a place or person: American literature, English countryside, Elizabethan
theatre.
Proper nouns are contrasted with common nouns (naming words for general
classes of things which contain many individual examples). In fact many of the
nouns that we consider proper are still names for more than one individual, as with
the name of a model of car (like Ford Escort or VW Beetle, which might have been
produced in the millions). Like the abstract-concrete distinction, the common-proper
categories may originate in Platonic philosophy, which contrasted the many things in
the real world with unique ideal originals of which they are imperfect copies. It is of
more practical concern, since it is meant to inform the written representations of
words (whether or not to use an initial capital). Unlike German (which uses a capital
for all nouns) or Norwegian (which never does), English has a mixed and
inconsistent system which changes over time, and which is confused by the
individual tendencies of writers. One problem is that a descriptive phrase (like the
second world war) can become petrified into a title, so that we write Second World
War or World War Two. And Queen Juliana is or was the queen of the Netherlands,
but Queen Elizabeth II is, to many of her subjects, simply the Queen, or even The
Queen. In these cases, the "correct" forms are not universally standard for all writers
of English, but more a matter of publishers' house styles.
Many introductions to English grammar for schoolchildren are to blame for
presenting this common-proper distinction as if it were very straightforward - by
referring only to well-behaved kinds of proper noun, such as personal names or the
names of cities, rivers and planets. In such introductions the distinction is introduced
chiefly to lead onto instruction about the use of capital letters in writing such nouns.
Nouns are used in different ways: The dog barks. The man bit the dog. In the
first case, dog is the actor, or the one that initiates the action of the verb. In the
second, dog is acted upon. In The dog barks, dog is the subject of the verb. In the
other sentence, dog is the object of the verb.

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 Sometimes a noun is the indirect object of a verb: He gave the dog a
bone.Bone is the direct object; it is what was given. Because it was given to the dog,
dog is considered the indirect object of the action.
Nouns can also be objects of prepositions - words like to, in, for, and by - so
the above sentence could read: He gave a bone to the dog. The words to the dog
are called a prepositional phrase.
Some verb forms take nouns as objects: Drinking milk is good for you. In this
sentence, milk is the object of the verbal form drinking. Such a combination of verb
and noun is called a verbal phrase.
Nouns can show possession: The dog's collar is on the table. The collar is
possessed, or owned, by the dog. All possession does not indicate ownership,
however. In The building's roof is black, the roof is on, but not owned by, the
building. Adding an apostrophe and an s to a noun shows possession ('): the cat's
tongue, the woman's purse. If the noun is plural or already has an s, then often only
an apostrophe need be added: the mothers' union (that is, a union of many
mothers). The word of may also be used to show possession: the top of the house,
the light of the candle, the Duke of Wellington.

PRONOUNS
There are several words that are used to replace nouns. They are called
pronouns. Pro in Greek means "for" or "in place of".

Personal pronouns
Some pronouns are called personal pronouns because they take the place of
specific names of persons, places, or thing, as in: Has Fred arrived? Yes, he is here.
Here he is the personal pronoun that replaces Fred. As indicated in the table, there
are both subject and object personal pronouns as well as those that show
possession. In His house is the white and green one,his is a personal possessive
pronoun.

Personal pronouns: subjects, objects and possessives

Singular Subject Object Possessive
First person I me my, mine
Second person you you your, yours
Third person he, she, it (one) him, her, it (one) his, her, hers, its
(one's)
Plural Subject Object Possessive
First person we us our, ours
Second person you you your, yours
Third person they them their, theirs*

*Some authorities give my, your, his, her, our, your and their as possessive
adjectives or pronominal adjectives, as they qualify nouns.

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 Some personal pronouns are formed by the addition of -self or -selves as a
suffix: myself, ourselves, yourself, himself, herself, itself, and themselves.

Demonstrative pronouns
Some pronouns - this, that, these, those - refer to particular people or
things:This is mine, and that is yours. These are demonstrative pronouns. The
demonstrative words can also be used as adjectives: this house, those cars.

Indefinite pronouns
Pronouns that refer to people or things in general are called indefinite
pronouns. Like the demonstrative pronouns, they can be used as adjectives: another
day, both animals, many weeks.

Relative and interrogative pronouns

The words who, whose, whom, that, which, and what are called relative
pronouns. (The word that can be a demonstrative or a relative pronoun.) They create
relative clauses in a sentence: The committee, which met last night, discussed your
report. The words which met last night form a relative clause that describes the
subject of the main clause, the committee.

Sometimes a relative pronoun is used as the subject of a question such as

Who ate the pizza? Here it is classed as an interrogative pronoun. Interrogate
means "ask" (questions).

VERBS
A verb is a member of the syntactic class of words that typically signal events
and actions constitute, singly or in a phrase, a minimal predicate in a clause govern
the number and types of other constituents which may occur in the clause, and in
inflectional languages, may be inflected for tense, aspect, voice, modality, or
agreement with other constituents in, person, number, or grammatical gender.
Here are some kinds of verbs:auxiliary verb, conjunctive verb, copula,
defective verb, finite verb, impersonal verb, irregular verb, lexical verb, nonfinite
verb, phrasal verb, reflexive verb
Verbs are the action words in a statement. They tell what is happening - what
a noun is doing or what is being done to it, or the state of being, becoming, thinking
or feeling. A verb with a subject, which will be in a particular tense is a finite verb.
Without a subject it will be the infinitive form (for example, to think, to dream) or a
gerund (the present participle, used as a noun: smoking is bad for you).
When a verb denotes what a noun is doing, the noun is said to be the subject
of the verb: The man speaks. When the verb denotes what is being done to a noun,
the noun is the object of the verb: The man eats jelly. The noun jelly is the direct
object of the verb. Verbs can also take indirect objects: Parents give children toys. In
this sentence, toys is the direct object, (what is given) and children is the indirect
object. The parents do not give children but toys.

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 Verbs that take objects are called transitive verbs, and those that normally do
not take an object are intransitive verbs (but note that an intransitive verb may be
used transitively in non-standard speech or writing). Some common transitive verbs
are: tell, give, show, eat, buy, take, and see. Some verbs can be both transitive and
intransitive: Tell a story (transitive), and Time will tell (intransitive). Verbs like sleep,
walk, rest, come, and go are nearly always intransitive. The most common verb of
all, to be, is intransitive in all of its forms: am, are, is, was, were, and been.
Tenses (time signals): Verb tenses tell the time when an action takes place.
Any action or condition may be in the past, present, or future: he was, he is, he will
be. Most common verbs simply add an -ed to show the past time, or form the past
tense, as it is normally called. Thus walk becomes walked. Other verbs, sometimes
called irregular (or strong) verbs, do not add -ed. Instead they undergo an internal
change: sing, sang, sung; fly, flew, flown; go, went, gone.
Auxiliary verbs: In the sentence She will sing even though he cannot stay, the
verbs will and cannot are called auxiliary, or helper, verbs. Other auxiliary verbs are
the incomplete or modal verbs: can, could, may, might, shall, should, and would.
The various forms of the verb to be can also be used as auxiliaries: I am going. He
was singing. They have been shopping. The verb have - and its other forms has and
had - are also common auxiliaries to indicate past action.
Participles: The verb form used with auxiliaries is the participle. There is a
present participle, talking, and a past participle, talked. Thus, a person can say
either I talk (present tense) or I am talking (present continuous) to show present
action and I talked (imperfect), I have talked (perfect), or I had talked (pluperfect) to
show past action. When a present participle is used with an auxiliary verb, the
purpose is to show continuing or ongoing action. She is doing the laundry. He was
speaking when someone interrupted him. Note that this uses a present participle
with a past tense auxiliary verb (was) to indicate continuous past action.
Verb flexibility: Verbs and verb forms can be used in a number of ways in
sentences. A verb can be the subject of a statement (To walk is good exercise) or its
object (I like to walk). In each case, the infinitive form to walk is used as a noun.
Participles can be used in the same way: He likes swimming. Flying is great sport. In
the first sentence, swimming is the object of the verb, and in the second, flying is the
subject.
Verb forms can also be used as adjectives, or words that describe nouns. In a
wrecked car, the word wrecked is a past participle used as an adjective.
Occasionally a verb form or verb phrase can be used as an adverb: He was
pleased to meet her. The phrase to meet her modifies the adjective pleased.

ADJECTIVES
An adjective is a word that belongs to a class whose members modify nouns.
An adjective specifies the properties or attributes of a noun referent. Some
languages have no formally distinct category of adjectives. In such languages,
property concepts are expressed as either nouns or verbs. An adjective generally
occurs in a noun phrase or as a stative predicate may be intensified, and may take
comparative and superlative degrees.

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 Examples (English)
That cat is big.
We will not drive the old car.
I am very encouraged!
She is more agile than you.
Here are some kinds of adjectives: absolute adjective, verbal adjective

ADVERBS
Here are two senses for adverb: An adverb, narrowly defined, is a word
belonging to a class of words which modify verbs for such categories as time,
manner, place, or direction.
An adverb, broadly defined, is a word belonging to a class of words which
modify any constituent class of words other than nouns, such as verbs, adjectives,
adverbs, phrases, clauses, or sentences. Under this definition, the possible type of
modification depends on the class of the constituent being modified.
The general class adverb is a mixture of very different kinds of words, which
cover a wide range of semantic concepts and whose syntactic distribution is
disparate. The definition of the lexical category adverb is language-specific, based
on syntactic distribution.
Many words traditionally called adverbs in English, such as degree words
(very, awfully) and negatives (not), are set up as distinct word-classes in linguistic
studies.
Examples (English)
He went fast.
She slowly shut the door.
Nearly in a rage, he left.
● Here are some kinds of adverbs:conjunctive adverb, sentence adverb
ADJECTIVES AND ADVERBS
Adjectives and adverbs are descriptive words, sometimes called modifiers
because they restrict meaning. They add detail to statements. The difference
between the two is that adjectives modify only nouns, pronouns, and verb forms
used as nouns; adverbs modify verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs.
Adjective function: An adjective may be a single word: blue, tall, funny, warm. As a
single word, it may come before the noun - the blue sky - or after the verb - the sky
is blue. Adjectives may be positive (tall), comparative (taller) or superlative (tallest).
Adjective phrases usually follow the noun they describe: the girl with blond hair. The
phrase with blond hair describes girl. Adjective clauses also usually follow the noun:
The child who finds the most Easter eggs wins. The clause who finds the most
Easter eggs modifies child.
Adverb function: The most common use of an adverb, of course, is to describe
verbs: He ran quickly. Actually, however, adverbs can modify anything but nouns or
verb forms used as nouns. Typically adverbs express:

● time (now, then)

● manner (happily, easily)

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 ● degree (less, more, very)
● direction and place (there, up, down)
● affirmation or negation (certainly, not)
● cause and result (thus, consequently), and
● qualification or doubt (however, probably).
Although many adverbs are formed by adding -ly to adjectives (quick, quickly;
happy, happily), adverbs have no characteristic form. They must be identified by the
function they perform in a sentence. In the sentence That is a fast car, fast is an
adjective. But in He ran fast, it is an adverb.
Certain adverbs (how, when, where, why, whenever,and wherever) are called
relative adverbs because they introduce relative clauses in a sentence: The keys are
upstairs where you left them. The clause where you left them modifies the adverb
upstairs.
Other adverbs are called conjunctive adverbs because they join one clause
with another. Some of these adverbs are: therefore, accordingly, besides,
furthermore, instead, meanwhile, and nevertheless.In the sentence He was tired;
therefore he stayed home, the word therefore modifies the clause of which it is a part
and connects that clause to the previous part of the sentence. Note that therefore is
not to be used as a conjunction, hence the semi-colon.

CONJUNCTIONS
A conjunction is a word that syntactically links words or larger constituents,
and expresses a semantic relationship between them. A conjunction is positionally
fixed relative to one or more of the elements related by it, thus distinguishing it from
constituents such as English conjunctive adverbs.
Conjunctions are joining words: they connect words, phrases, or entire that
are grammatically the same: two or more words, two equivalent phrases, or two
equivalent clauses.
Here are some kinds of conjunctions:coordinating conjunction
andsubordinating conjunction.clauses.. The most common coordinating
conjunctions are: and, but, or, for, nor, so, yet.Common subordinating conjunctions
are because, when, unless
● Red and white (two equal words joined in a phrase).
● Taking walks and looking at nature (two equal phrases in a relative clause).
● She ran to the corner, but she missed the bus (two equal clauses in a
complete sentence).

Correlative conjunction.A correlative conjunction is a special kind of

coordinating conjunction. It connects equivalent elements, but it works in pairs of
words: both, and; either, or; neither, nor; whether, or; not only, but also.

● He wants both money and power.

● Neither money nor power matters.
● Either she will go, or she will stay.

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 Subordinating conjunctions. While coordinating conjunctions connect equal
grammatical elements, subordinating conjunctions introduce dependent or
conditional clauses.
● Although she has money, she buys few luxuries.
● Because he was late, he missed the train.
● After the movie is over, we shall have dinner.
Other word uses. Words that operate as conjunctions can often be used in
other ways: as adverbs, prepositions, adjectives, or even pronouns.
● We have met before (before is an adverb).
● Before they leave, let us have dinner (before is a conjunction).
There are other words besides conjunctions that serve as connectors (or
connectives) in sentences. The relative pronouns who and which are often used.
● That is the man who was speaking to her.
● The dessertsare strawberries, which give him a rash.
Some of the conjunctions work both as adverbs and conjunctions in the same
sentence. This is often true of consequently, however, therefore, and nevertheless.
● He was ill; nevertheless he went to work.
● She disliked work; consequently she lost her job.
Note the semi-colon (;). This is standard here but is non-standard before
butorand. (This appears to be changing, as speakers and writers treat words like
nevertheless as conjunctions.)
It is possible to make clauses with conjunctions into separate sentences,
especially when writing for literary effect.
● He did it. And he was glad.
● Stay away from here. Unless you want trouble.
In the second case the clause is so obviously dependent that it would not
stand alone as a sentence and make sense. It can only be written that way for
emphasis or some other effect.

PREPOSITIONS
Prepositions are words or groups of words that introduce phrases; and these
phrases modify some element in a sentence. What follows a preposition is normally
a noun, pronoun, or noun clause. A word that follows a preposition is its object, and,
in the case of pronouns especially, this affects the form of the word.
● He walked near her (never He walked near she).
● He gave them to her and me (never He gave them to she and I or He gave
them to her and I).
One of the problems in spotting prepositions in a sentence is that many of the
words that are usually prepositions can also be used as adverbs.
● He never saw them before (here before is an adverb).
● They sat before the counter (before is a preposition, and the whole
prepositional phrase serves as an adverb, modifying sat).

PARTICLE

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 A particle is a word that does not belong to one of the main classes of wordsis
invariable in form, andtypically has grammatical or pragmatic meaning. The usage of
the term particle varies. Some authorities include English prepositions and even
English articles as particles.
Examples: to (in marking infinitives), up (in set up)
(Richards, Platt, and Weber 1985, p. 208)
An adposition is a cover term for prepositions and postpositions. It is a
member of a closed set of items that occur before or after a complement composed
of a noun phrase, noun, pronoun, or clause that functions as a noun phrase, and
form a single structure with the complement to express its grammatical and semantic
relation to another unit within a clause.
Examples (English):
He went to the races.
He promised to help with whatever was the matter.

Parts of speech: a summary

● Noun: A noun is a name for someone or something. It can be someone or
something in particular, or someone or something in general.
● Pronoun: A pronoun is a substitute for a noun or a noun phrase.
● Verb: A verb is the action word in a statement. Some verbs link the subject to
a noun, pronoun, or adjective.
● Adjective: An adjective is a modifier. Usually it modifies, or makes more exact,
the meaning of a noun or pronoun.
● Adverb: An adverb is a modifier. Usually it modifies a verb, an adjective, or
another adverb.
● Conjunction: A conjunction is a connector. A coordinate conjunction connects
words or groups of words that are grammatically the same. A subordinate
conjunction connects a subordinate, or dependent, clause to a main clause.
● Preposition: A preposition is a connector that introduces a prepositional
phrase. It usually connects a noun or noun phrase to the part of the sentence
modified by the whole prepositional phrase, and it shows the relation between
the two.

CLOSED AND OPEN WORD CLASSES

Some classes of words are called closed because they contain a relatively
small number of items to which no new words can normally be added. These are
words (prepositions and conjunctions) which make connections (connectives or
connectors), pronouns and words (including articles) like the, some, each that
co-occur with nouns - these are called determiners.
Other classes of word are constantly being added to. Each contains a vast
number of terms already. They are open to new words being introduced. The open
classes are nouns, verbs and the words which qualify them, adjectives and adverbs.
These form the bulk of a language's vocabulary or lexis (also lexicon, though this
sometimes refers to a published version). These classes may be called lexical

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whereas the closed-class words are structural or functional. These tables illustrate
the two kinds of word class.

Closed word classes

Determiner Pronoun Preposition Conjunction
A, the, any, my, She, them, who, In, across, at, by, And, but, if, or,
those, which that, himself near, within while, unless
Open word classes
Noun Verb Adjective Adverb
Abstract: fear, joy Transitive: bite, Descriptive: lazy, Manner: reluctantly,
steal keenly, easily,
Concrete: chair, tall
Intransitive: live, softly
mud cry Comparative: lazier
Time: soon, often
Common: boy, Modal: can, will, Superlative: tallest Place: here, there
town may
Proper: Fred, Hull Auxiliary: be, have,
do

Problems of classification
Some words are difficult to classify. Not all grammatical descriptions will place
them in the same word class. This, these or those are sometimes classified as
demonstrative (or distinctive) adjectives or pronouns. Possessives, like my, his, their,
are sometimes classified as pronouns (showing the word from which they are
formed), sometimes as adjectives, showing their grammatical function of qualifying
nouns: usually they are pronouns when alone (I like that) and adjectives when they
precede a noun (I like this weather). Traditional lists of adverbs contain words like
very which qualify other adverbs or adjectives. This word class is sometimes called a
"dustbin" class, because any word which defies classification will be put in it! Among
words which have sometimes been classified as adverbs are the following: however,
just, no, not, quickly, tomorrow and when.
This incoherence has long been recognized by grammarians who subdivide
adverbs into further categories, such as adverbs of time, place or manner.
In trying to organize words into coherent classes, linguists will consider any or
all of the following: what they mean (semantics), their form (morphology),
provenance (historical origin) and function in a phrase, clause or sentence (syntax).
Some words, such as numbers, do not fit in any of the word classes given
above. They can behave as adjectives (one loaf or two?) or pronouns (I want one
now!). And no one description of word classes is regarded as finally authoritative.
Some classes (such asverbs or conjunctions) are fairly coherent. You should be able
to discuss the problems of how or where to classify words which seem not to "fit".
Also note that a dictionary does not (or should not) prescribe, but indicates
the word class or part of speech where a word is usually placed. But in a given

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sentence, if the speaker or writer has used it as if it were in a different class, then
this is where it should be placed.
For example, toilet is usually classified as a noun. But primary school
teachers often speak of toileting children (I had to toilet John twice today). In
describing such a sentence, you should be guided by the internal grammar of the
sentence (syntax) rather than the dictionary. Here toilet is a transitive verb. If this
usage becomes standard, lexicographers will record it. This kind of word formation is
called conversion, a self-explanatory name.
Words considered as wholes can be categorized according to how they work
within phrases, clauses or sentences. These categories, traditionally called parts of
speech are now more usually known as word classes. Parts of speech are labels for
categories in which words are usually placed. But in a given sentence a word from
one category may behave as if it were in another. A dictionary will only record
established or standard usage.
The traditional parts of speech were of eight kinds, excluding the two articles
(a/an, the). These were nouns, pronouns, adjectives, verbs, prepositions,
conjunctions, adverbs, and interjections. Modern linguists prefer to list words in
classes that are coherent - all the words in them should behave in the same way.
But if this principle were applied rigidly, we would have hundreds of classes, so
irregularities are tolerated.

New word classes

● Auxiliary: A word whose function is to assist the main verb in a clause to
express basic grammatical contrasts such as person, number and tense. The
primary auxiliaries are forms of be, have, do. The modal auxiliaries are such
verbs as may, might, should.
● Connective: A word which links language units, such as conjunctions and
some adverbs
● Determiner: A word which co-occurs with a noun to show meanings such as
number, quantity or identity (the, some, each)
● Head: The main element in a phrase; it may be pre- or post-modified
● Intensifier: Traditionally classed as an adverb; a word which adds force or
emphasis to a qualifier (extremely stupid, very cleverly)
● Modifier: Word or phrase which gives more information about the head
element in a phrase (All the beautiful (pre-modifier) fish (head) in the ocean
(post-modifier)

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