English Word Classes:
A set of words that have one or more grammatical or syntactic characteristics in
common, such as the class of transitive verbs in English.
In linguistics, a word class may be either an open class or a closed class. Open
classes accept the addition of new morphemes (words), through such processes as
compounding, derivation, inflection, coining, and borrowing; closed classes generally do not.
'Content words, or lexical words,' (including nouns, verbs, adjectives, and most
adverbs) are words that carry the content or the meaning of a sentence and are open-class
words. They contrast with function (or grammatical, or closed-class) words, such as articles,
prepositions, conjunctions, auxiliary verbs, and pronouns, which can be found in almost any
utterance, no matter what it is about. Words in open classes (content and lexical words) carry
the primary communicative force of an utterance, and are variable in form (inflected). Their
distribution is not definable by the grammar.
Typical English has five main classes. They are the classes of nouns, verbs,
adjectives, adverbs and the copula (be).
The Linear Sentence Patterns:
By defining the five main form classes on the basis of their relative positions in English
sentences, one can make general statements about sentence structure, using these classes.
An analysis of sentence constituency begins at the largest units of grammar and then breaks
the larger units down into smaller and smaller units:
-
N+V
DET + N+ V
N+V+N
DET + N + V+ N
N + V + DET + N
DET + N + V + DET + N
N + be + ADJ
DET + N + be + ADJ
N + be + N
DET + N + be + N
N + be + DET + N
DET + N + be + DET + N
ADJ + N+ V
DET + ADJ + N+ V
ADJ + N + V + N
(ex) Women work.
(ex) Some children play.
(ex) Women build cars.
(ex) That teacher understands students.
(ex) Women build the cars.
(ex) Some children play some games.
(ex) Children are happy.
(ex) Some Children are happy.
(ex) Men are workers.
(ex) A woman was leader.
(ex) Children are the future.
(ex) A woman was the leader.
(ex) Young women work.
(ex) Some happy children play.
(ex) Old teachers understand students.
In the above sentence patterns one have made use of only five form classes of English
in the discussion of the linear sentence patterns. English has many more form classes:
auxiliary verbs, prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions, and adverbs are among the more
common. When these are taken into consideration, one soon realizes that an inventory of
linear sentence patterns for English must run into the ten thousands, probably hundreds of
thousands.
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