English Grammar: Classifying Words and Open vs. Closed Word Classes - Prof. Díaz Galan, Apuntes de Idioma Inglés

¡Descarga English Grammar: Classifying Words and Open vs. Closed Word Classes - Prof. Díaz Galan y más Apuntes en PDF de Idioma Inglés solo en Docsity! ENGLISH GRAMMAR I LESSON II Words Classifying words Words can be grouped taking into account three main criteria: 1. morphological (the morphemes they allow) – i.e. only nouns allow S1 – only verbs allow S3 2. syntactic (their typical functions and elements they co- occur with) – Lexical verbs always have the function “lexical verb” and the V.P. in which they appear will always be “predicator” – Nouns are the head of NPs. Nouns can co-occur with elements with the function “determiner” • i.e. these/the/ three houses *these/the/three quickly 3. semantic (their meaning, the less reliable) • i.e. nouns denote entities, concrete or abstract (“table”, “hope”) open word classes: • In English there are four open word classes: 1. nouns 2. adjectives 3. adverbs 4. verbs closed word classes There seven closed word classes in English: 1. prepositions 2. conjunctions 3. articles 4. numerals 5. pronouns 6. quantifiers 7. interjections closed word classes examples 1. prepositions (at, from, in spite of, except) 2. conjunctions (subordinators: that, if /coordinators: and, or, but, for) 3. articles (the, a) 4. numerals (ordinal or cardinal) 5. pronouns (personal, self-, relative..) 6. quantifiers (some, any, few, little..) 7. Interjections (ouch, ups ..)